Urban Farming at its Dirtiest
Duke’s eggs hatched! She’s got 8 poults. Yes, she looks exactly like Tater. It can take awhile of studying them to tell the difference between the two. Now we just need a creative name for Duke’s poults.
The Tater Tots are growing quickly. They are spending more time out and about with mom. Fortunately they’ve got some lungs on them so if something is wrong or one gets separated from the rest we know even when we’re in the house.
The poults are growing fast. We’ve been keeping them inside Turkey Town when we’re not home but when we are we had built a little yard for them to go out to stretch their legs and wings. Today we decided they could go out with everyone else. The chickens pretty much just ignored them as did Hank. But that didn’t stop Tater from chasing away anyone she deemed too close. If charging them didn’t work she went at them Kung Fu style feet first. After just a couple times everyone respected mom. I am thrilled at how fantastic a mother Tater is.
Bonnie, aka Naughty Bon Bons
I have no love for outdoor cats. Or maybe I should say I don’t have any love for the owners of outdoor cats. There’s little I dislike more than finding cat turds while digging up carrots. I hate finding all my seedlings dug up by a cat looking to use my freshly dug vegetable bed as a toilet. Or having the tires of my car sprayed by a tom cat. I also hate finding dead cats in the middle of our very busy street. They didn’t have to die.
I have three cats and I love them dearly. They are indoor only. I don’t want to piss of my neighbors the way some of them piss me off. I want them to stay safe more than anything, especially on our busy street. Do they want to go outside? Yeah, they do. But they don’t get to. I guess I call it tough love.
I could go on and on about how it’s better for cats to be indoors – from saving threatened song birds to reducing the number of vet visits and extending their life. But that’s not really why I’m writing this post. I’m writing it because one of my neighbors’ cats has become a HUGE problem for us. For the last couple of weeks we’ve caught it too many times to count in our backyard stalking our chickens. Usually the cats around here are permanently scared away by Squeak, but this one doesn’t seem to care. It just keeps coming back.
With chick and poult season here it causes even more problems. Tater and her tots are now confined in a wire crate inside Turkey Town to keep them safe. But how long can we keep them confined? Eventually they’ll be too big for the crate but not big enough to keep the cat from taking them. It definitely poses a problem.
Hotwire is an expensive option but one we may have to go with to save our birds – even the adult ones. The only bird I don’t think this cat is willing to take down is Hank – but even that is questionable. The hotwire might not work, which makes it a little tougher to swallow the cost.
Hank’s a daddy. Gratuitous cuteness indeed! Tater’s clutch is hatching. The little Blue Slate poults are making themselves known. They all look great so far – healthy and active. There’s 7 here in the photo (you can just barely see #7′s beak poking out under Tater’s tails), but there are definitely more underneath her. We won’t know for sure how many she has until she gets off the nest with them. This is the first time we’ve been able to get a hen to hatch her own eggs (we’ve tried 3 times before this) so we’re super excited.
Hank is a Self Blue (Lavender) and both of our hens are Splash (all the same breed it’s just the coloring this refers to). You can see the poults with more gray on them will be Splash (gray with black speckles like mom) and the ones that are all yellow will be Self Blue like dad.
*I have to thank my friend Kristin for coming up with naming them Tater Tots.
The #1 advice that I can give to people who want to get into urban farming is to take it slow. Too many people try to take everything on at once. In less than a year they’ve got the giant garden, 40 chickens, 5 goats, 12 ducks, 4 bee hives, 6 breeding rabbits, and 4 pigs. OK, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. It’s new and exciting and you want to do it all. I get it! I totally understand! But don’t do it all. At least not right away. Start small until you’re comfortable with it and then expand. But expand slowly.
