Popular posts about chickens

Over the years I've been writing Eight Acres - the blog, chickens have been a regular topic and there are a few themes that have been particularly popular.

chicken tractor ebook: popular chicken posts on eight acres

Chicken tractors
Of course the inspiration for my Chicken Tractor eBook was the popularity of my posts about chicken tractors. People are obviously very interested in building and using chicken tractors with chickens and other poultry. Here's those posts again in case you missed them:

If you want to know about the pros and cons of using a chicken tractor vs a fixed chicken coop, try Mobile chicken tractors vs fixed pen. Now that you're convinced that you need a chicken tractor, here's some thoughts on How to build a chicken tractor (with more photos in Another chicken tractor), and a couple of posts about How to use a chicken tractor (more in Chicken tractor guest post).

I'm still working on the eBook, nearly ready!

Gender of chicks
This question pops up all the time (and I had to word this carefully so I didn't get blocked by spam filters!), it seems like everyone who buys or hatches chicks eventually needs to know whether they got the hens they ordered, or a few roosters that might need to find another home. After nearly 10 years of hatching chicks, we are getting pretty good at picking the gender at around 6 weeks old. I put some photos in this post to help: Determining the gender of young chickens

pullets that we hatched

Guinea fowl
The guinea fowl were a brief experiment (we had them for about a year). We bought 10 keets and raised them. They lived in a chicken tractor, but never really fitted in to our farm. We hatched more keets and then sold the lot of them for more than the original keets cost me, so I guess at least I made a profit!

Here's the keets (they are SO cute) Guinea fowl keets, and this is when we first tried them free-ranging Free range guinea fowl!. And then the final decision to sell them Guinea Fowl Realities.

crazy guinea fowl!

Feeding chickens
We have been through many iterations with feeding the chickens. At first we thought a cheap laying pellet was the best option, then we were worried about animal byproducts, so we bought a mixed grain ration. That got expensive, so we tried just feeding corn and sunflower seeds (Chicken feed). And now we just give the chickens the same milled grain that we buy for the cattle. And I started raising Meal worms for the chickens. Ultimately I'd like to grow enough in our (planned) food forest to let the chickens eat mainly greens and insects, with minimal grain, but that is a LONG term plan!

hens enjoying meal worms

Butchering and cooking chickens
If you do end up with unwanted roosters, or you really want to become self-sufficient, butchering chickens is easier that might think and a great option for people living on small properties to grow their own meat.

I've written about Raising chickens for meat and Butchering Homegrown Chickens, more importantly is how to cook old chooks and roasting young roosters, because butchering is the easy part, and you won't enjoy the process if you don't know what to do with the chicken meat when you're finished!

chicken stock in the slow cooker

I hope you find this summary useful for address common chicken questions. What else do you need to know about chickens? What have I missed?

Cooking and eating beans

When I was growing up, my family never ate many dried beans, they just weren't something that was used much in NZ cuisine. If I did eat beans, it was always from a can (and most likely baked beans). And until recently I was still using beans from a can, but it can be difficult to get organic beans, and to find cans not lined with BPA. Then I had an opportunity to buy some organic dry goods in bulk, so I bought 5kg of kidney beans, 5kg of adzuki beans and 5kg of chickpea (garbanzo beans). I know, that is a lot of beans. And then I didn't really know what to do with them! Not just what dishes to put them in, but how to prepare them, I just didn't know what method to use. So I decided it was time to learn how to use all these beans that I bought, here's what I found out. I started with an excellent ebook called The Everything Beans Book , from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship, which has lots of bean recipes, but more importantly, an explanation of h...

Guest post: Is there a place for power tools in the garden?

One of my regular readers and commenters offered to write a guest post about a horticulture course, its quite a funny read, with some serious insights into our technology obsession. If you'd like to submit a guest post, email me at eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. While I am always happy to share links back to your blog or website, this contributor preferred to remain anonymous. I hope you enjoy their story.... -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- Just a few days ago our daily horticulture classes were interrupted by an invitation to review some new gardening gadgets. The idea was to open half a dozen of electric hand trimmers , test them and fill in some review about their goods and bads. As nothing is more dear to a student – even a “hort “ one - to escape routine and mess around till lunchtime, we opened the boxes and got down to business. What did we...

Farm update - August 2017

Its been cold this month, and very nice to have the fire going every night. Here's a photo of my boy in his cape, great for late night woofing at things. Most of July we were either preparing for the butcher to come or putting meat away. Its always a big job, but its only once a year, and its all done now. My lovely neighbour came over to help, so it was fun to have the company and work together. Taz was a champion once again as she helped us to move cattle in the yards ready to load for the market. Gus is not at that level yet and had to stay home (he cries when he gets left behind, but he just gets in the way and scatters the cattle). We have had a few sprinkles of rain here and there, but also plenty of cold nights, so the grass is mostly dead and dry, waiting for the warmer weather to revive our summer-active pasture. Gus in his cape Taz after she helped to move cattle Food and cooking It was all about beef in July and we are v...

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