#121
Post rating: ~
in the super-future where we have awesome poly-culture gardens for all of out weed food, i imagine a large portion of the labor for this would come from people doing that thing they used to do in germany where everyone was drafted into the civil service for a year or two to do something useful (or join the military)
#122
Post rating: +
just yesterday my friend told me she was thinking of getting some chickens in her yard and, using the knowledge i got from this thread, i recommended she try quail instead, but she said nah, ima just go with chickens
#123
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If she can handle chickens without her neighbors being all shitty about it then good! Chickens are very productive.

Chicken can be more useful than quail at times. They go around eating certain kinds of vermin and you don't have to keep them caged or even penned necessarily. You do have to build a coop though, unless you live somewhere where it never frosts.
#124
Marxsplainer
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lol @ trying to keep chickens without a fence. hope you like skunks and raccoon killin your whole flock in like 2 days
#125
Marxsplainer
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death to revisionist skunks, raccoons and foxes, vile saboteurs and enemies of egg production
#126
Poronto
Post rating: +
raccoons and skunks lay eggs i find them all the time. they taste kinda gross though
#127
Marxsplainer
Post rating: +
homesteading with masao: finding and preparing racoon egg
#128
Post rating: ~

dank_xiaopeng posted:

lol @ trying to keep chickens without a fence. hope you like skunks and raccoon killin your whole flock in like 2 days



Well, I've seen them kept with "natural fences" around them like rows of different shrubs and trees that also feed them but you're right. For the most part chickens are too dumb to stay around food and wander off.

If you have a backyard you're fine just make sure they can't flap over the fence anywhere.

#129
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What the fuck is with all these double posts.
#130
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"America is a big land. there is room to spread out" -Shennong zedong
#131
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oh yeah that guy gave me a thing on indiginous Illinois planting before he peaced out, cool stuff
#132
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If you have foxes where you live then it's presumably rural enough to keep some guinea fowl maybe? They would help with egg-snatching intruders. Their eggs are extremely difficult to crack, at least for anything without opposable thumbs.

But yes, it is quite upsetting to open a chicken coop a fox got into the night before.
#133
Post rating: +

roseweird posted:

what if my shitty landlord speaks no english and is just sort of generally horrified at the idea of allowing any of his tenants to do anything at all with his favorite square patch of unadorned dirt by where he puts his garbage cans



wow someone's in a hurry to gentrify Brooklyn!

#134
Marxsplainer
Post rating: ~

tsinava posted:

If you have foxes where you live then it's presumably rural enough to keep some guinea fowl maybe? They would help with egg-snatching intruders. Their eggs are extremely difficult to crack, at least for anything without opposable thumbs.

But yes, it is quite upsetting to open a chicken coop a fox got into the night before.



skunks will kill/eat hens if given the opportunity too. ive lost a bunch of birds to marauding skunks. usually if you have a rooster they will run/fly away (roosters seem to have a little more of a survival instinct than hens) but if a skunk manages to fget into the coop they'll fuck your flock up fast. stray dogs are terrible too

#135
Marxsplainer
Post rating: +
ive kilt more skunks than ye kin count in yonder coop. like the feller says aint airy a polecat born what dont git him a taste fer fricassee first time he comes a-callin at a henhouse. why ive shot the tail clean off one a them bastards and damned if he dont come back that same night a-trailin blood and still lookin fer dinner. took two barrels fulla #3 shot to put that onery feller down and i wouldnt lie to ye mister but them eggs tasted like skunk fer weeks after. that stink like to of worked into them birds' systems and im still afeard to eat em
#136
Post rating: ~
Guinea hens will surround and make a loud ruckus at anything that acts out of place, including the farmer sometimes. I'm sorry I keep babbling about guineas I just love them so much. They're so goofy.

You can also have train a dog with an appropriate breed to walk around the farm protecting the animals from varmints and strays.

If you had more 4.5 more acres you could raise peacocks. They're pretty vicious birds when attacked.

You can also pee in jars for a while and pour it around your chicken coop if you wanna be cheap. You have to keep doing it though. You can also collect human hair and tie it to trees near the coop or bury it. I know that foxes hate human smell, I'm not sure about opossums or skunks. I'm sure they do to a certain extent. I know that raccoon don't give a fuck.



Ahahahah I found a somewhat related anecdote about skunks on gardenweb:

To keep unwanted critters out from under the porches I put in flat black painted plywood and covered that with white lattice so it appears from a ways back that the lattice is the only thing there. So now when I have one of those critters between me and the house and they make a mad dash for safety under the porch they run smack into the plywood, bounce back, sit there dazed for a time and leave when they recover. I seldom see them twice.