Part of our garden back in 2007
I try to remind people that it’s taken Tom and I over 7 years of serious commitment to get where we are now. When you’re first learning to garden it can be overwhelming. Like many other activities it takes a lot more time to do when you’re just learning how. There are so many things to learn and pay attention to. Failure is going to happen and you can’t let it get you down. You have to pull yourself up and learn from the failures. It took me YEARS to finally grow a respectable pumpkin. I kept at it and can now grow pumpkins like this:
Squeek and her pumpkin - 2010
Nowadays we don’t spend much time gardening at all. In the spring we spend a few weekends prepping and planting and then in the summer we begin harvesting. We have automatic irrigation to take care of the watering and with wide beds weeding isn’t crucial once the plants get to a decent size. When we were comfortable with the time we were spending in the garden we got three hens.
Our first hens - 2008
Over the course of 4 years we’ve slowly added more animals and more gardening beds. We didn’t want to end up overwhelmed, which is easy to do especially when you have a chicken addiction like I do. We’re now at place where we’re comfortable and won’t be expanding much more. The only addition we are planning is to keep one of Sedona’s doelings so she’s no longer the third wheel around here. Other than that, we’re at a happy medium.
When introducing livestock it’s really important – I can’t emphasis this enough – to take it slow. Before taking on any livestock make sure to do your research and definitely make sure whether that animal is even legal to keep in your community. Take classes and meet others that are raising that species. Ask questions, lots of questions, and take the advice given to you. Figure out where you can get feed and supplies for them and where the closest vet is that will see that animal. Take on one species at a time and get into a good routine with them before taking on something new. Start with easier animals like chickens or rabbits. Evaluate how much work they require and whether you have the time to take on more. And, of course, be honest with yourself. If you’re already super busy with everything in your life are you really willing to commit the time that’s needed for more animals? Even if you really, Really, REALLY want goats but you barely have time to yourself they probably aren’t the right animal for you.
Taking it slow will ensure that you and your animals are happy and productive.
Our animals are eating weed trimmings from next door that we know are not treated with anything.
Back before petrochemical fertilizer cocktails, farmers weren’t monocroppers. They ran a closed system and part of that system included animals. The animals ate the crop waste and silage. They helped work the land. And their waste helped keep the soil healthy. As synthetic fertilizers became the norm animals and crop diversity quickly feel out of favor. Monocropping huge expanses of land was less work than having multiple crops and caring for animals.
Before we had animals we couldn’t produce enough of our own compost to amend the soil. On top of that, because the pile was fairly small it was near impossible to keep it hot enough. Instead we relied on bringing in commercial compost. Unfortunately with commercial compost you don’t know what is in it. Studies are showing persistent herbicides showing up in “organic” compost. On top of that there’s no way of knowing what persistent pesticides and fertilizers are also in your commercial compost. Think of all the grass clippings that go into yard waste bins. Now think about all the crap many homeowners put on that grass to make it green and weed-free. I’m not entirely sure that was something I wanted around my food.
To be able to amend all of our soil with just compost we had to bring in at least 5 full truckloads of compost every season. This wasted quite a bit of gas, time and money. It wasn’t cost effective for us and it simply wasn’t sustainable.
When we got chickens I wasn’t prepared for what they could do to my compost pile. Because their manure is hot it literally made our compost hot. Steaming hot. But being busy we found we weren’t able to turn the pile as often as we should. So we handed the job over to our chickens. They got all of our kitchen scraps and non-toxic yard waste. They ate what they wanted then turned and shredded everything else. They kept the compost aerated and added their manure to it. When we got the goats they joined in the fun.
This black gold they gave us was beautiful and plentiful. We completely stopped bringing in compost. With the manure we needed less material overall because it was more concentrated. This made it easier to spread taking an afternoon rather than several weekends. It is the perfect balance as we have all that we need and don’t have any extra.We feed our animals organic feed so we knew what was going in and out of them.
