I got my chickens on 21 of march 2017. I am so thankful I got these girls and I want them to know how much I love them. To do this from march 1-21 everyday I will give them a new treat. Well you know a treat that they don't usually get not just kitchen scraps or something... so join me and get great chicken treat recipes! Every week I will post what I gifted them that week so stay tuned.
P.s. I know that some treats are bad- By treat I mean seeds mixed with peanut butter or meal worms p.p.s Sorry for not posting for like a year its been really busy around here
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This week I made pancakes and accidently dropped one. I fed it to the chickens and they loved it. They went crazy! I also had extra batter that wasn't quite enough for another pancake unless I wanted the pancake to be smaller than the others so I decided to make pancakes for the chickens. I made 4 small pancakes and put granola on top and flipped them I fried them and added some more batter on top of the granola so that the granola was in the middle of the small pancakes. Then I needed to feed them so me being the crazy chicken lady wanted every chicken to get a pancake so I took them out of their pen one by one and fed them their pancakes they'd run of as if I was going to steal the pancakes!
Chickens love meal worms. You can purchase them dried or you can order them alive. This week the topic is mealworms, about them and how to take care of them. Meal worms are the larva of tenebrio molitor or the meal worm beatle which are a type of darkling beatles. They start their lives as eggs and then grow in to larva which become pupa which graduate into the mealworm beetle. But why do chickens love the meal worms and how are meal worms good for them? Well you probably know that chickens need a lot of protein to produce those lovely eggs and to stay healthy. Meal worms are around %20 protein. Every year when the moulting season comes around, the meal worms can help! The moulting season requires the birds to grow new feathers wich means they need more protein. Mealworms can provide that protein and also make your chickens happier. So here is how to get started with making your own meal worm farm. You will need to get your meal worms, you can order them online here www.amazon.ca/1000-Live-Meal-Worms-Bird/dp/B009R7QX7Q/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1496793817&sr=8-4&keywords=meal+worms. You should store them in a container where it is slighty sunny and slighty shady and you should cover with the lid, the lid should have some small air holes. Once you have the meal worms you will need to supply them with food. You should always have some moister in you container. Do not put water in the container instead put a peice of a vegetable or fruit. Change out the fruit and veges as needed. Before you put those in fill up the container about half way with some wheat germ,oats,or chicken feed, this works as bedding and food for the meal worms. Make sure to put the bedding in first then the veges and/or fruits and then the meal worms. I hope this had helped you and you are now ready to start your meal worm farm. If you have any other questions about mealworms (since this was pretty basic) please contact me at [email protected].
Thanks to= aphukrescue.org.uk/faq/life-cycle-of-the-mealworm www.backyardchickencoops.com.au/7-reasons-why-you-should-feed-your-chickens-mealworms www.happy-mothering.com/05/household/sustainability/breeding-mealworms-chicken-food/ www.communitychickens.com/diy-raising-mealworms-part-1-plus-a-giveaway/ http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/pest-patrol-zmaz09jjzraw http://mealwormcare.org/life-cycle/ Flies are little annoying bugs that are attracted to the coop because they like chicken poo and food. So If you give your chickens kitchen scraps they would be attracted to that. You don't want a bunch of flies buzzing around your chickens, coop and run. So this week flies is the topic of discussion. So how do you get rid of flies? Well there are traps, here are a few home-made you can make. Make this trap at www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/07/homemade-fly-trap.html Make a sticky paper fly trap at www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2013/06/get-rid-of-flies-naturally-with-homemade-flypaper.html Other ways to get rid of flies Flies are attracted to food and poo you should remove both. Clean out your coop regularly and if there is any food that the chickens didn't eat take it out. Sand is a great bedding for the coop, it dries out the poop so the poop doesn't stink and isn't wet. Carnivorous plants are a great natural way to get rid of the flies. Water should also be kept out of the coop. Vanilla sented air fresheners, this is weird but these do repel flies. A plastic bag filled with water, the water reflects light in every direction, and flies don't like that. Flies hate the smell of cayenne pepper and cinnamon, both of these are good for chickens. So you now know how to get rid of them, but maybe you want to know what the threat is. Well for one thing they are annoying their buzzing never seems to stop adn drives me crazy. But they are also bad for our health. If they buzz around your coop it's most likely that they will come into your house. Flies actually carry around a lot of diseases, practically they land on poo and then on your food. Some of the diseases that they carry around are,
tuberculosis,typhoid,anthrax,cholera and salmonella they also carry around parasites like worms. Thanks so much for reading if this was helpful to you please like and comment. I hope that you learned something from this article. I collected the list of how to keep the flies away by combining information from these two sites= http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/06/15-tips-to-reduce-flies-around-chicken.html http://www.getridoffliesguide.com/#MiscellaneousMethods And the information on flies and the fly photo here= http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3388799/Should-throw-away-food-fly-lands-Expert-reveals-really-risk-living-city-protect-you.html. I already listed the sites where the home-made traps are from and their photos are from there too. The sun is finally coming out here and that means hot weather, but what does hot weather mean for chickens?
