Is raising chickens something you’re considering? If so, here are five reasons you’ll love raising a small flock of hens.
1. Raising Chickens for Farm-Fresh Eggs
Raising chickens in a small urban or suburban backyard is farming on a small scale. If you’ve already been buying eggs from a local farmer, you know backyard eggs are exceptional. The yolks are deep orange from eating greens and they’re higher in omega-3 fatty acids, while lower in omega-6. When you gather fresh eggs from the nest box each morning, they’re still warm. And, while you’re not likely to see a hen laying an egg (a girl likes some privacy), you will hear her egg song every morning.
2. Making New Friends
Chickens are lovely companions, of course, and they can be a gateway to making human friends. Flocks in common are exciting icebreakers, sparking endless questions to ask a stranger or acquaintance.
“Did I hear you say you have chickens? So do I! What breeds do you have?”
“Oh, I have an Australorp, two Wyanodttes (silver and golden), an Easter Egger, a Buff Orpington, a Polish, you know with the big hair … What about you?”
People who’ve always wanted to keep chickens will talk to you, too. For someone who wants chickens, all it takes is getting to know someone who’s taken the leap into chicken keeping to boost their confidence.
“Yes, you really can raise chickens! Let me tell you how.”
We chicken keepers might border on enabling, but we’re the antidotes to naysayers who disapprove of raising chickens.
3. Raising Chickens Equals Having a Maintenance Crew
Your new flock of chickens is a maintenance crew that won’t mind working for its every meal—because when you’re a chicken, everything’s a meal and it’s always lunchtime somewhere.
Backyard chickens will help you clean out the garden by turning soil and pecking away edible scraps. These dedicated foragers will scratch through what you dig up from the ground, spreading soil and cleaning out grubs and other pests. If you bag grass when you mow, they’ll spread and turn it in the compost bin, or they will forage through and eat the trimmings if you leave them on the lawn.
4. Appreciating Our Food
Raising chickens inspires respect for the animals, their intelligence and their actual value as food producers. With the time, feed and water required for their bodies to produce an egg, grow new feathers, bathe and preen, and clean up pests, esteem for their seasonal abundance and off-season time off becomes a natural understanding. These are invaluable lessons of the day-to-day needs of the animals that produce what we eat. Appreciating the origins of our food is a gift often lost on urban dwellers.
5. Joining A Movement
Chicken keeping still isn’t mainstream, but it used to be, and it’s likely to be again. For now, you’ll be the weirdo in the neighborhood or the honorable crazy chicken lady, but that’s part of the fun. People seem to be increasingly reluctant to participate in the abuse of battery hens with their purchases, and they seem to be more aware of the energy it takes to transport our food from one place to another. The average distance our food travels is 1,200 miles from its origins to our grocery stores. Raising chickens, whether for eggs or meat, is activism. Quiet, cooing, clucking activism.
This article about raising chickens was written for Chickens magazine online. Click here to subscribe.
A cured egg yolk recipe is perfect if you’re wondering what to do with egg yolks. It’s a great addition to your recipe book when eggs are in season and abundant or to stretch end-of-the-season eggs just a bit longer.
A Cured Egg Yolk Recipe
Some people find that a salted cured egg yolk has an umami-like taste that is similar to Parmesan or mature gruyere cheese and we can certainly see the similarities both in taste and texture. They can be grated over pasta or sliced and added to meals that need more depth and saltiness.
Yield: 6 egg yolks
Ingredients
6 eggs
2 cups salt
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (more, as needed)
Cured Egg Yolk Preparation
Pour salt into a bowl and make a small well for each egg yolk.
Crack the eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. (Save the whites to make pasta dough, meringue or drinks.) Gently pour the egg yolks into the wells and carefully cover with salt.
Cover with a loose-fitting lid or beeswax cloth, and leave in the fridge for a few days.
Remove the egg yolks. Gently brush the salt off and wash them in apple cider vinegar. Dry them until they are completely dry. This can be done by hanging the eggs in cheesecloth in the fridge for a week, putting them overnight in the oven at 120°F or in a food dehydrator for an hour.
Store egg yolks in a sterilized airtight jar for up to one month.
Heirloom Skills Book Review
This recipe comes from Heirloom Skills – A Complete Guide to Modern Homesteading, written by Anders Rydell and Alva Herdevall. It was recently translated from Swedish to English and published in America. This is fortunate for us This book, without a doubt, has held my interest more than any book has in a very long time.
I’m partial to the topic of traditional living because I also write about heirloom skills and I find it fascinating to learn about the methodology of other people, especially people from across the globe.
In this book, Rydell and Herdevall write about chicken-keeping, raising bees, growing vegetables, food preservation, flower arranging, DIY beauty products and herbal medicine. They also go on to teach how to make sourdough bread, how to compost and how to keep ducks. There is even a chapter on beer and hops. This book is packed with great how-to instructions, delicious recipes, and plenty of colorful and helpful photos.
