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Notes on
My Poultry Sanctuary
You
will find the following
sections in progress below (page started 1/30/2003):
- Preface
- How
I got Started Keeping
Poultry in my Yard
- Hints
on Raising and Caring
for Poultry in Your Backyard
-
Hints
on Organic or Near-Organic,
and Sustainable Care for Poultry
-
Using
SAM (Syntropic Antioxidative Microbes) and SAM Products for
Poultry Care and Health
- Electric
Fencing: Excellent
Low-maintenance Protection Against Predators (red fox, bobcats,
coyotes,
stray dogs, raccoons, opossums, etc..)
Preface
I
currently reside on a forested
mountainside in a remote rural area -- in the Appalachian Mountains of
eastern U.S. In my yard I
have
about 20 chickens (and a few ducks, geese, turkeys, Bantams and guinea
fowl), which I keep primarily as pets and for eggs (I do not eat any of
the birds.) The purpose of this webpage is to share some of
my experiences
and successes in keeping my birds happy, healthy and well, with some
notes
on caring for them with sustainable near-organic (or even
beyond-organic)
environmentally-friendly methods. This
page will also contain
notes on keeping out predators such as red fox, stray dogs, stray cats,
coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, opossums and other animals. As you may have
guessed, the only really practical answer to the latter challenge --
short
of building a massive outdoor six-sided cage out of chain link fencing
-- is to use a good electric fence, as almost all professional poultry
farmers and most backyard chicken keepers do. For more info
on the
use of fencing and electric fencing to protect birds from all
four-footed
predators, please see the section below. I
will also be discussing
below a bit my experiences with using beneficial SAM
(Syntropic
Antioxidative Microbes) brews with my birds to
do the
following: - increase
their happiness, health,
hardiness and disease-resistance
- vastly
improve the quality of
their (natural, no drugs, no chemicals) feed
-
prevent
odors from their wastes
- allow
their wastes to decompose
quickly to a soft peat-like soil
- allow
the soil in their pens
to remain strong and healthy
As
of February 2003, this page
is very much under development, and I will be adding material as time
allows.
How
I Got Started Keeping Birds in my Yard
As
related above, I live somewhat
in solitude in a rather remote wilderness area in the
mountains.
Until springtime of 2002, my primary companions -- beyond visitors such
as friends or consulting clients -- were my beagle and my
cat. In
mid-spring of 2002, I started having fantasies of buying a few baby
chicks
at my local feed and grain store and raising them in a brooder box in
my
living room and then allowing them to live outside in my
yard. It
sure sounded and felt warm and fun to contemplate having a bunch of
baby
chicks in my living room for a month or two, but somehow, I felt
reluctant....
it felt like it could all become one more distracting
chore.... Further,
I was not really in the mood for building a brooder box, nor for
eventually
having to build fencing or at least extend the welded-wire fencing from
an old dog pen in my side yard once the chicks had grown enough to move
outside. However, the idea of getting a few baby chicks and
eventually
having some chicken companions in my yard kept recurring to me, and I
kept
considering it and rejecting it, despite the added bonus that I would
have
a ready and cheap source of all-natural organic eggs.
Nonetheless,
I mentioned the possibility to a few friends, and finally put it
aside....
One Saturday evening as I went to bed, I simply let go of the whole
idea,
and said on an inner level: "Dear God/Source and my angels, if
you really
want me to have chickens, I trust that you will send them to
me.
However, I have decided that I will not go out and buy chicks and build
a brooder box on my own. I refuse to push the river! If I am
meant
to have chickens, they will come into my life. Period, and
that is
that! Enuf' said!" I then turned over and
went to sleep. Well,
the next morning, I
fed my beagle Toby his breakfast much later than usual for some reason,
and then, as soon as he had eaten, took him outside at about 10 AM for
his morning romp in the yard so he could do his "business". Since I
live
in the mountains and in a forest, I never use a leash, and instead
simply
open the door and walk outside into the wooded yard with
Toby. This
particular morning was a bit warm and sunny, and so I stayed outside
for
a while, enjoying the sunshine and allowing Toby to explore the
yard.
