We decided to try out a heat tape waterer this winter (the design for which is included in the instructions that come with our DIY chicken waterer kits.)  The instructions call for a 15 foot length of heat tape, but Mark wants to find out whether a 3 foot length will work as well.  If so, the shorter heat tape should use less electricity and will definitely make the construction process cheaper and easier.

Materials included:

• bucket waterer
• a second bucket from Lowes
• 3 foot heat tape
• duct tape
• screwdriver
• drill
  
• jigsaw
• coping saw
  

First, Mark removed the handle from the bucket waterer using the screwdriver.

Next, we fiddled around for a while until we figured out the best way to cut the extra bucket into an outside housing for the new heated waterer.  This step will vary depending on the style of your bucket, but if you use Lowes buckets, you'll want to cut in a line that follows the bottom of the blue "Lowes" logo.  (Mark suspects that a three gallon bucket might just need the very bottom removed --- that'll be our next experiment since cutting off so much of the bucket felt wasteful.)  Either way, start your hole with the drill, then make your cut with the jigsaw.

The coping saw made a small slit about three inches down the side of the outer bucket. This slit will allow us to thread the power cord out the side.  (If you're using a Lowes bucket, the slit goes down to the end of the blue logo.)

We used duct tape to attach the heat tape to the outside of the bucket waterer, close to the bottom. 

Then it was easy to push the sawed off bucket over top of the bucket waterer, letting the cord come out the slit.

So far, our heated chicken waterer has stayed thawed down to the mid twenties Fahrenheit.  I'll be sure to report back once we discover its lower limit.

We recommend our 3 pack DIY kit for making a heated waterer for up to 50 chickens.  The CD that comes with each kit includes complete instructions to help you build our favorite heated options without any trial and error. The heated waterer we use in our own coop requires two buckets, a three foot length of pipe heating cable ($23), and the contents of our kit.  With a layer of chicken-friendly insulation, the waterer is good down into the teens.

I begged for some photos of chicken coops and tractors and several of our readers complied.  Here are some of our favorite tractor designs, starting with the simple and moving up to the complex.

Neil Brooks built the four foot by eight foot chicken tractor above based on Joel Salatin's model.  The 2"X2" construction, low profile, and open sides give a lot of chicken living area for very little weight.  Judicious cross-bracing will allow you to build even larger tractors while still using thin, light lumber.

RDG from WeekendHomestead.net built a simple chicken tractor to house his extra roosters while they were growing up to broiler size.  He wrote, "The chicken tractor I built is made from 2X6 pressure treated lumber for the frame.  The frame is 12 feet by 4 feet.  Half inch EMT metal electrical conduit is used for the hoops.  Chicken wire is used to enclose the structure.  The ends are made from half inch (1/2 in.) pressure treated plywood.  I have hung a feeder and automatic watering bucket from the conduit.  I used the only 4 foot tarp I could find to keep rain off the broilers."  RDG's design could be made with lighter framing components (a 2X4 bottom and PVC pipe hoops) for an easier to pull tractor that's just as simple to build.

Brian Cooper's chicken tractor would fit into any neighborhood, no matter how nice.  He built his tractor using the Catawba coop plans available online.  The tractor is an A-frame structure, with an open-bottomed "downstairs" and a wood-floored upstairs.  Chickens hang out on the ground, but head up a ramp to lay eggs or roost for the night.

Finally, I thought I'd throw in a photo of our first chicken tractor, built for next to no money from mostly found materials.  It was light, lasted about three years before the found wood rotted out, and provided hours of entertainment for our cat.

I've had a lot to learn about growing our own meat chickens, especially once I brought our heirloom birds to the kitchen.  If your recipes are based on storebought meat, chances are they start with a line like "Take two chicken breasts and...."  Here are some tips and recipes I've developed over the last two years that help you enjoy and respect your homegrown chickens' meat.

The easiest way to make use of the whole bird is to roast your chicken, then stew up the bones.  One of our small layer-breed broilers (less than two pounds) can turn into four to six meals if we first roast the chicken with vegetables, then use the carcass as the base for a delicious soup.  You can read my in depth description of roasting a chicken in my 99 cent ebook, or can see the recipe I developed mine from here.

Heirloom chickens have a lot more leg than breast, so it's useful to know some recipes just for the legs.  If you're buying storebought meat on a budget, chicken leg recipes are even more helpful since legs are often one of the cheapest cuts of meat.  This garlic and thyme chicken leg recipe is my new easy and delicious way to use up chicken legs.

Finally, if you're serious about making your flock self-sufficient, you'll often end up with old layers who are too tough to chew.  Traditional chefs love these chickens for their richer flavor, which can be stewed out by cooking for a long time at low heat.  The resultant soup is phenomenal!