This recipe has been shared from Heirloom Skills with permission from Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
This cured egg yolk recipe article was written for Hobby Farms magazine online. Click here to subscribe.
Ripe limes are tasty, but you may have an abundance and can’t use them all at once. For those occasions, preserving limes is a lot like preserving lemons. Consider making a jar of these limes to have on hand.
You can preserve ripe limes and use them in a variety of ways, such as in soups, simmer sauces, vinaigrettes and marinades. But even more commonly used, it’s the preserved lime rinds that are put to work, not the juice or pulp.
How to Preserve Ripe Limes
Yield: 1 quart jar
Ingredients
8 to 10 fresh organic limes
3 to 4 tablespoons coarse kosher salt, more as needed
Preparation
Scrub limes clean. Unless you are certain that the limes you are using are free of food-grade wax, it is worth taking the additional step to remove any wax that may be present on the fruit. To do so, put the limes in a colander in the sink and carefully pour boiling water over them.
Trim off the ends of the limes, and cut them into quarters lengthwise.
Generously sprinkle salt in the bottom of a clean quart jar and pack in one layer of sliced limes. Repeat the salting and layering method until the jar is full. Push down on, and gently smash the limes as you fill the jar so that some of the juice releases and there is no space between the slices, leaving 1½ inches of headspace from the final layer of limes and the rim of the jar.
Sprinkle one final layer of salt over the last layer of limes. Through this process, enough juice should be present to submerge the wedges. If not, juice another lime and pour the juice over the jarred slices until they’re completely submerged.
If you have a small fermentation jar weight, add it to the jar to keep the limes completely submerged under the brine.
Wipe the jar rim clean with a dampened paper towel or clean lint-free towel and add the canning jar lid and tighten on the ring.
Store the preserved lemons at room temperature, ideally between 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and keep out of direct sunlight. The limes will keep preserved if they’re kept under the juice-salt brine.
How to Enjoy Preserved Limes
The preserved limes will have a potent citrus flavor but be saltier. You can decide to rinse the limes off before using or use them as-is, depending on what it is you’re using them for. For example, if you’re making a marinade, you could certainly leave the salty lime as they are. But if you are stirring the rind into a salad or rice, I’d recommend rinsing the lime off, removing the pulp and only chopping up the rind portion of the lime. It’s totally up to you!
Preserving Ripe Limes -Notes
To alter the flavor of the preserved limes, consider adding one to two teaspoons of dried hot pepper flakes within the layers, or a pinch of whole black peppercorns. Shove a couple of whole bay leaves within the sides of the jar or while layering limes and salt or incorporate a couple teaspoons of coriander.
If you do not have a glass jar weight, you can improvise by using an easily removable small food-grade glass dish that fits inside the jar to keep the layers submerged under the brine.
You may substitute fine sea salt instead of coarse kosher salt if you prefer. The measurement will remain the same.
This recipe has been adapted from WECK Home Preserving (2020) with permission from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
This article about preserving ripe limes was written for Hobby Farms magazine. Click here to subscribe.
How to take care of ducks in winter may not always be obvious. With their warm, downy feathers and insulating layers of fat, you might feel like you don’t need to help keep ducks warm in winter. Ducks may appear to have everything they need to survive winter’s harshest climates. However, if ducks are to thrive through winter, providing them with some extra care is essential.
Access to fresh swimming water, proper shelter and good nutrition are some necessities ducks need during the cold months. Here’s a list of what ducks need to beat winter’s cold.
Water for Waterfowl
It may sound strange, but access to fresh swimming water is necessary to help keep ducks’ feathers in tip-top condition. The reason for this unusual trait is an insulating layer of air between each layer of feathers. If a duck can’t bathe frequently, the feathers become dirty and compacted, releasing the insulating air from the feathers. Without the added layers of air in their feathers, ducks are prone to catching a chill.
Ducks have another unique trait that allows them to stay warm and dry while swimming, called the oil gland. Frequent swimming enables ducks to keep their oil glands in working condition. The oil gland (located just above the tail) releases a waxy oil that a duck spreads over its feathers while preening. This oil works as a water repellent, ensuring all feathers stay waterproof.
Ducks also need access to a fresh, unfrozen bucket of water for drinking and cleaning out their eyes and nares to prevent eye infections and keep their airways clean.
Erin Synder
Avoid the Pond
While allowing ducks to swim in a kiddie pool is safe in winter, giving them access to a pond is not. Floating on a pond increases the chances of a predator attack, and ducks can get trapped under shifting ice while feeding or diving underwater.
Erin Synder
Winter Duck Nutrition
Like all livestock, ducks need proper nutrition to thrive in winter. Providing them with a well-balanced, complete layer feed is the best way to ensure your ducks get the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients they need to thrive. When acquiring feed for ducks, choose a feed that includes probiotics and prebiotics, is nonmedicated, and is made with grains grown on North American Farms. Avoid feeds with animal by-products, growth hormones, artificial byproducts, and fillers.