After our final harvest each season we would spread the black gold over the bed to allow it to continue to compost down further before we planted the next crop. When we got the rabbits they added a new dimension to our soil amending. Because rabbit manure is not hot it can be added directly to the plants without being composted. This allowed us to amend the soil while the plants were actively growing. We, of course, don’t use it on root vegetables unless we amend very early allowing at least 60 days before harvest. With heavy feeding crops such as melons, squash and corn, it was a godsend because it insured that we could continue to feed the plants throughout the growing season without worrying about burning them.
But it’s not just fertilizer that they provide. The chickens and turkeys in particular help with keeping weeds down and also with pest control. When the beds are dormant the birds get to go out and dig around eating mountains of cutworms, potato bugs, earwigs, and basically anything else that moves. When we start planting we fence them from the beds but they still get the area on the north side which is where our orchard is. There we allow the weeds to grow as a trap crop for insects, which the birds then eat along with keeping the weeds from getting out of hand.
The animals around here definitely earn their keep and help provide us food directly and indirectly. I couldn’t imagine doing it without them now.
On our Facebook page I asked people what burning questions they had for us. One of the questions was what we feed our animals and what we spent per month on their feed. It’s a good question, especially for people looking to raise animals for food production. In addition they brought up the idea of dumpster diving to feed the animals. It’s definitely an interesting idea and could definitely work for some of the animals, but not all. Everything here will be estimates as I’m just starting to keep track of everyone’s feed separately (last year I just lumped all feed together).
First, what we feed our different critters. Nearly all of them right now get commercial feed. Except for the rabbit feed, all of the feed is certified organic. I’ve only been able to find one company that makes organic rabbit feed but I was really unhappy with the quality of the feed for the price so we went back to a conventional feed.
Our rabbits get a commercial rabbit feed from a local mill and orchard grass. They also get stuff from our garden and extra greens from the farmers’ market like cabbage leaves and carrot tops. Some of our rabbits will eat it up but not all. Our bucks in particular are uninterested in anything green. They go through one 80lb bag of feed a month which costs us about $24. The orchard grass is a lot less usually going through a flake every other week which can come to a bale maybe three times a year. Of course this can vary a lot though depending on how many rabbits we have.
The chickens also get commercial feed and garden waste, but they also get all of our kitchen scraps and oyster shell. Our twelve chickens go through a 50lb bag of feed every 3 weeks which also costs about $24. The oyster shell is $10 for 50lbs which will last us a year.
The turkeys also get chicken feed but no scraps or oystershell. They generally don’t want anything to do with kitchen scraps or yard waste. They are really good foragers though so they only go through a bag of feed every other month.
The goats have a much more specific diet because of milk production and their specific dietary requirements. While we have orchard grass we get fairly poor milk production when we feed it to them. Instead they get alfalfa, which has higher protein and calcium. When getting milked they get a dairy goat ration which provides them with additional protein and calcium along with trace minerals they need to stay healthy like copper, selenium, and vitamins. They go through one 50lb bag once a month which runs about $23. We also offer free fed loose minerals and baking soda for them to regulate their needs. The cost of this is negligible since it takes quite awhile for them to go through a 25lb bag. They do occasionally get garden treats as well. They go through one bale of alfalfa per month which can range between $16 and $25 per bale depending on the season and how the weather is acting. Most of this year the cost of alfalfa has been at the higher end because of our erratic weather.
In terms of dumpster diving I think the only animals that would truly benefit from it would be the chickens and the rabbits. I would want to keep the breeding rabbits on commercial feed but we could grow out the others on scraps. The chickens would still require oyster shell and supplemental commercial food, but it would reduce the cost greatly if we went dumpster diving for their feed.
Hank is our newest addition. We traded him for Cranberry, one of our hens. Cranberry was getting bullied by the other two hens so we felt she would do better somewhere else. It worked out well since we were in need of a tom. Isn’t he a handsome turkey? And he’s actually quite sweet. He’s easily handled and isn’t aggressive at all.