How have you found cooking with real chickens to be different from cooking with storebought meat?  Do you have any heirloom chicken recipes to share?

When our pullets started laying, they eschewed the nest box and made their own nest in the straw at the back of the coop.  I didn't notice until I was refreshing the deep bedding and nearly stepped on an egg on the ground.  Since I didn't know how long the egg had been present, I needed to test it before deciding if it was safe to eat.

Luckily for those of us with ornery layers, it's very easy to run an egg test.  Simply fill a cup up with water and gently lower your egg in.  If the egg sits completely flat on the bottom like the one in the photo, it's newly laid and quite safe.  Over time, an air pocket will form and enlarge in the egg, so slightly older eggs will start to sit a little crooked, with the blunt end angled toward the surface.  That egg is okay for baked goods and hard-boiling.  But if the egg floats, very carefully take it outside and dispose of it before it explodes into a foul-smelling mess in your kitchen!

Since our pullets aren't laying up to their full potential yet, we've been buying grocery store eggs as a supplement to our dog's feed.  I was curious to see how "fresh" supermarket eggs did on the float test, so I lowered one into my mug.  According to the float test, supermarket eggs are good for baked goods only, which is just about all I'd use them for (and that in a pinch.)  I sure am glad we're back up to three homegrown eggs a day!

Chicken coops are easier to design than chicken tractors because you don't have to worry about mobility.  If you live on an established farm, chances are there's already a shed, outbuilding, or corner of your barn that could be turned into a coop without much effort.  I've even heard of suburbanites who build a coop in the corner of their garage.

If you're starting from scratch with storebought materials, I recommend using basic "stick house" construction practices.  Walls are framed one at a time using two by fours --- one on each side and then interior two by fours every two feet or so for stability.  Add plywood on one side of the wall to close up the space, then screw the walls together to make a box.  The roof begins with two by four or two by six rafters, topped with plywood and then some sort of roofing material.  You can make a lot of mistakes on your chicken coop and then be a pro when the time comes to put an addition on your house!

We're skinflints, so our chicken coops are cobbled together out of old lumber, pallets, doors, tin, and even cardboard.  The supplies cost next to nothing, and luckily we have no neighbors to complain.

What does your chicken coop look like?  If you email your photos to info@avianaquamiser.com, I'll add them to this post so you an show off your building skills.

The chicken keeper's worst nightmare is unfortunately common.  You head out to the coop to feed your hens...and instead walk into a battleground of dismembered chickens.  Although you may simply want to crawl into a hole and cry at the time, it's worth taking a few minutes to determine what kind of predator killed your chickens so you can prevent further attacks.

The key (and descriptions) below are based on a factsheet from the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service.  To read the key, start at the top and answer each question, skipping ahead as ordered until you find your answer.  For example, if one bird is missing but you see feathers in the coop, you'd start at question 1, skip ahead to 5, and settle on a fox or coyote as your culprit.

1. Were the birds killed or missing?

• Dead birds visible.........................................................................go to 2
• One or more birds missing............................................................go to 5
  

2. How may birds were killed?

• Several...........................................................................................go to 3
  
• One or two killed...........................................................................go to 4
  

3. How were several birds killed?

• Mauled but not eaten......................................................................Dogs
• Killed by small bites on body, neatly piled, some heads eaten.......Mink or Weasel
• Heads and crops eaten on several birds..........................................Raccoon
  

4. How were one or two birds killed?

• Birds mauled, abdomen eaten........................................................Opossum
• Deep marks on head and neck, some eaten...................................Owl
• Chicks killed and abdomen eaten; lingering scent.........................Skunk
• Young chicks dead on floor of coop.............................................Rat
  

5. How many birds are missing?

• One bird is missing but feathers remain.........................................Fox or Coyote
• Several birds are missing without a trace.......................................Human
• One or two chicks are missing without a trace...............................Rat
  

Dogs. A dog usually kills chickens for the sport.  Several dead birds with much mauling of the carcasses is usually evidence of a dog.  Dogs usually visit the chicken pen during daylight hours rather than at night.

Mink and Weasel.  Birds usually show signs of attack on the sides of the head if a mink or weasel has visited the poultry house.  With these predators, several birds will probably be killed and piled neatly together.  The back of the head and neck are frequently the only parts of the carcass consumed.

Raccoon.  If a predator visits only once each 5 to 7 days and eats the head and the crop of the dead birds, a raccoon is probably responsible.  Sometimes more than one bird will be killed at each visit.