Erin Synder
Feed Ducks Nutritious Treats
Supplementing a duck’s diet with some healthy treats can help boost their immune system by adding extra nutrients. Feed beneficial treats such as peas, wheat kernels, oatmeal and black soldier fly larvae that contain essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Avoid unhealthy options such as corn, pasta, red meat, poultry, bread and mealworms, as these treats have little nutritional value.
Allowing ducks to forage for treats is an excellent boredom buster. Bored ducks are unhappy ducks, and this fun mental stimulation will help keep your ducks happy, busy and thriving until spring.
Providing Shelter
Ducks need fresh air and sunshine to stay healthy, but when the snow starts to fall and temperatures dip below freezing, ducks need a sheltered area in the run to escape winter’s chill. Creating a weather shelter for ducks can be as easy as making a shelter out of pine boughs or constructing a “house” out of plywood. When building a weather-proof shelter, remember that these shelters are for protection from winter weather only and cannot keep out predators.
When housing Muscovy ducks, keep them confined to the coop when the temperature dips below 40 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the bare skin on their faces from frostbite.
Wind Advisory
Even though ducks love being outdoors, when temperatures or wind chills reach below 15 degrees, it’s time to head to the coop. While ducks are incredibly hardy, extreme temperatures and wind chills can be harmful and could cause sickness or death. Keep your ducks warm, and they’ll be happier.
Before letting your ducks into the run during cold winter mornings, check the local forecast to ensure the temperatures and wind chills are safe for them to be out.
Predator Protection
Protecting ducks from a predator attack is the priority in helping them survive and thrive through winter. While predator attacks happen throughout the year, the cold and snowy conditions make it harder for predators to find a meal and make them more likely to attack backyard ducks.
To keep ducks safe from predators, house them in a predator-proof coop and run. Cover the run’s top and sides with half-inch sixteen-gauge PVC heavy wire, leaving no gaps larger than one-half inch on the sides or roof. Attach predator skirts around the perimeter of the run to deter digging predators.
House ducks in a coop or barn with a wooden or cement floor to prevent digging predators from gaining access to the coop. Cover windows and holes larger than one-half inch with half-inch 16-gauge PVC heavy wire. Secure all door fixtures with padlocks to keep curious raccoons from opening coop doors, pop holes or nesting boxes.
Erin Synder
Knowing how to take care of ducks in winter can help backyard ducks survive and thrive through the harshest months. With a little effort, you can keep your ducks warm and soon they’ll be providing you with fresh eggs again in the spring.
This article about how to take care of ducks was written for Chickens magazine online. Click here to subscribe.
A chicken dust bath is a necessity for chickens to keep their feathers and skin, and ultimately their health, in tip-top shape. Plus, nothing makes a chicken happier than fluffing her feathers and wriggling in sun-warmed dirt. Before you set up your chicken dust bath, check out this list of dos and don’ts to provide a fun and safe time.
Life or Death in the Chicken Dust Bath? – A Personal Story
I decided to construct an indoor dust bath for chickens to use during the winter when the frozen ground prohibited them from frequent dust baths.
I constructed the DIY chicken dust bath by filling a flexible plastic mixing tub with dirt and wood ash. Their new accommodations delighted the hens, and they happily scratched through the soil, looking for tasty morsels.
All was well until one day when a strange sound came from my chickens in the barn. I hurried inside to find one of my Speckled Sussex hens, Kristi, wheezing. I rushed her to the vet, where they put her on oxygen and did emergency radiographs to discover the cause. The vet diagnosed her with dust particles in her lungs (probably due to improper ventilation while dust-bathing) and gave her less than a 50% recovery rate.
My vet treated Kristi with a steroid injection and nebulizer treatment and sent her home with additional medications. After receiving around-the-clock care, Kristi returned to the vet for a follow-up the next day, where she was given a clean bill of health.
After Kristi’s near-death incident, I examined my chicken dust bath setup to ensure the safest experience possible.
Erin Synder
Why Do Chickens Need to Dust Bathe?
A chicken wriggling around in the dirt may appear dirty, but this behavior is how chickens keep themselves clean and free of external parasites. As a chicken fluffs its feathers while dust bathing, a protective dust coating settles on the skin, creating a dust barrier to prevent insect bites.
Allowing chickens to dust bathe in a natural setting decreases bullying and cannibalistic behaviors amongst flock members in chicks and adults. Chicken dust bathing is a social event that helps build a strong bond between flock members. This natural behavior also reduces stress, allowing your flock to coexist more harmoniously.
Chicken Dust Bath Dos
How to make a chicken dust bath is easy, but before you begin, here are several things all dust-bathing spaces must have to create a safe and fun enrichment for your flock.
