Chickens and Leaves

During the fall and winter, leaves can be a nuisance. We used to pile them up to be disposed of but in recent years we have tried to find ways to work with them instead of against them.

If they are dry, we can use them as bedding in pens and henhouses. We have also used them in our homemade wax fire starters for our woodstove. My favorite option is putting nature to work and letting the chickens take care of them.

With this, we simply give the chickens our excess leaves that we rake and pile up. Every day I sprinkle a couple good handfuls of cracked corn or grain over the pile and the chickens are happy to spend a few hours foraging and scratching through it for treats. In the process, they break down the leaves into little pieces which I can then either add to our compost pile or use as mulch in the gardens in the spring.

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Barn Improvements

I've been putting off a much needed barn improvement project for a while in hopes of catching the necessary materials on sale. Specifically, high grade rubber mats for the stalls and aisle way. The heavy stall mats I needed finally went on sale today so Seife & I headed into town. We will need to remove the old mats in the stalls and do some leveling of the clay floor before we put the new ones in place, as well as have some sand brought in to raise the floor level in the aisle way because we occasionally have flooding problems when it rains a lot. Project benefits: Reduce bedding costs (which are at an all time high) because rubber mats keep the bedding from being ground into the dirt/clay floor. Reduce flooding problems by allowing us to raise the floor level and then protect it with the mats Reduce dust issues... our barn is very, very old and the aisle way is made up of very, very old fine dusty dirt that gets on everything. This will also help keep our milking stat...

Egg Hatching 101: Day 14 Bones and Shifting

Day 14 means only one week to go! Time to start getting your brooder planned out and ready if you haven't already done so. Chicks will be hatching before you know it! One Day 14: Bones in the chick are starting to ossify (harden), including the skull. The chick is beginning to shift around in the egg to face the wider end → See our entire Egg Hatching 101 Series up to this point here. ← This post is part of a series about hatching eggs on The Farm at Beaman’s Fork blog . Want to help support the farm? Please visit our online store or visit us at the New Bern Farmer’s Market!

Heated Buckets

We recently installed heated water buckets in the barn, one in each stall for the horses and one for the goats. I probably should have done this years ago but I think I've finally had enough of busting ice in the morning only to have it refreeze a couple hours later. The buckets have cords, so you have to put some thought into where you are going to hang them. The cords are wrapped in a protective metal spring to deter chewing, but especially with goats, the cords need to be completely out of sight of them. I don't trust their wandering mouths. I placed the goat bucket pretty much on the ground (still attached to the wall by a bracket) so that it is low enough for the chickens to access it also if needed. They frequently come in the goat stall for water, especially if all of their drip waterers are frozen. The cord goes through the slats in the wall so they can't reach it. I also put a bungee cord around the bucket to keep them from moving it at all (and possibly exposing...

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