Opossum.  The opossum generally attacks only one bird at each visit.  Usually, the bird's abdomen has been eaten.  Eggs may also be the object of the opossum's raid on the chicken house.

Owl.  The only likely culprit here is the great horned owl, which does sometimes attack poultry.  One or two birds are usually killed, with the talons being used to pierce the brain.  The owl wil usually eat only the head and neck.  Feathers found on a fence post near the chicken house or pen may provide an additional clue.

Fox and Coyote.  The old sayings about the sly fox were not by accident.  The fox and the coyote are very smart and difficult to catch in the act of raiding the flock.  Since birds are frequently carried away with little evidence left behind, the only way of determining losses may be a head count.  Visits from these predators will usually be very early in the morning.  Keeping birds in a secure pen or poultry house until late morning is good insurance against losses from a fox or coyote.

Skunks.  Skunks do not usually attack adult birds.  They may kill a few chicks and eat the abdomen.  Eggs may also be the targest.  If skunks have been in the poultry house, the odor is usually a clue.

Humans.  Unfortunately, there can be problems from people as well as animals.  If birds are missing with very little evidence, particularly from a predator proof pen or house, the possiblity of humans being involved should not be overlooked.

Long winter days means the chickens spend a lot more time resting (and pooping) on their roosts.  As a result, I refresh the deep bedding more often, a task that is as simple as opening a bag of autumn leaves my mother kindly collected from her suburban curb, then scattering the high carbon bedding on top of the manure.

As you can see from the photo, when I run low on autumn leaves, I sometimes use storebought straw, although straw isn't quite as high in carbon and thus doesn't use up as much manure.  In his amazing new book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, Harvey Ussery recommends using any kind of high carbon bedding that's cheap and easy for the chickens to scratch through.  His coops are bedded with oak leaves but Ussery also recommends kiln-dried wood shavings, wood chips, and sawdust.

From my own experience, I highly recommend stockpiling your bedding right beside the chicken coop.  We've yet to get our act together, so manure often builds up on the coop floor before I get around to hunting down some fresh bedding to add on top.  In the winter, a bit of exposed manure isn't such a big deal, but in the summer the manure stinks and draws flies while letting some of the precious nitrogen escape into the air.  Remember --- a properly  managed chicken coop should be a pleasant environment for both you and your birds!

Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is the number one homesteading related book to read this year.  I know, I know --- Joel Salatin put out his first non-self-published book, The Dirty Life promises to reach beyond the usual homesteading readership, and Sepp Holzer has finally published a book about his methods in English, all in 2011.  But for the backyard homesteader itching to turn her farm into a permaculture masterpiece, Harvey Ussery's book has those bestsellers beat hands-down.

Ussery keeps 24 layers and raises another 48 to 72 broilers every year on an acre of pasture.  He also experiments with a couple of dozen waterfowl every year.  Although this sounds like a lot of birds, it's well within the average homesteader's grasp and makes his experiences much more relevant than any information you can find about Joel Salatin's commercial poultry operation.

I've been poring over Ussery's articles for years in Backyard Poultry Magazine and Mother Earth News.  In fact, his articles are often the only ones worth reading since they always introduce new ideas rather than rehashing the same old information you read in previous issues.  I've posted about the way he raises worms and black soldier flies for his chickens previously, and you can read many of his original articles on his website.

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock takes those articles and expands them into a reference guide that will suit anyone from the raw beginner to the advanced chicken-keeper.  In addition to basic information on chicken care, you can learn about backyard breeding, raising chicks with a broody hen, innovative feeding techniques, and much more.  I'm going to highlight some of his most interesting tips in later posts, but if you have a spare weekend, I highly recommend you get the book and read it from cover to cover.  I guarantee it'll change the way you integrate your flock into the homestead.

Once you get serious about making your chickens a working part of the homestead, you'll be faced with a thorny issue.  Buying chicks from a hatchery every year puts you on a treadmill going nowhere --- you're stuck with whatever genetics the hatchery selects for, which generally means appearance and ability to reproduce quickly in a hatchery environment.  If you're more interested in chickens that forage well, taste particularly good, or who are devoted mothers, you'll have to learn to breed your own flock.


What should I select for?
The great thing about breeding your own chickens is that you can decide what matters most to you.  That said, it's best to focus on the all-around bird, not on a single trait.  Try to steer clear of inordinately fast-growing birds --- these may seem like a good choice for broilers, but they tend to have immune weaknesses and won't do well on the homestead.  On the other hand, do select for large eggs since these tend to equate to stronger chicks (but don't expect large eggs until your pullets are around 28 weeks old.)  Finally, don't keep hens who continually lay oddly shaped or textured eggs since these traits are heredible.