I eventually became aware that Toby was doing something very
unusual....
he was a few dozen yards from me, and stood frozen, fixedly
"pointing"
at a large clump of mountain laurel bushes. Now, I guess that
all
beagles can technically "point", as it is likely in their very genes,
but
I had only seen Toby point about twice before in his entire life, once
at a deer along the trail which I had not noticed, and once, on a dark
evening, at something rustling in the bushes, which turned out to be a
large bobcat. I
called Toby several times,
but could not get his attention off whatever he was pointing at so
fixedly.
Finally, I walked over to him and asked Toby what he was pointing at;
he
just kept pointing, shaking with excitement. I peered into
the cluster
of mountain laurel, and I gradually discerned two adult hens, kinda
reddish
in color, standing there. Once they realized I had seen them, they
strutted
out of the bushes, and came a bit closer to me. After I was
finished
admiring them, I told them that I realized that they had probably
wandered
off -- or been chased off by predators -- from their home, and that
they
were welcome to move in to my yard and stay with me if they
wished.
After a while, I went back into the house with Toby.
As
evening fell, I noticed
that the hens were still in my yard, so I reminded them that they were
welcome to move in with me. I tidied up a ten by ten foot
open patio
space under an overhanging porch, and made room for them on top of some
plastic 30-gallon compost pails in a corner of that space, in case they
wished to roost there. However, as it grew darker, I became
worried
that they might not want to choose the space under the overhanging
porch,
but might prefer something safer, perhaps inside the fence of
my
old dog pen. So, as dusk fell, I cleaned up Toby's old
doghouse,
which had sat unused for years, put it on cinder blocks in the old dog
pen, and then nailed a long dowel stick to the peak of the roof, so
that
the two hens would have somewhere to roost. As I finished my
task,
I looked around for the hens, and discovered that they had already
settled
in for the night in the patio/foyer area under the porch, and they did
not seem at all interested in moving into the old dog pen and the extra
safety afforded by it's welded wire fence. They had settled
in on
top of the old compost pails, and were settling down to go to sleep for
the night. Within
days, it was obvious
that the hens, whom I started to call Mrs. Weatherbee and Mrs.
Merriweather,
had adopted me and had moved in to stay. I did not need to worry at all
immediately about feeding them, since it was springtime, and my yard
and
woods held enough food for dozens of chickens. Rather, I gave
them
a bowl of water in the sheltered area they had chosen for sleeping, and
then set about making their night-time roosting spot more comfortable
and
safe. Since it was obvious that they did not wish to move
into the
old dog pen, but preferred to freely roam the yard, I put some old
scrap
plywood on top of the 30 gallon compost pails which had become their
roosting
area, and then moved the doghouse-cum-roosting pole on top of
that.
This gave the hens greater height above ground at night to afford more
safety while roosting, and also more comfort than standing on the
plastic
lids of garbage pails which had been converted to compost pails.
Within
a week, the hens had
started laying eggs daily, under the sloping branches of a dense fir
tree,
which I harvested and ate each day. Well, somehow, since I
figured
that the arrival of the hens had been a sign from the angels, I decided
to go down to my local Southern States feed and grain store, and buy a
few baby chicks. So, I made a couple of jury-rigged broody
boxes
for a tabletop in my living room, rigged up a couple of heat lamps for
warmth, and went to town and picked up about a dozen chicks.
However,
it did not stop there.... a few weeks later, as the first batch of
chicks
were nearly ready to be moved outdoors, I broke down and again went to
the feed store... This time I bought eight more chicks, which moved in
to a new, larger, custom-made brooder box which I had built in the
interim.
