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Paris Byrum
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Caring for baby chicks
When the baby chicks arrive from the hatchery, they have flown across the United States, to our local post office and then through a car ride home to our beginner farm. They are tired, cold and hungry. When you first bring chicks home, whether it be from the hatchery or a local farm store, you need to get them into a warm place right away with food and water. The ideal outside the heat lamp temperature should be 95 degrees. This is to ensure they are not so cold that all huddle under the heat lamp smothering each other. You can tell if chicks are too hot if they are all outlining they space you have provided, or too cold if they are all huddling under the heat lamp. You want the chicks to be spaced out evenly and hearing happy chirping noises.
They need to have grit at ground level, to kick start their gizzards. They also need feed a little higher then their feet, in a feeder that the chicks can not roost on, so they do not contaminate their food. They also need water, a little higher then beak level, so they do not get it clogged and dirty when scratching around.
About every 4 days you need to add about 2 inches of bedding under the chicks, as to always keep their space warm and dry. Every 7 days you drop the temperature about 5 degrees. Make sure you always have food and water readily available to them.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Hen Housing- The Coop
Our swanky little ladies and their hunk of a rooster stay in our pallet build chicken coop. My husband, who is great with making things from basically trash, built this coop with about 50 hens in mind. They sleep in there during the nights to protect them from predators, like owls, weasels, and who knows what else. Featured in the chicken coop are 12 "laying nest boxes" that are made out of 5 gallon buckets, nailed on their sides to pallets. We put saw dust in the nest boxes so that the eggs come cleaner and so that its cozier for the ladies. Also in the spacious coop is a room, doored off as to store feed, and saw dust there. They also have a roost, and a chicken latter, even though only ONE of them uses the latter. During the day, we let them out of the coop, so that they can free range on our property- well not on our mud room porch- but they can go anywhere else. But no matter what, they always find a way in, so that they can have a nice fresh place to poop.... Not pleasant, but the children and I chase them off with the quote from the book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom " Skit Scat Skadoodle Doot!"
And they usually leave with the rooster trying to protect them.
It's so fun to watch chickens. The rooster always makes the weirdest calls to his ladies, and they follow! Talk about submission! One minuet they are happily foraging, and the next minuet he does his call and they are all pecking at their wings, giving themselves a dirt bath.
Right now is the best time to raise chickens! Farm fresh eggs, friendly companions, and meat at the end of their laying careers are great!
And they usually leave with the rooster trying to protect them.
It's so fun to watch chickens. The rooster always makes the weirdest calls to his ladies, and they follow! Talk about submission! One minuet they are happily foraging, and the next minuet he does his call and they are all pecking at their wings, giving themselves a dirt bath.
Right now is the best time to raise chickens! Farm fresh eggs, friendly companions, and meat at the end of their laying careers are great!
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Poultry housing- The Green House
When the baby chicks come to our farm, we keep them in the greenhouse. It is the most heat efficient place to keep them, since it is south facing and already being heated for the seedlings. We keep them in groups of 50-75 so that they will not over crowd each other. The first two weeks of their lives, we keep them in an 18"x40" box raised close to the top of the green house, because its extra toasty up there. This box is bedded with wood shavings. We put a small waterers raised up on a 2x4 so that the chicks will not drown in the water. We also give them small feeders that have slide on tops so that they can not stand on them. At two weeks of age, the chicks are moved down to the floor of the green house to a 24"x40" box with a heat lamp for 1 more week. We also put in two of each and bigger feeders and waterers. At week 3 we turn off the heat lamp, in preparation for being put out to pasture. This may be different for your area. You could put chicks out as early as 12-16 days old, but in our area, it is just too cold for them.
P.s. we only recommend this timeline for the Cornish cross meat bird breed. All breeds grow at different rates, and you all live in different areas, so research these things first.
Check out our next blog post on putting the chicks out to pasture!
P.s. we only recommend this timeline for the Cornish cross meat bird breed. All breeds grow at different rates, and you all live in different areas, so research these things first.