How do I know which birds are showing the traits I want?
This is where breeding can get tricky, and the answer depends on which traits you're selecting for.  You can build trap nests to get an idea of how many eggs each of your hens lays in an average week.  For broilers, consider tracking rate of growth and mature size by weighing each bird alive at 8, 12, and/or 16 weeks, then also keep track of carcass size of birds you cull and eat.  Unless you're extremely observant, you'll probably also need to label individual birds with leg or wing rings or foot notches so you can tell them apart.

One trait most homesteaders should select for is resiliency.  That means birds who will forage as much wild food as possible and who can handle cold winters and hot summers.  Don't be afraid to utilize environmental extremes to make favorable homesteading traits more evident.  If a hot spell stunts some of your birds, delete them from the flock.


What do I do with birds who don't live up to my standards?
The trick to improving your flock is to cull rigorously.  That means you may only keep 10% (or even fewer) of your best birds every year, turning the rest into dinner.  Remember, your flock will never be better than your worst birds --- don't keep that runt around for sentimental reasons.


How do I prevent inbreeding?
This is a tricky question since the average homestead flock is probably going to be too small to be entirely self-sufficient.  However, you can take steps to maintain genetic diversity by avoiding mating brothers to sisters at all costs, and trying to minimize parent-offspring matings.  Two methods can help

• Rolling matings --- Separate your flock into two groups: the old roosters with young pullets and the old hens with young cockerels.  At the end of the season, cull the oldest birds.  Now your young pullets and cockerels have turned into your old hens and roosters, and can be mated to this year's youngsters in two new groups.
• Spiral  matings --- Divide the flock into three or more matrilinear families.  Each year, mate the sons to the next family down the line, eating the cockerels after they've been bred for one or two seasons.  The females always stay in their own family and can be kept as long as you want.
  

Dividing your flock into two or three groups sounds daunting, but keep in mind that this complex arrangement may only need to last for a month or so.  If you've marked your birds so you know which group they belong to, you'll just need to separate the flocks for a couple of weeks in the spring to flush excess sperm out of the hens' systems, then collect eggs for another week or two to hatch out into this year's babies.


Where can I read more about breeding my own chickens?
I've summarized the tips above from Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.  Keep in mind that his description of the process is twenty pages long --- I highly recommend that you read his book if this teaser post makes you decide to try breeding chickens on your own homestead.  Good luck!

How many eggs do you see in this picture?  If you answered "one", you got it right!

My sister kindly gave me some Egg Gourds for my birthday, and I decided they made even better nest eggs than golf balls.  The golf balls have served us well, but one of our new australorp pullets needs to be broken of her habit of laying on the floor.  Maybe some more egg-like objects in the nest box will help?

If you're going to improve your flock by breeding for traits you want, you'll have to raise chicks at home.  One option is the incubator method I played with in 2011, but Harvey Ussery opts for a lower work method --- using mother hens.

As I've discovered, you can't just expect any old bird to become broody and raise new chicks.  The broody trait has been bred out of most mainstream chicken varieties, so you need to choose heirloom breeds that are good mothers.  Ussery's favorite type of mother hen is the English game hen, although he admits that the small chickens can't sit on as many eggs as a standard-sized hen.  Other breeds he recommends include Asil, Malay, Shamo, Kraicenkoppe, and some Dorkings and bantams (especially Nankin and Silkies.)

Even after you choose a good mothering variety, Harvey Ussery recommends breeding your broody hen subflock just as carefully as you breed your main flock.  That means culling hens that don't set on your schedule (like our cochin, who didn't feel like going broody until midsummer) or who don't manage to raise living chicks for any reason.  But remember that the mother hen's main job is raising chicks, and don't cull her if she doesn't lay particularly well or bulk up as fast as you'd like.

For more tips on working with broody hens, check out Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.

When it comes right down to it, the success of a permaculture chicken flock is based on food.  Do you just go out and buy 50 pound bags of milled grain from the feed store, or do you try to make homegrown feeds nourish the flock 10%, 50%, or 100% of the time?

Harvery Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock includes far more information on feed than I can even tantilize you with in a short post.  However, here are some questions to get you started.

Do your chickens get all three food groups every day?  Ussery suggests that chickens need three main types of food: high vitamin green plants; high nutrient seeds and fruits; and animals (whether that's bugs or beef liver.)

Do you ask your chickens to forage or do you let them act like couch potatoes?  I've talked about several options for enticing your chickens out of the coop, including feeding a daily ration rather than free choice feeding and experimenting with lowering feeding rates until production suffers (then raising the rates to just above this critical window.)  Ussery adds other ways to stretch your feed dollars, such as culling nonproductive birds, stacking grazers with chickens, and buying only quality feed so your chickens waste less.

