Dark AB wants to know how the fork went!
This chicken is one of the ones I call The Littles. They're still babies, but growing very fast! Their names are TB and the ABs (AB is pronounced "Abby"). Tail Baby and the Adventure Birds. The ABs are Dark AB and Light AB, according to their colors.
I think the littles are the birds that @makinstuff funded when he helped me create the Permaculture Chicken Fundition Project. They were sold as pullets, but TB ended up deciding she was a rooster. Thus the "Tail Baby."
This is an update to my Fundition Project, linked above.
I've been slow to update lately. Since the chooks got sick, I was embarrassed and honestly pretty defeated. The support from the @homesteaderscoop and @naturalmedicine communities though was inspiring. @riverflows, the NM angel, organized a bunch of folks to make donations, and they sent me nearly 300 steem! I've been sitting on it until now and trying to observe the chickens to see how to move forward. I think the time has come to do that, but was still conflicted.
Should I scale up and get more chickens (who would also get sick), or should I stagnate and not have more birds to make more eggs and do more garden work?
Everything gardens. -- Jack Spirko
After a while of observation, I've noticed that, while they are all still symptomatic, none of the chickens seem like their lives are severely affected by this bug. There's an occasional sneeze and runny nose, and Dark AB had some pus that made her eye a little crusty for about a week, but everyone eats fine, is growing fine, and has pretty feathers.
With that in mind, I asked the elders in HSCO for support and opinions. So far, the results are unanimous:
Scale the chooks!
So I'm updating the Fundition, and I'll be cashing out the steem raised by these outstanding communities. The plan is to go for fifteen hens. That'll be an amazing number and make room to provide roughly a dozen eggs a day and still have room for a broody or two for sustainable populations.
The plan with the chick raising is to eat roosters and cycle through hens. That way we can have a sustainable animal protein source from our garden, upping the caloric yield from the garden dramatically. Any eggs produced above my family's needs will be sold to friends and family to help cover feed costs, decreasing the cost to support the project.
So, with that in mind, would you consider donating to the Fundition campaign? Funds are currently going towards new chickens. Once the target number of seventeen birds is reached, additional funds will go to feed, supplements, and supplies. Maybe even a new chicken coop!
Thanks for the consideration!
All action for the good of all.
Nate.
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And they take care of pests around orchards well!!!!!
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Yes! They really improve every single aspect of the system to make it more efficient in both caloric production and labor!
Seventeen birds will need a MUCH bigger coop and run, especially if there are roosters. Otherwise the hens' quality of life will be real low....
I have a 70 sq. ft coop and that's far too small for my 18 birds. But they have an 800+ sq ft run plus the snake fence, and that's ok in summer. In winter, much less so...
If the birds are carrying a low grade infection all the time, the laying will not be so good...
I'd also wonder about eating birds with low grade infections...
I'll add bars in the coop, but they don't spend any time there except to sleep. So far, all the birds sleep together on one of the three bars. The official run is 3000 square feet, but they range past that pretty often.
Everything I've read says the rate of lay will likely be affected and that it's not spread to humans.