Giving Thanks for your Chickens

At Thanksgiving, Turkeys get all the attention, as they should for what they bring to our Holiday table. But year round Chickens bring us daily abundance of eggs, meat, entertainment and love. For those of us that are "Chicken Keepers", we spend a lot of time, money and conversation around chickens. As we give thanks this year, toss a little over to your girls for all they give us throughout the year. Happy Thanksgiving, Anice


9 Healthy Treats Your Chickens Will Love

Posted by The Happy Chicken Coop on July 10, 2015

https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/9-healthy-treats-your-chickens-will-love/

We all love to spoil our chickens with treats every now and then.
Giving treats to your chickens helps to give their diet some variation. It also helps to keep them happy and laying eggs.
If you’re not careful buying treats for your chickens can cost lots of money, that’s why most of our treats are normally kitchen scraps and left overs… In fact, 75% of the cost of keeping chickens is made up of chicken feed.
With that being said, I still love to spoil our chickens and they get more than their fair share of treats!
Let’s take a look at our girls’ top 9 favourite healthy treats.
If you’re looking for even more treats, you can use this handy chicken treat chart.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal is one of our girls’ favourite treats and it’s probably their favourite treat during the cold winter months.

Picture the scene: its 6:30am, pitch-black, and there is a thick frost on the ground.

I let our girls out of their coop and straight away they can smell the oatmeal. I just pour the oatmeal straight out into their trough- I’ve found in the past they can bully each other if I just put the pan down because they can’t all get to it at once.
You can also add either maple syrup or bananas to the oatmeal to help give it some variety.

Cottage Cheese

There’s something about cottage cheese that our chickens just love. Maybe it’s the cheese taste or maybe it’s just the consistency?

Either way, they love it!

You can give your chickens cottage cheese straight out of the tub or you can mix it with vegetables. Both carrots and broccoli go really well with it.
It provides your chickens with several essential nutrients such as calcium which helps keep their bones strong. It’s also a great source of protein as laying chickens need around 20 grams of protein a day to produce an egg.

Pasta and Noodles

Have you ever seen free range chickens running around the garden with streams of pasta flowing out of their beak!?

Cooked pasta can be a cheap but filling treat for your chickens. Two cups of pasta is more than enough for a flock of six chickens.

Again, like with cottage cheese you can mix other food into the pasta. A nice creamy sauce or chopped up vegetables can go a long way to keeping your chickens happy.
However, they will be perfectly happy with just dry pasta.
If you are going to feed your chicken pasta, just make sure to cook it beforehand! I’m not sure they would appreciate hard, crunchy, raw pasta…

Mealworms

Mealworms are without a doubt our chickens’ favourite treat of all time.
They are a very quick and easy treat to give your chickens and require no preparation.
I just buy a 1lb bag of them and dump them into a pile inside our girls’ pen. It’s very entertaining to watch the chickens run back and forth with the mealworms in their mouth.
You can normally buy them from your local fishing/tackle store but they can be quite expensive- $20USD for 1lb. If you give your chickens mealworms regularly it might be worth considering farming your own mealworms.

Corn

You can either feed sweetcorn to them loose, mix it in with their pellets, or you can feed it to them straight from the cob.
Here’s a great idea if you want to keep your girls busy. Buy several corn on the cobs and hang the cobs using some string. You can then let the girls peck away at them- this should keep them amused for several hours.
Not only is sweetcorn a cheap treat, it’s packed with lutein and zeaxanthin which are phytochemicals that help keep your chickens vision healthy. It will also provide your girls with some much needed fiber.

Ginger

We’ve already written about the superfood ginger and some of the health benefits your chickens will experience when eating ginger. Certain studies claim that feeding chickens ginger can increase the size of the eggs and also improve the amount of antioxidants in the egg yolk.
I tend to only use ginger when our chickens moult as it can help them grow back their feathers quicker.
If you are going to feed your chickens ginger you can either mix ginger powder in with their pellets or you can mix it in with their water.
However, make sure you only give your chickens ginger no more than once per month. Feeding your chickens too much ginger can cause muscle swelling and occasionally death.

