Big Island Chickens

New and Improved Seed Station Or, protecting and taking the stink out of the seeds.   My last post was about the idea of sprouting seeds for our chickens gastronomical pleasure.Since then, I have run into a few problems that I think I have solutions for, we'll see. This is my Sprouting station as built: A standard set of big box store shelf racks set up on the ground near a water source. Seeds soaked in a bucket for 24 hours (convenience, as they need only 8-10 hour soaks) then spread out in an even layer on a 10" x 20" garden tray with pre-punched holes. Problem 1. Water distribution. Dry seeds in one side, flooded on the other. Problem 2.  During the night rats and during the day the birds  are getting to the seeds eating and fouling the trays with husks and their waste. Between the two shifts, I am losing almost half the seeds to these scavengers. This is my Sprouting station as it is today: We added 5 more shelves, a larger water recovery tub for...

Use Sprouted Grains How much can I expect it to save me?  Wow, that is a good question. In my last post I outlined what I was spending on the chickens to "save" money and I realized I needed to bring the feed bill down even further. I had a few options. Feed scraps only Feed commercial feed only Feed fermented food Feed sprouted grain or a combinations of the above. Wait, before the comments go off on the "Free Range" options, we choose NOT to free range our birds for a number of reasons. Some are based in our laziness in not wanting every morning to be the Easter Hunt / Bill Murray Ground Hog Day debacle on our one acre, we don't want to chase the wild child chickens roosting in the trees, and now that we have turkeys, we know that is where they want to be (that is a story by itself!) and then there are the Mongoose that are invasive here.  Yesterday the girls killed a rat that somehow got in. So rats are not a real threat for the adult birds, but...