Around this time, some Amish and Old Order Mennonite organic farmer
friends
in Pennsylvania also got in the act. A wonderful Amish farmer
named
Jacob Zook gave me a beautiful white Bantam hen sitting on a dozen
eggs,
and a wonderful Old Order Mennonite family who ran a farm near
Harrisburg
gave me two old Barred Plymouth Rock hens and a big old white rooster.
It
did not stop there. Within
a month, a third "wild" or wandering hen walked out of the woods --
from
the same place and direction from which the earlier two hens had come
--
this one was an adolescent, about 15 weeks old, and she decided to move
into my bird sanctuary as well. I eventually also purchased
two baby
turkeys and eleven baby guinea fowl. These were shortly
followed
by 2 baby ducks and 2 baby geese, which my traditional farmer friends
had
advised me would act as "watchducks" and "watchgeese" and defend the
other
birds against any predators such as owls, hawks, fox or coyote (and,
yes,
the geese and ducks have worked admirably to protect the other birds
from
hawks and owls; the issue of fox or coyote is a moot point, because my
combination of fence plus electric fence is 100% effective in keeping
all
four-footed predators away from my birds.) Meanwhile, my
slowly growing
menagerie of outdoor birds was still wandering the yard freely, with
nary
a mishap but for when one wandered out into the road and temporarily
slowed
down the occasional car which passed my house.
Well,
as the baby geese and
ducks matured in the brooder box in the house, reality hit my outdoor
flock...
I started losing birds in the morning hours, at the rate of about one
every
day or other day, to a female red fox who nested in an old artesian
well
springhead across the street. In fact, as her very first
victim,
she chose not my little Bantam or one of the adolescent hens which had
been moved outside, but rather my very large old and tough
rooster.
As the predation continued, I had to quickly decide what to do. I
certainly
had no desire to harm the fox, as she was only doing what God had made
her to do, but I just did not want her eating my kids..... I
eventually
had a few losses as well which were not from Mrs. Fox, but rather from
a stray neighbor's dog, a stray neighbor's cat, and one apparently from
a raccoon at night. I was not happy, and I started figuring
out ways
to manage my growing flock and keep the birds safe.
As
the stories of my losses
spread among the local livestock and farm world, I received plenty of
offers
from folks who were willing to come up and either shoot or trap the
fox,
but I politely refused all offers. I finally decided that I
would
need to beef up the 3-foot high welded wire fence enclosure
which
had been the old dog pen, and then emplace several electric fence wires
on the outside at intervals, and also one on top. Luckily, I
had
built electric fences several times before, so the electric part was
not
a problem. Rather, the job of beefing up the old welded wire
fencing
became a mechanical chore which took me several hours per day for
several
weeks. However, as soon as possible, I managed to get my
birds moved
into the enclosed and electrified pen, and eventually built a second
pen
-- using a cheap, affordable, ready-to-use 164-foot roll of portable
flexible
electric poultry netting -- outside the first pen, to accommodate the
Bantams,
turkeys and guinea fowl, thus keeping them separate from my Rhode
Island
Red and Barred Rock chickens. The two ducks and two geese,
when they
moved outside, chose to move into the larger, older pen with the big
chickens,
in which I had built a spacious 10 foot by 12 foot "flying buttress"
poultry
shelter for night-time roosting. Incidentally,
the electric
fencing worked perfectly, keeping out all four-footed
predators.
I have had one or two incursions by hawks, one of which was so amazing
-- where my female duck beat up the hawk, paralyzed it and nearly
killed
it -- that I will likely eventually devote an entire section on this
page
to the story, replete with photos, at some later date. I
eventually
had one loss of a guinea hen at night in mid-winter, which may have
been
due to a raccoon or opossum which climbed up a tree outside the fence,
crossed over to a tree inside the pen, then climbed down into the pen
and
climbed another tree (inside the pen) to attack my guinea
hen. However,
this is hardly any failure of the electric fence, but rather an
extremely
rare occurrence which I could have prevented if I had spent the time to
trim branches... Just
after the last of my
baby birds had moved out into the pens, another hen, this time
an
adolescent Rhode Island Red hen, a couple of weeks younger than my own
batch of now-adolescent Rhode Island red hens, walked out of the woods
and asked if she, too, could move in, just as had Mrs. Weatherbee and
Mrs.