Watermelon

Watermelon is the perfect summer snack for chickens.
Not only is it full of water and extremely refreshing for them, it also contains lots of essential vitamins and minerals.
I buy watermelon cheap when it’s in season and slice them up into small chunks. I then take the small chunks and freeze them.
During a hot summers day I get the frozen chunks out and place them into the chickens’ water bowl. This helps keep the water cool and the chickens can also peck at the watermelon.
You could also, mix the frozen watermelon in with plain greek yogurt. This helps spread the watermelon out and greek yogurt is also very refreshing for them.

Pumpkin

Pumpkins are another one of those refreshing treats with added health benefits.
The seeds inside pumpkins help with worming. According to Delaware State University pumpkin seeds “contain a deworming compound called cucurbitacin which has been used to expel tapeworms”.
Pumpkin can be very hard to cut, so I just put the pumpkin inside our chicken pen and then hit it with a mallet to break it open for the girls.
Your girls will be entertained for hours as they merrily peck away. You will notice they will eat the pumpkin in its entirety- bar the skin.
Another benefit I found was that their egg yolks turned vibrant orange for a few days after they’d eaten the pumpkin.

Scrambled Egg

Sometimes during the peak of summer, our girls can get carried away and lay too many eggs for us to cope with!
I could store the eggs or freeze them to use later, but instead I prefer to cook several of them and make scrambled eggs for the girls.
Scrambled egg is full of protein and can quickly fill your girl’s up.
Note: Always make sure you cook any eggs which you feed your chickens. You DON’T want your chickens getting a taste for raw eggs because they will start eating their own eggs.


One important point to make here is that you shouldn’t give your chickens too many treats as this can actually cause your chickens to stop laying eggs. Just make sure that their treats are part of a consistent and varied diet and your chickens will be fine.

Do you have a Bully in your coop?

Handling a Bully in your Chicken Flock

May 15, 2018

 https://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2018/05/handling-bully-in-your-chicken-flock.html

Chickens are the original Mean Girls.  You can't raise them for too long before you realize that. Hard as it may be to believe (almost as hard as believing that your sweet family pet dog is a chicken killer!), chickens can be downright nasty. Sure, they can also be sweet and cuddly and adorable, but in the blink of an eye, they will turn on a flock member.


They form cliques, they dislike newcomers, they snub those that didn't grow up with them in the flock. They'll turn on each other if they sense any type of sickness or weakness - or even if they're just bored or overcrowded.

Even after you've successfully integrated new pullets or grown hens into your flock (something that must be done gradually with fencing in between), and the pecking order has been sorted out, through the course of the year it can shift or be thrown out of whack again, leading to all sorts of bullying and pecking order issues. 

So what to do?

If you discover a bully (or bullies) in your flock, there are several things that you should do.

Check for Illness or Injury

Often chickens will sense weakness or an injured flock member well before you do. If you suddenly notice your chickens picking on one hen, the first thing you should do is take a good look at that chicken. It could be that she's been hurt or injured, or is suffering from an illness.  

If you spot a wound or other injury, or symptoms of any sickness, then you should definitely remove that chicken from the flock to recover.  If there are visible wounds, immediately separate the poor one being picked on - but INSIDE the coop or run so she gets a break from the negative attention, but doesn't lose her place in the pecking order while she heals. 

Simply dividing the run with chicken wire or putting her in a dog crate, rabbit hutch or small cage in, or adjacent to, the run works well (or that small "starter" coop that you bought when you first got your chickens, but realized the first month you had it that it was too small to actually be their forever home) so she is still considered part of the flock, but is safe from further pecking. Once she's healed, put another docile hen in with her for a few days and then add both back to the flock at the same time so she's not the only "newcomer".

