Why does a chicken coop have two doors?
(Punchline: Because if it had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan.)
Chicken tractors are a way to keep the chickens enclosed and safe[er] while still being able to move them around. Moving them has dual purpose - they get fresh ground to scratch over, and the ground cover gets a chance to recover.
Chickens are ground feeders by nature - they need grains of sand and tiny pebbles in their crops to grind the food up, lacking teeth =) so they peck around on the ground. They also eat bugs, bits of plants and assorted grains from various plants. In farming, we feed them processed grains and grit, and if they are egg layers calcium in the form of ground up shells. When you free range the critters, you are letting them get back to a more natural diet for them. However, you need to keep moving their pen so the ground can have bugs and grasses/little plants and is not a mud pit full of chicken shit. Chicken shit is also very nitrogen rich and can burn the ground if it doesn’t get the chance to get weathered by the actions of nature [rain and sun]. Sunlight also can kill many different microbes and parasite eggs that can harm the flock.
So, chicken tractors are a good option if you don’t just let them run around. If you are raising them for commercial purposes, tractors are the best solution, they get the natural life combined with supervision to make sure they remain healthy. I would be willing to bet that they have a tractor [tent] that is where they put all the sick birds so they can be treated and their disease can’t spread to others. It is also a great idea for egg layers, it makes getting the eggs less of a scavenger hunt =)
[we have one broody guinea fowl that is brooding the eggs of the entire 15 bird flock, poor thing was sitting on something like 80 eggs when we figured out where she was hiding … ]
I’m visualizing that poor guinea hen sitting on a teetering pile of eggs, trying to keep her ovaceous house of cards to stay upright…
I have a few friends in Austin who would absolutely love to visit your farm. Do you ever have public visiting days? I know you’re busy, so if not I understand.
Not too far from the truth … though we did clean out the nest … no male guineas so the poor eggs were just sitting there rotting :eek:
Clearing the nest seems to have stopped the broodiness, which is good.
when brooders are cleaned manually to replace the bedding, how are the chickens “pushed around” to get them out of the way?
Chickens may not be the brightest beings on the face of the earth, but even they know to get out of the way when a shovel is headed for them. I would imagine that they go where the shovelling isn’t.
Chickens aren’t particularly big, either. They’re pretty easy to shove around. When I was a teen, one of our neighbors had a hobby farm, complete with chickens and turkeys. Occasionally they’d go on vacations, and my mother volunteered me to feed and water the animals and gather eggs and okra. I drew the line at eating okra, though. At any rate, most chickens will scatter when they’re shooed.
With my six, I just picked 'em and moved them to another box for a few minutes. Now that they’re big enough to be out in the coop, I wait till they’re out foraging (which is every minute the coop doors are open) to do the housekeeping. That works fine with a backyard microflock, but after about 20 birds moving them one by one doesn’t really work. The preferred method I’ve seen so far seems to be partitioning them off in part of the brooder while you clean the other part.
That idea makes no sense. What do you think would happen to your feet if your wore shoes for 6 weeks straight? And, in that six weeks, you grew from an infant to a college student? Never mind that most large farms will have more than 10,000 birds in a house, with 4-10 houses on the farm.
Baby chickens that are destined to make eggs for human consumption start out raised on the floor like meat birds. When they get into puberty and start laying eggs, they are moved to elevated cages (for those farms that use cages).
Every large farm I know of keeps the chicks in one building from the day after they hatch until they either go to market or go to a egg farm. Catching up the birds for transport involves a crew of about 20 guys physically picking up the birds and putting them in transport cages. There is ongoing work by people in the field to develop automated chicken catchers. The ones I have seen are awesomely cool. Once there are no birds in the building, the litter is composted with the help of heavy machinery.
If you are going into the house to make a spot repair of some kind, the birds generally walk away from you, so getting a space to work isn’t a big issue. Turkeys are an exception because they are very curious, but it’s not hard to gently swat them away from what you’re working on.
I appreciate your eagerness to help the industry, but maybe you should look into an actual problem that needs solving and learn more about how things currently operate and why they operate that way before deciding that you have a solution.