Merriweather before her. So, I picked her up and held her for
awhile,
and then I moved her into the pen with my own adolescent
chickens.
She has been here ever since. However, my "farm" somehow
became known
as the local bird-adoption shelter, and since that time I have adopted
numerous chickens who had become homeless or were about to become
homeless,
including about 14 beautiful Bantams. Now,
if you have been keeping
count, you will have noticed that my bird count must be getting pretty
high. Luckily, my ex-wife Lisa, who has chickens of her own,
was
willing to take over a dozen birds at one time in mid-summer 2002, and
so my bird population is still quite manageable. Except, of
course,
for my rapidly-growing Bantam population, due to my beautiful white
Bantam
hen Henrietta, who successfully hatches and lovingly raises broods even
in late November.... Using
SAM and SAM Products for Poultry Care and Health
As
mentioned above I have
been, since December 2002, playing with using beneficial SAM (Syntropic
Antioxidative Microbes) brews with my birds to
do the
following: - increase
their happiness, health,
hardiness and disease-resistance
- vastly
improve the quality of
their (natural, no drugs, no chemicals) feed
-
prevent
odors from their wastes
- allow
their wastes to decompose
quickly to a soft peat-like soil
- allow
the soil in their pens
to remain strong and healthy
I
get the SAM organisms
to the birds and waste in the following ways: -
as
a probiotic in their drinking
water and "ponds''
- as
a probiotic in their feed
- to
make a special fermented bran
product called bokashi with which I supplement their feed (4% of feed)
daily
- to
treat their wastes to manage
odor and speed de-composition into a peat-like beneficial substance
- to
treat the soil in their pens
so it is not destroyed by the presence of the birds and so that it is
more
healthful for them
I
also have created a website
devoted solely to SAM and its
uses in agriculture,
waste management, human health, and several other fields. To
go to
that page, simply
click here.
Some Basics --
How I Have Used
Syntropic Antioxidative Microbes (SAM) So Far with Poultry
As you may
know already from reading
the sections above, I live on a forested mountainside in a remote
wilderness area in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern U.S., and I
have
about 30 pet birds (chickens, Bantams, turkeys, guinea fowl, ducks and
geese) in my yard, all within two modestly-sized (well, this is a
forested mountainside, not open flat fields!) pens surrounded by
electric
fencing (to keep out the four-legged predators, especially the red
fox!) I started using SAM Type 4 microbes with my birds in
late
December 2002, adding small amounts of the fermented microbial liquid
to
their feed on a daily basis and to their water on a twice-weekly basis.
I
have observed the following, even during really cold winters and hot
humid
summers: my
birds are even happier than
before
my birds are even healthier than before
- there is even far less odor in their
houses and the pens
- their waste accumulations, particularly the
outdoor ones, quickly
change to a fine moist peat-like humus
- their indoor waste accumulations (which I do not
spray diligently, as
I want them to stay relatively dry) are showing the same changes, and
with almost zero odor as well.
Notes
on Electric Fencing to Manage Four-legged Predators
When
I first started keeping
birds here in my yard, I took advantage of the fact that I live in the
wilderness, and simply let them wander the yard, offering them food,
and,
of course, a fairly safe sheltered roosting place at night.