(If you suspect an illness, then she should be removed to a location away from the flock and treated until she recovers. At that point, move her into a crate inside the run as described below and then "reintroduce" her after everyone has had a chance to get reacquainted with her.)

But if she seems okay, don't be too quick to take her out....

Try not to Separate the Victim  

As chicken moms who love all our girls, it's natural to want to protect them all - even from each other. The normal response when you see one chicken being continually bullied by the others might to take out the poor victim, but that's the worst thing you can do. That only ensures that she's even lower in the pecking order when she returns. If you don't visibly see anything wrong with the "peckee", it could just be that she's lowest in the pecking order.

Normally you want to let the flock sort things out themselves, but if things turn bloody (see above!) or all the pecking seems directed at just one poor chicken or seems to be relentless, it's time to step in. So instead of removing the victim...

Separate the Bully

Instead of going with your first instinct and taking out the victim, if you can identify one head ringleader, then take that one completely out of the flock for a few days -  a dog crate in the garage or that small starter coop around the other side of the house where the rest of the flock can't see or hear them will work well.

When you put them back in with the rest of the flock, likely they will have lost their place high in the pecking order and might behave - at least for awhile. If it's just one or two, take them both out for a few days. If they go right back to the bullying, take them out again - for a bit longer this time.

Hopefully making sure everyone is healthy and unharmed, and trying to knock any bullies down a bit in the flock hierarchy, will help resolve bully situations, but sometimes chickens are just mean. Like people. Like I said, chickens are the original Mean Girls. For whatever reason, they just can't play nice and insist on pecking on those they feel are a threat to their place in the pecking order.

Consider Rehoming

As a last resort, sometimes rehoming a bully will be your only recourse. Sometimes being introduced to a brand new flock is all a bully needs to become a model flock member, believe it or not. Taking them out of their element and putting them on another flock's "home turf" can be enough to stop a bully in her tracks.

But one caveat: NEVER rehome a bully without being very clear and transparent about why you are getting rid of the chicken. Make sure the new potential owner clearly understands the issues you're having. But know that many former bullies have been rehabilitated merely by joining a new flock. Maybe one with more aggressive flock members, or more room to roam, or with a rooster who keeps peace among the hens. But realize also that sometimes the stew pot is going to be the ultimate fate of a chicken who just can't get along or play nice with others.

(Another option would be to rehome the victim if your bully seems to be focusing on just one other flock member. Sometimes two chickens (or people!) just can't get along no matter what.)

Trying to prevent bullying in your flock is important. Here are some tips.

Give Everyone Their Space

Rule of thumb is that you should allow 10 square feet of space per chicken in your chicken run. That's the bare minimum. Bigger is better when it comes to room in the run, if that's where your chickens spend the majority of their day.

In addition to adequate run space, it's also a good idea to create areas where a chicken who is being picked on can get away. Things like outdoor perches, logs or benches, swings or even ladders or chairs that the flock can hide under to get away from a bully are all good ideas. Just be aware that you don't want to create any "dead-ends" where a bullied chicken could potentially be cornered and unable to escape from her attacker.

Provide Distractions

Giving your chickens lots of things to do can help. Bored chickens will tend to look to each other for entertainment (not all of it good), so instead give them lots of distractions in the run. Like a dust bath area.  Like piles of leaves or straw to scratch through. Like a flock block or head of cabbage or other treats that will keep them busy.

Provide Feed and Water in Several Locations

Regardless of whether or not you have a bully in your flock, it's always a good idea to put out several areas for feed and multiple waterers. Not only are they insurance that your chickens will still have enough to eat and drink in the case one spills or gets dirty, setting up multiple feeding stations will prevent a bully from "guarding" one spot and not letting others near to eat or drink. They can just go eat at the other feeder.

Dealing with a bully can be frustrating, but by taking these few steps, hopefully you'll avoid the situation - because for the well-being of your chickens, a bully needs to either be quickly rehabilitated or removed from the flock. Nobody likes a bully.