Natural is Best: When given the option, chickens always prefer creating their own dust-bathing area. Nothing makes a hen happier than scratching through new grass to the dirt below. So, providing an artificial dust bath during the summer months where hens can access this natural behavior isn’t recommended. However, in winter, when the frozen ground is covered in snow, chickens will happily utilize any dirt you can offer.
Adding Dried Herbs: Many herbs work as natural insect repellents, so it seems only natural to sprinkle some dried herbs in the dirt where your chickens dust bathe. Catnip, dill, fennel, lavender, mint, rosemary, thyme and yarrow are excellent insect repellents and help deter other vermin such as mice and snakes.
Outdoors Only: Only allowing chickens to dustbathe outdoors versus inside the coop is essential for proper airflow to keep chickens’ airways clean from dust particles.
Refresh the Dirt: When using a kiddie pool, flexible mixing tub,or a child’s sandbox, the dirt should be replaced with new, clean dirt. How often the dirt should be replaced will vary depending on the number of chickens in the flock and how frequently chickens are allowed access to the area.
Erin Synder
Chicken Dust Bath Don’ts
Just like every dust-bathing space has specific needs, there is a list of things to stay clear of when setting up the perfect area for your chickens. Following the suggestions below should ensure the safest experience for your flock.
Indoor Dust Bath: Even in the most ventilated coops, airflow is still more restricted than out in the run. Never put a chicken dust bath in the coop to prevent the risk of dust or dirt entering the airways.
Forget the Wood Ash: Wood ash is often used in chicken dust bath areas. This natural ash has many health benefits but can irritate a chicken’s sensitive airways. To keep hens’ airways clean while providing the health benefits of wood ash and charcoal, feed charcoal free-choice like you would grit or oyster shell.
Stay Clear of Fertilizer: When choosing dirt for a dust bathing area for your flock, avoid soil with fertilizer since many contain harmful substances that can cause illness or death if ingested. (This rule also applies to gardens and lawns.)
Following safe chicken dust bath practices allows your chickens to experience the instinct of dust bathing, stay free of parasites and help to strengthen flock bonds.
This article about chicken dust baths was written for Chickens magazine online. Click here to subscribe.
What to feed laying hens should be top priority as egg-laying hens must be fed correctly to achieve their potential. When their dietary needs are met, laying chickens supply homegrown eggs that are far tastier and more nutritious than typical store eggs.
What to Feed Laying Hens When They Start To Lay Eggs
As female chicks approach laying age at five to six months of age, depending on the breed, their nutrition and dietary needs change because their bodies focus on laying eggs rather than growing. Proper nutrition is also helpful to make sure hens that are laying don’t stop egg laying They don’t require as much protein, but they need much higher levels of calcium, which is necessary for hens to produce eggshells, along with phosphorus and vitamin D.
Commercially available layer rations are designed to provide optimal nutrition for laying hens, and all feeds sold in the U.S. must have a nutrition label. So when purchasing feed, read the label to make sure it’s specifically a layer ration and that it provides protein levels of 16 to 18 percent. Additionally, the percentage of calcium should be in the 3.5 to 4.5 percent range while the level of phosphorus should be 0.4 percent or higher. Young hens may be started on layer rations at about 18 weeks of age, or when the first egg arrives, whichever comes first.
A basic layer ration that contains appropriate amounts of protein, calcium and phosphorus should provide adequate nutrition for egg-producing hens and be the most economical option. Suppliers also offer more expensive feeds that contain additional vitamins and minerals or are specialized in some way. There are feeds with vitamin or omega-3 enhancing supplements, as well as natural, soy-free, non-GMO, organic and others. Choosing among these higher-priced rations is a personal choice based on your chicken-keeping goals.
Food Budget
Feed costs vary widely depending upon the type of layer feed—basic, organic, and so on—and the region you live in. Pelleted feeds are considered more economical than crumbles (aka broken pellets) because adult birds waste fewer pellets. Where I live in Northeastern Ohio, a 50-pound bag of natural layer pellets is about $15. It’s recommended that laying hens have free-choice access to feed, and on average, you can expect them to consume about 1/4 pound per day.
Given the parameters listed previously, a pound of feed costs 30 cents ($15/50 = .30) and 1/4 pound costs 7.5 cents (.30 x .25 = .075). That means it would cost about 53 cents (.075 x 7 = .525) to feed a hen for a week. If that hen laid six eggs per week, then it would cost $1.06 (.53 x 2 = $1.06) in feed for a dozen eggs. This demonstrates how economical home-produced eggs can be and one reason laying hens have become so popular.
Supplement Selections
In addition to free-choice rations, egg-layers should have constant access to clean water, oyster shells and grit, if they are eating anything other than commercial rations. Eggs are primarily made up of water, so water is critical to a laying hen. Just a few hours without water can result in reduced egg production.