That
worked well for about 6 weeks, until the local red fox and bobcats
happened
to hear, via a predator hotline or the red fox predator website, that
my
yard had lots of free meals for the taking. I quickly started losing
one
or more birds per day (mostly in the first 7 hours of daytime), mostly
to red fox, even a massive, tough old white rooster bigger than a
Volkswagen
-- he was snatched one day in mid-morning by a brazen red
fox. I
finally realized that I had to get serious and make some concerted
effort
to contain the birds in a smaller, safer area, and then protect them
from
the predators.... The answer was electric fencing. Luckily for me, I
had
built electric fences before, and am sort of an expert in that field,
as
I useta be an electrical engineer, and before that I had been a ham
radio
operator since age seven, tinkering with all sorts of electrical and
electronic
things, including high voltages and electric fences for
livestock.
So, it was quite easy to implement an effective electric fencing system
to protect the birds. Therefore, a section below will offer
what
I have learned about construction of good electric fencing systems for
birds (aka poultry) -- again, the goal is not so much to keep the birds
in as to keep all four-legged predators out...
First,
much as I have already
mentioned above, the primary purpose of an electric fence -- at least
for
me in my situation here on a forested mountainside -- is not so much to
keep the birds inside the pen as to protect them from four-footed
predators
such as red fox, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, opossums, stray dogs and
stray
cats. Of course, a fence will not stop aerial predators such
as hawks
and owls, nor the crows who love to prey on very young baby chicks,
but,
implemented properly, will offer literally 100% protection against
four-legged
predators. I
have two pens, adjacent
to each other and which share on common "fence wall" and
gate.
One
pen consists of 4 foot high welded wire fence, with strands of electric
wire mounted on the outside of the fence via standoff insulators, with
the lowest positioned about 5 inches above the ground, and about 5
inches
out from the fence, to prevent any animals from attempting to burrow
under
the fence. The strands above it discourage predators from attempting to
climb the fence. There are also a total of six strands of wire and
electric
fence ribbon (alternating ground and hot wires) mounted above the
welded
wire fence, extending its height to 5.5 feet, with the highest "wire"
being
a 1/2" wide electrified "ribbon". The
second pen, newer, is
surrounded by a 164-foot (pre-fabricated) length of 4-foot high
portable
electric fence netting designed for use with poultry, and stabilized
with
additional fiberglass poles as needed, with a makeshift gate at one
end.
If you are not familiar with such portable fence netting, it is usually
sold in 164 foot lengths, and consists of insulating vertical strands
(forming
a mesh) with alternating hot and grounded horizontal strands consisting
of wire and fabric filaments. This
system works well for
me and I have never had any problems with four-footed predators getting
into the pens since setting up these fences. However, I must
also
note that I do not experience extremely heavy predator pressure, as do
many farmers whose farms are located on flat plains and consist of open
fields. For example, I know one farmer who keeps both cattle and
chickens who experiences
such severe predator pressure from raccoons and opossum that he
employs,
for his 1/4 acre poultry pen, a nine-foot high welded wire fence
surrounded
by strands of electric wire, and he also has much of the "roof" of the
pen covered as well with chicken fencing -- again to keep out
overly-persistent
predators. For
an electric fence charger,
I recommend only a good, reliable low-impedance charger, and I
recommend
an excellent ground system consisting of at least four or five ground
rods,
each spaced at least 9 feet apart. Never
buy the cheaper old-fashioned "weed-chopper" or "weed-eater" models,
but
rather only the modern "low-impedance" models.
To
help give you some idea
of how you can set up a simple electric fence system and what you might
need in the way of equipment, here is a copy of a "help me!" e-mail
which
I recently received from someone in Eastern Pennsylvania, along with my
reply to her: Sylvia
wrote: Hello~
I love your informative website I
have Guineas and baby chickens..all
pets of course..we Love all
animals. On Wednesday I heard a
commotion, screamed and
ran outside. A RED
FOX was in the middle of my 6 one year old Guineas..I herded them into
the pen..did not release the until today..12:30 afternoon..I waited by
a tree..just watching nature..all of a sudden that nasty fox sprinted
from
the hedgerow towards my precious birds! I screamed and he ran after
several
yells~~ I need to install an
electric
fence..will it work for fox? I live
in Eastern Pa. near Phila.....please help!..email any numbers you
can..or
call... ~Sylvia
Here is
the reply
which I sent to her: Hi
Sylvia: Yes,
electric fence will
work perfectly and 100% for red fox, bobcats, opossums, raccoons, stray
dogs, stray cats, and stray humans. Perhaps easiest is the
164 foot
lengths of prefab flexible portable electric fence netting, 4 feet
high,
complete with stakes, sold for about $150 per roll, as mentioned on my
website. Meanwhile, tying your dog outside during highest
risk daylight
hours will scare off the fox, unless dog is very small...