When we brought him home though, we noticed he was a little off. He was wheezing a bit but didn’t have any mucus. His eyes and nostrils were clear and he wasn’t wheezing all the time. Then he would run around acting like he was clearing his throat. He would shake his head too, but it wasn’t something I noted really.
I decided to do a little research and from what I could tell, there was really only one cause. But I wasn’t sold on it because from everything I read it wasn’t a common problem. I decided to just go ahead and treat him for it and see how it went. Treatment worked and he’s right as rain now.
What he had was gapeworm. It’s a small blood red nematode worm that attaches to the bird’s trachea. Eventually they grow and multiply until they suffocate the bird, so even though it’s rare, it’s a serious problem. It gets it’s name because birds will stretch out their neck and “gape” trying to breath. They shake their heads to try and dislodge the worms. This shaking of his head sprays the microscopic eggs around him, thus infecting the ground. We had him quarantined from our two hens, but the pen he was in is normally used by the chickens as a axillary pen. So for now, until we can figure out how to clean it, it’s closed to everyone.
Gapeworms are spread through earthworms, sowbugs, snails and slugs, so control can be very difficult with free range birds. They mainly affect turkeys, pheasants and other wild birds. Younger birds are more susceptible. Older turkeys, like Hank who is 2 years old, generally are asymptomatic, but with the stress of moving they were able to get a stronger foothold on him.
Treatment, however, is fairly simple. We treated him with a 1% Ivermectin injectable solution orally. The dosage is .1mL per 10lbs of body weight. Hank weighs 20lbs so he received .2mL. We simply removed the needle from the syringe. Jeanette held him on her lap facing away from her. I opened his mouth and put the syringe as far back on top of the tongue as possible and pushed the plunger.
By the next day the wheezing was gone and he just looked better. He’s now all better and trying to find his place with our bossy hens. They don’t much care for him, but hopefully they’ll grow to be a flock.
Turkey Town, I love saying it.
So when getting livestock you should have some kind of shelter fro them. When we decided to get Turkeys we got them as poults (day old babies). That part was easy aswe just housed them in a old dog crate turned into a brooder for a couple of months.
Then they started to get big so we had to come up with some kind of housing. That’s where Turkey Town comes in. I started to think about what type of housing to build that cost the least. The first thing that I thought of was a big shipping crate. I found one behind a wine shipping business and asked them if they were planning on keeping it. Unfortunately for us they were. The second option was to build one from the ground up. Too costly and we try to avoid using new materials whenever possible.
Then I was at work one day and got to thinking about how to get rid of the pallets that were stacked out bock of our warehouse. And that’s when it hit me. I could build something out of pallets. The first thing was finding the right pallets. What i did was look for the ones that where exactly the same size, and how many I would need.
I figured that I needed about 10 pallets. Starting out with 2 on the right side and 2 on the left side, 4 for the back side and 2 more on the front. By using old scrap 2 x 4′s cut into 1 foot piece’s that I found in the yard I then attached the pallets together along the inside framing. Then I attach the sides to the back wall, then to the front.
Now with a little thought into it I had to come up with some structural support or all this work would be for nothing. With about $50 worth of materials I got ten 2 x 4′s x 8′ and 2 pieces of plywood 1/2 inch thick and started framing.
I put in two foraged branches, one at 2′ and one at 4′ high. We lined the inside with free burlap sacks that we got at the local recycler to help block our strong winds and to stop the rain from coming inside.
3 hours later and I’m done with Turkey Town v1.0.
Apparently the turkeys secretly play when we’re gone at work. However, Jeanette is staying with us again and surprised them while one was being especially silly. It’s holding a paper towel that was in the trash that has turkey poo on it. If you leave the door open they like to go in the tower and poo. You could be gone for just a minute or two and come back to a fresh pile. And of course they’ve already made it to the other side of the yard. They are stealthy critters. But not stealthy enough to not get caught doing this.
You’d never see a chicken do that!
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