Chicken (hen) or birds pecking at my seedlings?

DancesWithWeeds

DancesWithWeeds

Well-Known Member
Has anyone noticed the chickens not eating the corn in their scratch? I've tried 3 different brands and they won't eat it.

We throw some scratch out every day and they eat everything but the corn. The corn just accumulates.
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Ths pan of corn has been sitting out in the back yard for a couple of weeks and nothing has eaten it.
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We have all the wildlife anyone else has, but nothing except the goats and donkeys will eat it. Not even the field mice or the birds. I think its because of being GMO.

What do you chicken farmers think of that?
 
DancesWithWeeds

DancesWithWeeds

Well-Known Member
buckaclark said:
Anyone heard of preserving fresh eggs in a jar of water with pickling lime.Kept at room temp and they show them freshly scrambled after 18 months.
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When I was just a kid my grandmother told me they used to store eags in quart jars fo warer under the bed for the winter. Eags can actually sit out at cool room temperatures for nearly a month if they are only wiped with a dry rag (not recommended).

Edit: I think the RSO is making me eat eags instead of eggs!
 
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TaoRich

TaoRich

Well-Known Member
DarkWeb said:
Oh and chickens are assholes. Screw those stupid shit bags.
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My biggest annoyance has been the hen realising that I'm the 'worm guy'.

I've got a corner of the garden with my growing shit, which included 5 tubs with earthworms pre-processing my soil and amendment mix. Those all got emptied onto a tarp on the lawn and hand mixed with my homemade garden compost, probably 300-400 litres of the stuff ... around 75 gallons. I started with 1000 earthworms - there must be 3000-5000 by now.

If I moved away for literally 2 minutes, the little feathered fucker would be all over my mix, rooting around and pigging out on my red wrigglers like a fat lady at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Everyone else in the house as wondering why I was shouting FUCK OFF, CHICKEN every 10 minutes.

Now that scenario is imprinted in the tiny fowl brain:

"Follow that man wherever he goes and whatever he does in the garden. He's the tasty wriggle protein god."

That's why I strongly suspect she is the leaf ripping culprit. She shows far too much interest in my plants, and there are always a few worms escaping out the bottom of the seedling planter bags.
 
TaoRich

TaoRich

Well-Known Member
buckaclark said:
Check under pots for slugs,they love seedlings.
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Yep. Have done.

But it's not slugs. I occasionally find the odd little one here or there in my worm bin where it's reasonably damp, but never out in the garden. It's ripping into peak summer here, and my plants are all on the paving by our pool ... the nearest grass is a good 10-15 paces yards away. Slugs or snails would get their foots fried trying to get across that.
 
TaoRich

TaoRich

Well-Known Member
Jjgrow420 said:
Sometimes tricking them by placing a fake egg in their nest will make them lay. Fyi.
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Can confirm.

I was wondering why hens lay an egg every day. I thought that maybe we had bred them to do that, so I looked it up.

Each hen wants to get to around 7 or 8 eggs, and then sit and brood on that clutch until they hatch. That's the number of baby chicks they can handle to rear to adulthood.

So every time you raid her eggs, she Cluck! Clucks! in annoyance, and starts again.

If you raid her down to zero, they can get spiteful, and stop laying for a few days or a week.

We've just recently dropped in pretty damn good fake rubber egg into her tray - realistic in colour and weight and size. So now she's never down to an empty nest, and we're back to a regular one-egg-per-day 'harvest'.
 
thumper60

thumper60

Well-Known Member
TaoRich said:
Can confirm.

I was wondering why hens lay an egg every day. I thought that maybe we had bred them to do that, so I looked it up.

Each hen wants to get to around 7 or 8 eggs, and then sit and brood on that clutch until they hatch. That's the number of baby chicks they can handle to rear to adulthood.

So every time you raid her eggs, she Cluck! Clucks! in annoyance, and starts again.

If you raid her down to zero, they can get spiteful, and stop laying for a few days or a week.

We've just recently dropped in pretty damn good fake rubber egg into her tray - realistic in colour and weight and size. So now she's never down to an empty nest, and we're back to a regular one-egg-per-day 'harvest'.
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Fun fact a chicken is born with all the eggs it will lay in its life time.
 
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