Heat Stroke Symptoms When the temperatures reach 100 Fahrenheit or 30 Celsius you should start looking for symptoms of heat stroke. Panting- A panting chicken will have an open beak but won't produce any noise. Food and water- If you find your chickens drinking more and eating less they could have heat stroke Puffed up- By puffing up their feathers chickens feathers won't trap heat underneath them. Diarrhea- If you see diarrhea you should be quite concerned, diarrhea is the result of drinking more water but it also means that electrolytes are being lost in the birds body which means that the immune system is weakening. Lethargic- If your hen is showing droopy behaviors then it is most likely that she is experiencing severe heat stroke Pale comb and wattles. If heat stroke becomes severe then it can kill your chickens, which none of us want. To fight heat stroke The hot summer chicken treat This is my recipe to keep my hens cool during the hot summer months, you will need water greens-kitchen scraps or greens from the gardens cranberries,sunflower seeds,oats or any other treats your chickens like to eat containers string (if you want to hang them) Start by adding the cranberries,sunflower seeds, oats or any other treats that your hens love and put them at the bottom of the container then cover that with greens at the top you might add another treat or leave it. Then slowly add water. Then put them in the freezer until hard (a few hours). To get them out run, the container under hot water and then flip, they should come right out. When serving to your chickens you might tie it up like you were tying up a parcel and hang to keep the dirt off of it. Other ways to beat the heat other frozen treats such as frozen blueberries frozen raspberries frozen fruits and vegetables A mister Shade A bath Air out the coop make sure the coop isn't to hot Fans Thanks so much for reading I hope that none of your chickens experience heat stroke as the summer weather comes. Keep yourselves as well as your hens safe. If you found this helpful please like and comment. Thanks to http://www.raising-happy-chickens.com/heat-exhaustion-in-chickens.html http://www.henrescue.org/keep-hens-safe-in-heat http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/07/chicken-heat-stress-dehydration-and.html Here is my recipe for chicken treats for chickens of course! This is a great treat to feed your chickens,since they love to peck at it. What you need: 1/2 cup of their normal food I used mash 1/2 cup wild bird seed 1/4 cup oyster shell 1/4 cup dried corn 1/4 cup dried cranberries or raisins 1/2 a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon black pepper 1/4 cup sunflower seeds 1 egg and egg shell 1/8 cup water First mix together all the dry ingredients in a big bowl, this includes, mash,birdseed,oyster shell,dried corn,cranberries,black pepper and sunflower seeds. Then add egg and the egg shell (crushed) mix well covering everything with the egg before adding water. Than preheat your oven to 350 and cover a pan in butter. Get a spoon and drop big balls of the mix onto the pan. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the kitchen smells good. Let cool before feeding to your chickens they should love it.
Thanks for checking out my blog and checking out this recipe. I first got chickens to get those fresh and delicious eggs, I built a coop, got all the supplies and then came the chickens. It turned out that chickens are actually really great pets they have great personalities and if you want to you can show them or just keep them for meat or eggs or both. Here are a few pictures of my chickens and some eggs.
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