Homesteading Chicken Coop Build, Chickens, Pond, Garden & Projects

Thank you Sir!

Kids were all over the easter eggers but pretty hard to find. I read a lot about the Plymouth Rocks so they were my choice but ended up with a few Buffs which from reading is an awesome bird to have. Good layer, docile, and friendly

 

Thank you!

 

I placed an order for true blues and true green layer chicks and then 15 barred rocks for meat birds. This should be a fun year.

Does anyone know about raising turkeys? I feel like that is the next thing I need to do.

 

We raised 3 turkeys once. Wasn't that hard. Made a coop and kennel for them
Had a feeder a auto water. We would bring them out of the kennel after work and they would wonder around. If we got on the ATV they would follow it. Funny to watch them run after it. Holly really like herding them. She would sometimes get a little excited with them and would just tell her easy. They were all named turkey. Best dam turkey we ever had. We had 3.

 

This is the egg bubbler I made last weekend. I hook it up to the compressor at 95 pounds and blast those eggs clean. (Jk - more like 5 lbs)

 

Pretty coloured eggs.

 

What’s going on here?

 

They are washing fresh layed egg in a warm bubble bath.

 

Eggs come out of the chicken squeaky clean. Then they roll around in the barn for a few hours until I can get to them. By then, the eggs are... soiled. If you bubble the eggs for 15 minutes, they are clean again. I like to avoid washing the eggs if I can, but in the winter, the hens are in the barn and won't venture into the snow. That means there is a lot of manure and the eggs are pretty much all soiled.

 

The health dept. in Ohio says 100 days. That's good enough for me. I usually use or sell my eggs inside of 2 weeks. I haven't noticed any difference in 'freshness'. They are all fresh to me.

 

Same here. If the schmutz is really bad on them, I’ll leave them soaking in a bowl of water for 10 minutes and the junk washes right off.

 

Or, you could spend 2 hours in the basement over-engineering a DIY "egg bubbler".
I saw a quote here that I love, "why spend 15 dollars on something when I can spend 50 and do it myself!?". This has become my motto...

Edit; I also have around 30 birds and will soon have 65. It takes too long to wash them all by hand.

 

LOL I know what you mean... trust me, the method I use is too simple for me to have come up with myself. Credit goes to my wife for that one. She saw me struggling to clean them off a while back and nonchalantly asked me why I didn’t just soak them first. She knows EVERYTHING.

 

My nesting box is attached to main coop but is slightly elevated in an effort to keep it a little seperated and contained. Only had them 2 weeks but so far so good, been laying in the boxes nice and clean and I haven't found any outside of the nesting boxes yet, however I am sure I will at some point.

I've been collecting and keeping out on the counter at room temp until ready to use at which point I wash under lukewarm water for a few minutes.

 

If they are clean, I don't see any reason to wash them.

 

Thought I’d jump in on this topic. We currently have 14 layers. Mix of ISA browns, Austalorps, white and brown leghorn, RI red. Getting ready for 25 Cornish cross chicks to arrive end of March for meat birds.