Although layer rations contain extra calcium, it’s a good idea to offer oyster shell or calcium grit. Top-producing hens may need more calcium than what is in the feed and will self-regulate the amount of additional calcium they consume. If you are feeding supplemental foods or hens are foraging, then they need grit, too. The only mechanism chickens have for grinding food into pieces small enough to digest is grit.
It takes just a few basic elements to ensure that laying hens receive an optimal diet. The reward for meeting their nutritional requirements are happy hens that provide homegrown, wholesome and delicious eggs.
This story about what to feed laying hens originally appeared in the July/August issue of Chickens. Click here to subscribe.
Feeding chickens is simple, right? You just put up some fencing and let them do the rest, right? Well, not exactly. Many of our domesticated chicken breeds need a bit more in the way of nutrition than their progenitor, the red jungle fowl. This is because humans have bred farm birds to be high producers of eggs and meat. Abundant, healthy output requires feeding chickens abundant, healthy input.
Chickens do have simple digestive systems, “with few to no microorganisms living in the digestive system to help digest food like in ruminants such as cattle,” writes Phillip Clauer, poultry extension specialist at Penn State University in “Biology of the Fowl.” “Chickens depend on enzymes to aid in breaking down food so it can be absorbed, much like humans.”
Here are a few things to consider as you look at the feeding system for your chickens.
1. Always Offer Age-Appropriate Feed
A rapidly growing day-old chick needs higher protein than an actively laying hen or a bird in molt, for example. Each age and stage of a bird’s development—throughout its life and throughout the calendar year—commands a different ration.
When feeding young chickens, offer starter feed or broiler feed, depending on their purpose, free-choice, meaning, make it available at all times.
Laying hens should be offered a layer feed, designed with the proper amount of protein for hens actively laying eggs. Birds in molt need higher protein in general; feathers consist of more than 85 percent protein, and it takes a lot of energy to grow new feathers. This can often be supplemented in other ways.
2. Feeding Chickens: Keep Treats Seasonal
If you live and tend to a flock in a region with fluctuating seasons, keep the months in mind when providing treats.
High-protein treats, such as mealworms, are great in the fall, when many birds are molting.
Scratch, as a fatty snack, encourages a bird to bulk up. Reserve for winter.
When laying resumes in the spring, support your hens with fresh abundance of their calcium-rich layer feed (preferably organic).
In summer, follow the season and offer green treats, particularly allowing ample time to forage.
3. Free-Range Often
A happy chicken is a foraging one. Every bird should know the freedom of ranging, the warmth of the sun and the satisfaction of hunting its own feed. The emotions of your chickens aside, an active bird is a healthier bird, and feeding time plays into this. Adding variety to the diet and keeping the fat stores around its reproductive system to a minimum increases egg laying and fertility.
4. Feeding Chickens: Remember Supplements
For laying hens, calcium supplements are critical. Many chicken keepers offer them in the form of oyster shells, produced and sold for this very purpose.
“Laying hens use the calcium from their bodies to form eggs,” writes Pam Freeman in Backyard Chickens: Beyond the Basics (2017). “Almost half the calcium a hen needs to form an eggshell comes from her bones.” If they aren’t getting enough calcium to replenish their stores, their bones can become weak.
For birds that are lucky enough get kitchen treats and compost access, provide the right-size grit free-choice in a separate feeder in the coop. Grit assists in digestion, as a chicken doesn’t have teeth, but rather a gizzard, an oval organ composed of two pairs of thick red muscles.
“These muscles are extremely strong and are used to grind or crush the food particles,” Clauer writes. “This process is aided by the presence of grit and gravel picked up by the bird.”
Offer oyster shells and grit in their own containers, separate from the feed and full at all times. Flock members will take what they need when they need it.
5. Water Is Essential
Summer or winter, hot or cold, access to fresh clean water is an absolute must. Consider water the most critical “feed” element—even before feed. Laying hens that go without water for just 24 hours might experience decreased laying abilities for a month or more. Hens that go without water for a longer period might sustain irreparable damage and never fully recover their egg-laying frequency.
“Water helps to remove waste products produced by food and exercise,” writes chicken-keeper Virginia Shirt in The Right Way to Keep Chickens (2007). “As food is eaten, water softens the corn or pellets and aids the extraction of vitamins and minerals from the food. Chickens, being small animals, do not ingest great amounts of water at a time; however, they do make many visits to the water supply throughout the day.” Also, many supplements are administered by being added to water.
It’s true that chickens are easy and don’t ask for much. Anticipating their needs and meeting those needs before anything goes awry keeps them happy and healthy in the long run. Good food, plenty of water, a few extras and access to the outdoors will keep your flock in tiptop shape.
This article about feeding chickens was written for Chickens magazine online and is regularly updated for accuracy. Click here to subscribe.
Chicken feed one hundred years ago looked very different than what we feed chickens today. Feeding chickens with nutritionally balanced, bagged livestock and poultry feed is a fairly recent and welcome development. One hundred years ago, poultry keepers grew their own produce for feeding chickens or fashioned it from bulk ingredients.