Speaking of storebought feed, is yours fresh?  For best nutrition (and least picky eating), the kind of feed you buy pre-milled in 50 pound bags should be fed within the first two weeks after the grain was ground, and definitely no later than 45 days after milling.  Older feed actually suppresses your chickens' appetitites --- it just doesn't taste good.  Feed companies have to put the milling date on the tags of their bags of feed, but the companies tend to hide that data quite carefully, so you may need to call up the manufacturer and ask which number is the date and how to interpret their code.

Do you feed your chickens weeds?  If you have a garden as well as a flock of chickens, this is one of the easiest ways (beyond feeding chicken scraps) to nourish your flock for free.  True, all of the weeds from your garden are going to fit into the "green plant" food group, but that's the category that's most often missing from overgrazed runs.  Ussery notes that his flock especially enjoys prickly lettuce, purslane, dandelions, lamb's quarter, yellow dock, and chickweed.

Can you set aside at least one garden bed to grow seeds for your chickens?  I put this tip further down the list because if you're not growing all of your own vegetables, you probably don't want to "waste" that space growing grains for your birds.  But if you've got room, some of the easiest chicken-friendly grains to grow at home include corn, sunflowers, sorghum (Ussery says his flock prefers the ornamental variety called broomcorn), and amaranth.  Most of these grains can be cut stalk and all and strung up on rat-proof lines under the eaves of your chicken coop to dry and store until winter.

How about food from the wild?  Ussery gets into some experimental territory here, running white oak acorns through his grinder to feed the flock.  He cracks wild hickories and black walnuts by hand for his chickens and also suggests (but hasn't himself tried) hazelnuts, chesnuts, and mulberries.  (Our chickens turned up their noses at cracked chestnuts, but yours might be less picky.)

Where can you get cheap, high quality animal feed?  Remember the last food group --- animals?  That's tougher to find for your flock, but Ussery has a few suggestions.  He grows black soldier fly larvae and compost worms and also feeds the flock skim milk and whey; cracked or filthy eggs; offal, liver, and blood from slaughtering; and roadkill opened with a hatchet.  I know some of you will think these options are just plain gross, but chickens are omnivores, and especially in the winter when wild bugs are scarce, they get a real hankering for meat. 

By the way, if you don't want to rush out and buy Ussery's book (although I think you should), you can find a lot of fascinating tidbits on his website, which is also the source of the photos in this post.

Winter is a tough time to keep your chicken flock healthy.  If you're not careful, their run will turn into a mass of mud which will erode away and pollute nearby creeks.  Meanwhile, the ground will be scratched so bare that your chickens will lack all access to fresh food.

Harvery Ussery suggests various solutions to these winter problems.  First, he recommends that you cull your flock heavily, removing any birds you don't really need so that the remaining chickens will have more access to wild foods.

Next, how about planting cover crops to give your chickens some greenery deep into the winter?  Our chickens were supremely uninterested in our oat, winter pea, and mustard cover crop in the fall, but by December, they were happily browsing through the green leaves.  If your garden is completely dormant, you can also send your flock through there to clean up weeds and seeds.

If you see bare soil in their run, how about turning that area into a deep bedding/compost pile?  Even a small run can be biologically active through the winter months if you add enough organic matter so that your chickens can go hunting for worms.

Now's also the time to augment your chickens' diets with fresh foods.  Harvey Ussery grows potatoes, sweet potatoes, mangels, winter squash, and chard for his chickens, noting that if you're willing to cook them, potatoes can replace grains in a chicken's diet.  Before we gave them free run of the woods, our cooped up Light Sussex were thoroughly enjoying Tokyo Bekana --- the thin leaves seem to be a very palatable green.  Ussery even dries comfrey and stinging nettle "hay" in the summer to dole out extra nutrients to his flock through the cold months.

Most of those winter pick-me-ups require some forethought during the spring, summer, and fall, but you can feed your chickens sprouts for nearly instant greenery.  Rather than buying his grains in pellet or mash form, Ussery buys several grains in bulk and mixes his own feeds.  In the summer, he grinds the larger grains and feeds the smaller ones whole, but in the winter he sprouts all of the grains in modified five gallon buckets.  He uses a five day cycle, soaking the first day, then rinsing daily until the sprouts are ready.  Give the chickens free choice minerals or sprinkle them on top of the grain and you have a complete diet with extra protein, vitamins, and enzymes.

For more tips on keeping your chickens healthy on a budget, I highly recommend Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.