Tips on how to feed poultry
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Perhaps most important for the serious self-sufficient this month is Dot Tyne’s tying up the different strands of all her articles over the last year to create a checklist for anyone wishing to further their aim of achieving a self-sufficient life. With her usual eloquence and incisiveness Dot targets the potential shortcomings of many ventures and provides the ideal blueprint for anyone wishing to improve matters. On the ever-present poultry front we cover two very different but equally important matters in the shape of food and drink for the chooks and food for us in the form of eggs and the recent EU battery cage ban. So what’s been happening, are we all conforming and how do we best make sure that all the eggs in all the different foods we eat were produced humanely – Janice Houghton-Wallace is on the case, and Clare Beebe examines the way we feed our poultry by checking out the feeders and drinkers on the market today. It’s a wide range, so do I buy metal or plastic, and as chooks are all pretty messy eaters, how do I reduce waste which attracts the vermin – Clare’s on the case, so the info is all in this month’s Home Farmer. But it doesn’t end there; Heidi M. Sands covers the subject of rearing a runt and Claire Waring in her bee-keeping column deals with the subject of swarms and how to prevent them.
Tags: Claire Waring, Clare Beebe, Dot Tyne, EU
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Well we don’t have cows and goats, but we do have chickens, geese, sheep, pigs and bees as Clare Beebe spring cleans the chicken house and offers up a real gaggle of geese as she covers many of the breeds available. Dot Tyne completes her three part series on sheep with a run down of the meat, fleece and dairy potential of this essential beast, Heidi M. Sands covers that characterful and co-operative smallholder favourite, the Berkshire pig and Claire Waring gets set for the bee-keeping season and explores the option of buying second hand equipment.
Clare Beebe winds up her two part series on incubation with a timely article on rearing your newborn chicks and Janice Houghton-Wallace sets out the rules for a home-reared Christmas turkey dinner. Meanwhile Claire Waring is preparing her bees for spring, Dot Tyne covers lambing and shearing your sheep and Heidi Sands pays tribute to the proud history of the Clydesdale horse.
Clare Beebe sets out the next level of chicken keeping after taking on a couple of garden hens as she covers the subject of incubation and the latest equipment available which pretty much removes the uncertainties of bygone eras, with fully automatic options for those of us who aren’t around all day to turn eggs by hand. Janice Houghton-Wallace caters for the competitive and proud chicken keeper as she covers the show circuit and Dot Tyne turns her attention to keeping sheep in the first of a new three part series in the Viable Self-Sufficiency series. And our ongoing series on bee-keeping looks forward to the new season as Claire Waring checks out and revitalises the essential bee-keeping equipment for the forthcoming season.