Also, if
you eat meat, urinating on nearby trees circling the bird area may
repel
fox temporarily -- she will think there is a larger predator
nearby.
However, these are temporary measures -- you need electric fence for
longer
term. By the
way, red fox are actually
very sweet, intelligent, beautiful animals, very lovable.
They are
just doing what comes naturally. No need to hate the red fox,
and
rather, just keep her from eating your pets.
Here is more detail: I suggest
that you purchase one or more 164 foot length rolls of Electric Fence
Netting
from Kencove Farm Fence Supplies
in Western PA. Their
phone number is 1-800-536-2683, and their website is at www.kencove.com
Two or more rolls may be connected to extend length.
I suggest Kencove's Model
NPX Poultry Electric Netting, (14 line wires, 3.5" spacing, semi-rigid
stays, 164 feet long, Double pin, 15 posts, pos-neg.). Each
roll
is $156. More than one roll may be purchased and joined
together
to make a larger pen. You will
also need a good
low-impedance fence charger, three ground rods, some soft aluminum
ground
wire, some extra fiberglass fence posts. The NPX Poultry
Electric
Netting comes with 15 posts, about one per every 11 feet -- you will
likely
want about 9 extra fiberglass posts, clips to attach the netting to the
extra posts, plus one "hammering cap" to place over the top of the post
to protect it while hammering it into the soil.
For a fence charger, I recommend
any of the following: Kencove
Model 6
charger (Kencove Order # EK6; $182.00)
or
SE-3
charger (Kencove Order
# EM1; $109.50) By the
way, the extra fiberglass
posts are: SunGuard
3/8 inch
Fiber Rod, Kencove order # F38-5SG, $1.46 each, you will want at least
9 (nine). The
clips to attach the fence
to the extra posts (rods) are: Stainless
Steel
3/8 in. rod clip, long tail, Kencove order # F3S, at $0.17 each,
you will want to purchase 3 for every extra rod/post which you buy.
Then,
the little gizmo to protect
the top of the posts while hammering them into the soil are:
Nylon Drive Cap,
for 3/8" fiberglass rod, Kencove order # F3N, $4.85 each; you need only
one. Again, a
reminder on electric
fence chargers: never buy the cheaper old-fashioned "weed-chopper" or
"weed-eater"
models, but rather only the modern "low-impedance" models.
By
the way, I strongly recommend
both the Speedrite electric fence chargers and the Gallagher fence
chargers,
both from New Zealand, especially their dual-power models, which run on
120 VAC most of the time, but during a power failure they automatically
switch to drawing 12 volt DC power from a backup 12 volt automotive or
marine storage battery (you need to purchase the battery separately at
a local battery store....!) However, while Kencove does carry
one
or two of the Speedrite lines (they do not seem to carry any
automatic-switchover
dual-power models), they do not carry Gallagher chargers, so you will
need to purchase them elsewhere. You can find Gallagher
chargers
online or via some local farm supply stores. Also, for a
given energy
rating, Gallagher charges can be rather expensive. However, they are
very
reliable. I often
use the Speedrite
Panther B3000 charger here, which is a dual power supply model,
automatically
switching between AC line and DC battery power as needed. For backup, I
use a Gallagher B75 battery-operated electric fence charger.
Best of luck!
with
care, --Vinny
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