Check out our next blog post on putting the chicks out to pasture!
Monday, April 15, 2013
Sprouts!!
We have been watching our little sprouts come up, one by one, day by day. Some of them took shorter then the time allotted on the package, very exciting! Others are taking longer then stated- kind of worrisome.
I am so happy to see sprouts coming up, it make me feel accomplished! We have been watering daily with a mist setting on the hose. It seemed that by mid to late afternoon, they were already getting dried out. So I started watering by hand with a watering can. They seemed to stay moist longer, especially since I covered the seedlings with clear food plastic. Now they are in mini green houses!! They are thriving much better!
When we started our seeds, we played about 2-4 seeds in each depth hole, just incase some were dead seeds. Now almost every pot has 2-4 sprouts! I was sad, because I didn't want to just through them away. I have transplanted some on the extra seedlings, but I am unsure if they will survive. With our newest sprouts, we are just putting the extra seedling sprouts on our salads- and it's very tasty!!!!!
I am so happy to see sprouts coming up, it make me feel accomplished! We have been watering daily with a mist setting on the hose. It seemed that by mid to late afternoon, they were already getting dried out. So I started watering by hand with a watering can. They seemed to stay moist longer, especially since I covered the seedlings with clear food plastic. Now they are in mini green houses!! They are thriving much better!
When we started our seeds, we played about 2-4 seeds in each depth hole, just incase some were dead seeds. Now almost every pot has 2-4 sprouts! I was sad, because I didn't want to just through them away. I have transplanted some on the extra seedlings, but I am unsure if they will survive. With our newest sprouts, we are just putting the extra seedling sprouts on our salads- and it's very tasty!!!!!
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Why Pastured Poultry?
Except from my cookbook Pastured Poultry Cookbook From Butchering to Kitchen Table By Paris Byrum of Byrum Family Farm
- coming midsummer 2013
"Why Pastured Poultry?
If you have came this far and purchased this e-book, you are heading in the right direction! Pastured chickens are the alternative, to what our family calls “GMO infested bleached meat”. Our pastured broilers are raised without antibiotics, vaccines, steroids, genetically modified feed, fecal surroundings and artificial lights. Instead, they are raised in small groups with fresh air, non-GMO feed, with sunlight and a field to have forage, as that is in their natural diet. Raising our birds on pasture, allows them to have a well rounded diet, without sitting in their fecal matter all day for 8 weeks, thus without having to inject them with antibiotics to fight with the disease and ammonia in the air.
This is a great alternative to the industrialized poultry business, who keep their birds in a confined house of thousands, with artificial lighting, fecal air, dead birds under them, and other sickly birds surrounding them. They then, because of all the sickness, have to vaccinate and give antibiotics to the birds to keep the numbers up. Chickens in confinement like this are under a lot of stress, and if they do survive, the meat is not nearly as tasty. Store bought factory chickens are processed by machinery, which inevitably while processing, breaks their sack of fecal matter all over the birds, and processing equipment. As a result, they must bleach the chicken, literally dip them multiple times into a bleach and ammonia solution, so that the fecal bacteria does not poison the consumer.
As a consequence of how factory chicken is raised, I know I would not want to consume this chicken. That is why we started raising our own meat birds. We know how they were grown, how they were processed, and how they were taken care of. If you raise you own birds for meat, or are purchasing pastured poultry locally, then you are on the right track, if not, I hope you are gaining knowledge through this ebook, to convince you to do so. "
Pastured Poultry Cookbook, From Butcher to Kitchen Table , 1st Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Byrum Family Farm. All rights reserved.
Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of Byrum Family Farm.
First Publication: March 2013
For more information on Pastured Poultry, please visit us at: www.ByrumFamilyFarm.com
- coming midsummer 2013
"Why Pastured Poultry?