Consider chick starter. In 1909, Arthur Johnson wrote Chickens and How to Raise Them. In it he stressed the importance of chicks’ first meals to a healthy start.
“For the first meal, there is nothing like the old-fashioned hardboiled egg and stale bread crumbs, the former being well minced and mixed up with the latter,” he wrote. “A little of this should be sprinkled upon a sack, and the chickens will in most cases immediately begin to eat.”
In a couple of hours or so, Johnson said, the chicken keeper may offer another meal. The next day, the chicken keeper could add some coarse oatmeal to the mixture.
“Unfertile eggs are just as good as fresh ones,” he wrote, “but this food should not be used exclusively or excessively, and not after the third day, unless the chickens are very weak and the weather against them. Having discontinued it gradually, some scalded biscuit-meal may be given with the oatmeal, and green food added to the bill of fare.”
Chicken Feed: Going Green
Green food enjoyed high regard in the day. It still impacts the fare of our chickens, whether chicks, layers or slow-growing heritage meat birds. Johnson couldn’t stress enough the importance of a good supply of fresh, juicy vegetables, particularly in late winter, when green is hard to find.
“Lettuce, cabbage and onions can always be obtained, and the last-named is an excellent vegetable for chickens if minced up,” he wrote. “They are cheap, always obtainable, wholesome and prevent many diseases.”
Myrtle Wilcoxon wrote Common Sense on Poultry Raising in 1906 and heartily agreed. Her favorite chicken feed from the garden was the mangel-wurzel, also known as the mangel or fodder beet, an astoundingly productive, easy-to-grow, old-time vegetable still right for today’s poultry garden. A single root weighs as much as 20 pounds, and mangels keep well in winter storage.
“Where fowls are kept in pens and yards throughout the year, it is always best to supply some green food,” she wrote. “During the winter and early spring months, mangel-wurzels, if properly kept, may be fed to good advantage. The fowls relish them, and they are easily prepared. As it is not difficult to grow from 10 to 20 tons of these roots per acre, their cost is not excessive.”
Chicken Feed: Beets
When feeding chickens beets, Wilcoxon advised splitting the root lengthwise with a large knife. The chickens can then pick out the crisp, fresh food from the exposed cut surface. Large pieces have the advantage over smaller pieces in this respect: The smaller pieces when fed from troughs or dishes fall into the litter and soil more or less before consumption. Large pieces can’t be thrown about as easily and remain clean and fresh until wholly consumed.
Fanny Field, author of The Excelsior Poultry Book (1891), preferred cabbage and clover. “If we would keep our fowls in the best of health and have them lay regularly in cold weather, we must supply them with some kind of green food that will, as nearly as possible, fill the place of the green grass that they get while at large in warm weather,” she wrote. “Some poultry raisers claim that raw cabbage is ‘the best’ green food, while others declare that clover is better than cabbage. I think the better way is to feed both if you can get them.”
Field advised to hang the head of cabbage to the side of the coop. There, the birds could reach it and let them help themselves. Don’t worry about their eating too much good food, she wrote. “When it is where they can get at it all the time, they won’t eat enough to hurt them.”
Recycled Food
In addition to green food, turn-of-the-century chickens ate rations comprising grains, protein from milk or meat, and scraps from the family’s table.
“Bits of bread, cheese, meat, cake, pie, doughnuts, all kinds of vegetables are served up to the hens,” Field wrote. “Nothing in the way of food comes amiss. Of course, where a large number of fowls are kept,
the table scraps will not be sufficient to make the fowls’ breakfast every morning, but if all the scraps are carefully saved in something kept for the purpose, there will be enough to give an occasional breakfast that will be liked by the fowls.”
Field’s preparation included scalding or boiling the table scraps enough to soften them. She then mixed in enough wheat bran to make a stiff, crumbly mass.
“For some of the other breakfasts, boil up the small potatoes, apples, turnips, carrots, beets, parsnips, beans, peas, squashes, pumpkins, celery tops, sometimes one thing, sometimes another. Mash them, and then mix up with bran and shorts [wheat middlings] and sometimes a little cornmeal,” she wrote.
Chicken Feed: The Ideal Plan
In The Home Poultry Book (1913), author Edward Farrington described an ideal feeding plan for a small flock of chickens.
“Good sound grain in variety, with a mixture of ground grains served as a mash, a certain amount of meat in some form and green food in abundance will fill all the requirements,” he wrote. “The grains to use are corn, oats, wheat, barley and Kaffir corn [sorghum]. Corn, oats and wheat are the grains to be depended upon month in and month out. The others are fed to give variety but really are not necessary.”
Farrington especially adored corn. “Corn is the best poultry food there is, and the danger that it will make the fowls too fat to lay is a bugaboo to which little attention need be paid. Cracked corn is better than whole corn simply because it makes the hen work harder to fill her crop, and exercise is important.”