Edited by tsinava ()

#137
Marxsplainer
Post rating: +
pissin on chickens well i never. chickenshit aint no bouquet a violets but itll be a cold day in hades when the missus sits still fer me thowin pints a piss round the backyard.

now ye guineahen's a good eatin bird, but i'll be damned if them ladies dont lay they eggs in the queerest places. give me a good layin hen anyday, damned if im gone to tromp halfway to hell lookin fer some guinea nest. one time Leland Miller had him a mess a peahens what done laid up two dozen eggs in the smokehouse chimney. old Leland went to fire up that smoker to smoke him up some hams and damned if them keets didnt come arunnin out that firebox all burnt up to hell. all of em just settin there afire. leland never did get him no more peahens after that i dont believe
#138
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No no no. I didn't mean pour pee where your chickens are. I meant pour pee around the perimeter of your chicken area. I should have clarified. lmao
#139
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Just make like a pee trench or something.
#140
Marxsplainer
Post rating: ~
at my parents house we just stay up at night with a shotgun and spotlight if we know an animal is coming by to eat chickens. unfortunately me and my partner now live in a small town now and the cops wouldn't appreciate us discharging firearms towards our neighbors houses at night

after the third hen we lost to skunks i just really beefed up our chicken run, made a hogwire enclosure with about a foot of fence buried so critters couldn't dig under. so far its worked well.
#141
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Have you worked with any successful traps? Maybe you can start collecting pelts.

If you don't wanna kill them at least spray them with pee.
#142
Marxsplainer
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i could have used a hav-a-hart trap i guess but dealing with a terrified caged skunk sounds like a great way to get sprayed. i have a dog and a cat so deadly traps werent really an option and i have no idea where i'd get one anyway
#143
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Hmm. Well for a cage skunk trap you could probably just drape and clothespin an old towel over it so the skunk can't spray you from the inside when it's trapped. Also it may keep the trapped animal more calm.

If the icky skunk spray somehow shoots through that you could maybe use a box trap or something.
#144
Marxsplainer
Post rating: ~
its more of a what the hell do you do with the skunk once youve caught it type thing. i mean i guess you could call animal control or whatever but i'm not gonna go anywhere near a crazed skunk in a cage, towel or no towel.

anyway its a moot point, the new run works well and we haven't lost any more chickens. building a sturdy coop with a good closed run is a good investment and will save you lots of headaches down the way.

ive heard of rooftop chicken coops on tall apt buildings which would be awesome because all you'd need would be a coop and the birds could run around
#145
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Yeah you're right. It's good that you aren't losing any more of them. I really like the rooftop idea I've never heard of it before actually! I've heard of rooftop gardening though.

Have you heard of chicken tractors? They're portable constructs that you keep your chickens in to peck in the the fields and fertilize it and you move it along every few hours.



People use heavy wood or put weights on them to prevent animals from flipping them over.
#146
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If you want a scary bird, get geese. I remember just getting anywhere within 5 metres of the male goose would cause him to show his teeth and hiss.
#147
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I don't know why, but waterfowl bird varieties, ducks, geese, swans, they just have bad attitudes man.

#148
penitent
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my parents keep chickens as pets in london
#149
penitent
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they lay 1-2 eggs a year + shit everywhere + keep getting eaten by foxes + are profoundly stupid creatures
#150
Poronto
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id be too nervous to lay eggs myself in that kind of new-statesman reading environment
#151
penitent
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chickens have no concept of my family's clichéd class position
#152
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is it really right to bring a egg into this world?
#153
Poronto
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deadken posted:

chickens have no concept of my family's clichéd class position



i wasnt talking about chickens ken

#154
[account deactivated]
#155
chickeon
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Dargydoof posted:

If you want a scary bird, get geese. I remember just getting anywhere within 5 metres of the male goose would cause him to show his teeth and hiss.

I assume you mean the ridges along the bills of waterfowl used for filtration, because birds don't have motehrfucking TEETH dude

#156
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

Dargydoof posted:

If you want a scary bird, get geese. I remember just getting anywhere within 5 metres of the male goose would cause him to show his teeth and hiss.

Alligators also a particularly scary birds

#157
[account deactivated]
#158
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Sorry you're right. At first glace they look more like razor sharp teeth than filtration ridges.
#159
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#160
[account deactivated]