Brown eggs are exactly the same as white eggs except for extra pigment in the shell. White eggs are generally preferred in the industry because it is easier to see defects in the shell and to gauge other aspects of egg quality.
Back when the industry first started in California, the producers chose white egg laying birds for this reason. White egg laying birds weren’t as common then. As the industry grew, the producers started shipping eggs by train all over the nation. People on the East Coast of the US quickly learned that the white eggs in the store weren’t as fresh as the brown eggs since the white eggs had come from California while the brown eggs were from down the street. Thus, the myth of brown eggs being better was started.
There also isn’t a reliable difference between organically produced eggs and non-organic. At organic egg farms, the chickens are fed organically grown feed. How much impact this has on the actual composition of the egg varies, but is small. However, increasing demand for organic grain in order to make poultry feed is cool.
Alas, I never understood the finickiness of American pallets, either. It’s pretty easy to find feet if there’s a decent Asian market around. Heads are trickier, but I know of places around LA, San Francisco, and New York that I can PM you with if they are nearish to you.
Rest assured, though, that nothing goes to waste in modern agriculture. Those parts that can’t be reprocessed into nuggets or sandwich meat or broth are broken down into the all purpose Chicken Bone and Feather meal, which is then used as a protein supplement for animal food.
Some of the cruder guys I know in the pork industry like to point out that we use every part of the animal except the scream.
OMFG (work safe)
I’d like to thank **pullet **and **aruvqan **for stepping in as my schedule is precluding spending much time on the computer right now. You guys are great. 
Sundays are our best days for visiting and my email is listed on the webpage.
They should plan to get here bright and early as it’s already getting hotter than hell.
It’s shaping up to be another miserable summer here in Texas.
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YogSosoth Just finished reading the topic and realized some of my questions were answered in regards to the innards. But I still want to know abuot the heads. I love gnawing on the chicken heads. Unfortunately I live too far away to drive to your farm and pick some up. But if someone requests it, like an Asian supermarket, would you sell it to them?
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Of course. I’m a chicken pimp-I’ll sell whatever you want.
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**Lionne **Jlzania, you mentioned above that you don’t like or trust Whole Foods…what are your reasons behind that?
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I don’t really have time to go into this right now but I’d be happy to try and answer in more depth later.
Years ago, I saw a British TV skit, in which a “farmer” was being interviewed. He said “We feeds the chickens the pig shit, and we feeds the pigs the chicken shit.” That has me now wondering, is the chicken shit used for feed – specifically cattle feed? Or is that just an urban legend?
This would be awesome for rapid transit passenger management in congested urban areas: ItemFix - Social Video Factory
How much would a bag of heads cost anyway? Let’s say, 20 heads.
I just spotted this thread. I don’t have any questions, just wanted to mention that I worked a summer on my aunt’s (now ex)husband’s family poultry farm many years ago. It was an egg farm and didn’t raise chickens specifically for meat, although that’s how they ended up.
To this day it is the worst job I have ever had. In fact, it is the job that I use to keep all others in perspective.
so do only small chickens need to eat feces and adults don’t?
the questions I asked in this thread might not have uncovered many “actual problems” (although there seems to be unresolved disagreement over feces and potential parasites in them) but they did shed some light on the process and feed my curiosity. If you have realistic suggestions about how I should go about finding out those problems more efficiently than that, I would love to hear them 
If you are seriously and sincerely interested in finding out about the problems experienced by a poultry farmer, then how about spending some time on a farm? I really don’t see how you think you can improve processes and methods of things with which you have no experience or understanding.
and then what? Ever heard of planning your actions based on expected cost-benefit? Compare the expected utility of me chatting on the forum (no expenses, some knowledge gained) vs expected [del]dis[/del]utility shoveling shit for a few months and paying airplane tickets there and back. Marginal increase in cost is massive here, while marginal increase in benefit (knowledge? likelihood of making money from an invention related to the topic? :rolleyes:) is pretty small.
The point is, fewer let-them-eat-cake out of touch slogans and more thinking with the head. There is even an entire book about it Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye: LeGault, Michael R.: 9781416531555: Amazon.com: Books