The Spice of Life
Fanny Field, Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Excelsior Poultry Book author Field earned a reputation as an outspoken lady. And she really loved chickens. Her nutrition advice included feeding chickens a variety. This was not just for health reasons but because the chickens needed it for their mental well-being.
“Don’t give the same kind of cooked food every morning right through the winter,” she wrote. “Give as much variety as possible. I don’t like the same kind of breakfast 50 or 60 mornings in succession. And I don’t believe hens do either.”
Wet Their Whistles
Our authors stressed that supplements and plenty of water are important, too.
“Only the veriest tyro [beginner] needs to be told that oyster shells and grit must be kept in hoppers where the hens can have access to them at all times,” Farrington wrote.
He also noted that without water, hens will not lay eggs. During summer, he advised providing fresh water at least twice a day.
“It is an advantage to have the water dish in a shaded place outside the house and an iron or earthenware dish will help to keep the water palatable,” he wrote.
Field addressed winter water for hens in the same way she addresses feeding chickens. She was direct, with her chickens’ welfare in mind.
“Many farmers who would not think of depriving their fowls of drink in warm weather, make no effort to supply them with water in cold weather,” she wrote. “They seem to think that the biddies can get along somehow without drink, but the fowls that ‘get along somehow’ are not the ones that pay dividends.”
During cold weather, Field suggested keeping a supply of pure, fresh water available to your flock during the greater part of the day. And be sure it’s a bit warm.
“Warm drink and warm food makes the fowls feel comfortable,” she wrote.
Vintage poultry books contain a lot of interesting, often adaptable old-time advice for chicken feed. Download a few from the Heritage Biodiversity Library or buy reprints from today’s booksellers. They are fun to read and informative, too.
Free Library
All the vintage poultry books we discuss in this column are available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium of libraries dedicated to making digital a huge array of old-time natural history and agricultural books and journals so they’re available as free downloads to anyone who wants to read them.
More than 200,000 titles are available, including more than 50 general-interest poultry books. And a plethora of books just about chickens including breeds and bantams, geese, ducks, turkeys and guinea fowl. It’s a resource every poultry keeper should have.
This article about chicken feed was originally written for Chickens magazine online and is regularly updated for accuracy. Click here to subscribe.
Vegetable gardening with kids can be a lot of fun. Here’s a list of fruits and vegetables perfectly suited to a children’s garden to help get you started. But don’t let the fun stop here—let your kids’ imaginations run wild and don’t be afraid to try something new in the gardening realm.
1. Parisian Carrots
Pinetree Garden Seeds
Carrots tend to be a favorite when vegetable gardening with children, but we love this small, round, heirloom for small hands to harvest. Parisian carrots have a consistently sweet flavor, and are ready to harvest in a shorter amount of time than full-length carrots. They grow well in difficult clay or rocky soil but are also perfectly sized for container gardening. Be sure to provide this variety plenty of water, and they’ll be sure not to disappoint your little ones.
2. Easter Egg Blend Radishes
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
What could be more fun than an Easter egg hunt? Digging up colorful radishes in pink, purple, red and white, of course. While radishes might not be at the top of your little eaters’ favorite-foods list, kids will want to pop one of these pretty, mild-flavored globes into their mouths after having pulled them from the ground. Easter egg radishes have a crisp, mild flavor and can be harvested in just a few weeks after direct-sowing into the garden.
If your kids are hesitant to eat the radishes raw, consider baking them with a little salt and butter to bring out their sweetness. Or mix them raw in a food processor with a stick of butter to spread on bread as a snack—the butter mellows out the radishes’ bite.
3. Strawberries
Ajith/Flickr
Strawberries are a no-brainer for children’s vegetable gardening because kids love them, they come back year after year, and they will spread on their own to fill the container you plant them in. When choosing strawberry plants, look for everbearing varieties, which produce fruit all season long. For something a little different, try pineberry strawberries, a white variety that tastes like pineapple.
4. Cherry Tomatoes
Bonnie Plants
Tomatoes are a must for adults and children in vegetable gardening because the flavor of a garden-grown tomato beats a store-bought variety every time. Cherry tomatoes in particular capture the imaginations of children, perhaps because they are so plentiful and easy to pick. A child just can’t help but pop a few in his or her mouth while wandering through the garden. Try sweet, disease-resistant varieties such as Sun Sugar (a yellow cherry tomato) or Super Sweet 100 ( a red tomato)—but be aware that they might do better in raised beds than in pots and will need to be staked or caged to keep their indeterminate vines off the ground.
5. Purple Potatoes
Seacoast Eat Local/Flickr
Growing potatoes is like growing your own buried treasure. While any type of potato can be fun for youngsters in a vegetable gardening project, kids will be especially delighted by purple varieties—and it can be an excuse for you to introduce more color into their diets.