If you have came this far and purchased this e-book, you are heading in the right direction! Pastured chickens are the alternative, to what our family calls “GMO infested bleached meat”. Our pastured broilers are raised without antibiotics, vaccines, steroids, genetically modified feed, fecal surroundings and artificial lights. Instead, they are raised in small groups with fresh air, non-GMO feed, with sunlight and a field to have forage, as that is in their natural diet. Raising our birds on pasture, allows them to have a well rounded diet, without sitting in their fecal matter all day for 8 weeks, thus without having to inject them with antibiotics to fight with the disease and ammonia in the air.
This is a great alternative to the industrialized poultry business, who keep their birds in a confined house of thousands, with artificial lighting, fecal air, dead birds under them, and other sickly birds surrounding them. They then, because of all the sickness, have to vaccinate and give antibiotics to the birds to keep the numbers up. Chickens in confinement like this are under a lot of stress, and if they do survive, the meat is not nearly as tasty. Store bought factory chickens are processed by machinery, which inevitably while processing, breaks their sack of fecal matter all over the birds, and processing equipment. As a result, they must bleach the chicken, literally dip them multiple times into a bleach and ammonia solution, so that the fecal bacteria does not poison the consumer.
As a consequence of how factory chicken is raised, I know I would not want to consume this chicken. That is why we started raising our own meat birds. We know how they were grown, how they were processed, and how they were taken care of. If you raise you own birds for meat, or are purchasing pastured poultry locally, then you are on the right track, if not, I hope you are gaining knowledge through this ebook, to convince you to do so. "
Pastured Poultry Cookbook, From Butcher to Kitchen Table , 1st Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Byrum Family Farm. All rights reserved.
Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of Byrum Family Farm.
First Publication: March 2013
For more information on Pastured Poultry, please visit us at: www.ByrumFamilyFarm.com
Friday, April 12, 2013
Starting seeds!
Today my children and I started our garden seeds.
We mixed in a wheel barrow 1 part compost, 1 part peat moss and 1 part vermiculite. With this mixture we will be starting all of our garden seeds with this.
We then took the mixture and put them in small starting pots, carefully. It took longer with the children, but the experience was great.
We then took spray bottles, as to not over water the soil, and sprayed the tops of the starter pots. The children LOVED this part!
Today we got started tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, green onions, and half of our early spring herbs for the kitchen! To make it easier to plant some of the tiny tinny seeds, I used an eraser at the end of a pencil to make the hole for the seeds to go into. I then used the pencil to bang the seed packet over the hole, and counted how many seeds came out. You can also put the seeds in the palm of your hand and take a pinch of the seeds to plant into the hole. After placing the seeds in the pot, we sprayed the top of the soil again.
Remember, the key to family farming is that everyone takes part in making the farm run smoothly! My children are 7 months, and 2 and 3 (next month) and they are capable of doing alot of farm chores, it may take longer, but it is well worth the wait, to see them build self confidence and patience. Happy SPRING!!
visit us at www.byrumfamilyfarm.com to order your farm fresh goodies, and like us on facebook www.facebook.com/byrumfamilyfarm
We mixed in a wheel barrow 1 part compost, 1 part peat moss and 1 part vermiculite. With this mixture we will be starting all of our garden seeds with this.
We then took the mixture and put them in small starting pots, carefully. It took longer with the children, but the experience was great.
We then took spray bottles, as to not over water the soil, and sprayed the tops of the starter pots. The children LOVED this part!
Today we got started tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, green onions, and half of our early spring herbs for the kitchen! To make it easier to plant some of the tiny tinny seeds, I used an eraser at the end of a pencil to make the hole for the seeds to go into. I then used the pencil to bang the seed packet over the hole, and counted how many seeds came out. You can also put the seeds in the palm of your hand and take a pinch of the seeds to plant into the hole. After placing the seeds in the pot, we sprayed the top of the soil again.
Remember, the key to family farming is that everyone takes part in making the farm run smoothly! My children are 7 months, and 2 and 3 (next month) and they are capable of doing alot of farm chores, it may take longer, but it is well worth the wait, to see them build self confidence and patience. Happy SPRING!!
visit us at www.byrumfamilyfarm.com to order your farm fresh goodies, and like us on facebook www.facebook.com/byrumfamilyfarm
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