To plant, cut seed potatoes so there’s at least one eye per piece. Space the potato pieces at least 3 feet apart in the garden and about 5 inches deep. As the plants begin to sprout, hill up the soil around the stalks until the plants begin to blossom. (For containers, choose a deep container, and add soil to it as the plant begins to grow.) Then continue watering them. Once the plants begin to die back, you can dig up the potatoes. Feel free to dig them up all at once, or leave potatoes in the ground to preserve them until you’re ready to use them.
6. Sugar Snap Peas
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
A cross between flat snow peas and garden peas whose pods are inedible, sugar snap peas are a fun addition to a children’s garden because they can be eaten fresh or cooked, whole pod or not. Look for stringless varieties so that small children don’t choke on the strings. The peas can be planted straight into the garden in early spring and will need to be trellised. Incorporate something fun into the garden as a trellis, such as the side of the children’s swing set or a teepee trellis that the kids can climb inside.
7. Baby Greens Mix
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
This is another small plant for small hands and one that will work well in containers as well as raised beds. By incorporating a mix of greens—spinach, kale, chard, arugula and others—your children will get to explore a variety of colors, textures and flavors while getting their daily dose of roughage. Start planting baby greens when the weather is still cool, and continue to sow until warm weather causes plants to bolt and turn bitter. Have children harvest with scissors daily or as leaves are big enough for a tender salad mix. If they don’t get to the harvest in time, don’t sweat it—the full-grown versions of the greens are just as tasty.
8. Okra
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Okra is a fun plant for kids because it’s a flower as well as a vegetable. During the day, okra plants boast big beautiful flowers (which can be eaten, too, if you want to try a fun experiment). The okra grows very quickly once it comes onto the plant. Your children will be amazed at how its size changes from day to day, and there will always be something for them to harvest. To add an extra splash of color to the garden, look for a red variety, or plant a mix of green and red okra.
This article about vegetable gardening with children was written for Hobby Farms magazine online and is regularly updated. Click here to subscribe.
Gardening tools always include the classics like the digging shovel, the hand trowel, the hoe, the hand cultivator and more. In fact, we’ve compiled a list of these must-have items (see below). But your collection of gardening tools isn’t complete when you’ve covered the basics. Some might argue it’s impossible to truly “complete” a collection because there are so many niche and custom tools you can employ to make gardening better and easier. Like my favorite bamboo pole planter, for example.
That’s why we’ve compiled a list of five less obvious items you’ll want to have on hand when spring rolls around and you’re ready to prepare and plant your garden. Are they absolutely critical? Not necessarily. But they can certainly make life easier.
Tending to a garden requires many hours spent in the sunshine. To avoid sunburns, add sunscreen to your gardening tools. This is especially helpful if you’ve spent a long northern Wisconsin winter indoors or bundled up in winter coats so the sun never reaches your skin. (I speak from experience.)
2. Cardboard Boxes
Cardboard boxes of all sizes are highly useful in a garden. You can set one by a garden bed and toss in plant matter as you weed. You can fill them with worn-out plant materials (frost-bitten tomato plants, sunflower stalks, etc.) at the end of the growing season.
They’re handy for transporting dirt, compost, dried leaves and other materials around the garden. They can even serve as emergency cloches on cold nights. Just don’t leave the boxes out in the rain or they’ll fall apart, which can make quite a mess if the box was stuffed full of weeds and dirt.
Decorative signs labeling your garden plantings are both picturesque and effective, but sometimes you don’t have a sign for every type of plant you’re growing. Or maybe you need more information than a sign that says “Tomatoes” can provide. (Maybe you’re growing 15 varieties of tomatoes and need to remember where each individual type is planted.)
That’s why you need an outdoor marker on your list of gardening tools. I grow plants in wooden raised garden beds, and it’s simple and easy to write the types and varieties of plants in ink on each bed. If you’re not using raised beds (or if you’d rather not write on them), just cut a few slats of wood and stick them in the ground as homemade markers.
A quick DIY approach with scrap wood and an outdoor marker is better than forgetting which plants are which.
4. Rolls of Twine
If you’re not sure where and how you would put twine to use in your garden, don’t overthink it. Just buy a roll and have it ready with your gardening tools. The needs will become apparent soon enough.
Obviously twine is useful when building trellises for plants like peas to climb, but it can also be used to help large and gangly plants that need extra support. Think of giant sunflowers trying to blow over in the wind or a tomato plant that is trying to fall over under the weight of its crop.
5. Scissors
You could cut twine with a knife, but scissors are easier and you’ll put them to use in countless other ways. Whether you’re deadheading flowers or opening a bag of organic fertilizer, you need to have a pair of scissors (perhaps even several pairs) in your garden.
Congratulations! With these extra items, you’re elevating your gardening game to the next level.
This article about gardening tools was written for Hobby Farms magazine online and is regularly updated. Click here to subscribe.
