First of all I spent many weeks researching this, even talking to the owner of a raw dog food company. (Catch the fun conversation on Episode 7 of Season 3 on my podcast: Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy.) 

Are dehydrated chicken feet good for dogs?

I learned that chicken feet are high in glucosamine, which I had been buying for him in pill form for years to help with his hip pain. As I’m working at incorporating more real food, and not as worried about convenience, with my own diet, I was intrigued that I could treat Bixby daily with something he would long for, and look forward to, and also feed him real, whole food instead of making him take a pill.

Are dehydrated chicken feet safe?

Even after the days of dehydrating (yes, warning, it’s not fast), and being assured by experts that chicken feet would be really GOOD for Bixby, I was kinda terrified giving him his first one. I watched every one of his happy crunches and bites closely, worried he would choke.

I quickly learned my fears were unfounded. He not only did GREAT with his first chicken foot, they immediately became his favorite treat ever, still today, years later.

In the beginning, I did cut off all the toenails before dehydrating the feet, using my gardening sheers. Some folks say this is imperative but Bixby has been eating the feet with the nails ever since that first batch, with no problem. But if your dog is small, not-so-healthy, or you’re just not so sure (as I wasn’t), feel free to remove the nails. It only takes a minute if you have good sheers.

How long does it take to dehydrate chicken feet in a dehydrator?

It takes about 48 hours for chicken feet to be “done” in the dehydrator.

I did defrost bags of frozen feet, from our last meat bird dispatch, to make my first batch, and they may have been slightly frozen still which would have added to the time of course.

You’ll know your feet are “done” and ready for storage when they have no flexibility or juiciness in the padded parts and the skin. They will be very hard and dry. Once they’re all dry, take the chicken feet out of your dehydrator and let them cool completely.

At what temperature do you dehydrate chicken feet?

You want to dehydrate your chicken feet at 150 F for roughly 48 hrs. I can fit 2 dozen feet in my dehydrator,  using only every other tray, since the feet are so thick.

How long do dehydrated chicken feet last?

1. I love these chicken feet from my favorite raw food company who also offer many other amazing functional treats.
2. And these chicken feet are great. I will often toss on an extra bag of feet when I’m ordering Bixby’s dog food from here, so I reach the free-shipping level.

How to Dehydrate Chicken Feet

1. Wash feet
2. Clip nails (or remove them all together) with garden sheers, if you prefer. (optional)
3. Line dehydrator trays with feet.
4. Run dehydrator at 150 degrees for roughly 48 hours.
5. Remove feet when they are hard and dry and there is no flexibility or juiciness in the padded parts or the skin.
6. Let feet thoroughly cool well/air dry.
7. Store in glass jars with sealed lids or mylar bags or storage buckets.

More of Bixby’s Favorites

More Details About Pets on the Homestead:

Training your dog to be chicken friendly

When your dog gets sprayed by a skunk 

Lies the pet food industry is feeding us (podcast)

5 things you need to know about raising barn kittens

Dog training & great dog products

Who teaches us more than he teaches the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds in the sky? Job 35:11

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The post How to dehydrate chicken feet first appeared on Souly Rested.

I’m all about dual-purpose, so these 6 herbs are ones I would be growing for our family even if I didn’t have chickens.

But I love it that these herbs serve both my family and the chickens very well.

If you’d rather listen than read, I got ya covered, with my latest podcast episode:

How I Use Herbs for My Chickens

While you can simply feed these herbs to your chicken, my hens are kinda odd. They don’t really eat the things I hear other chickens devour. I assume it’s because they’re free-ranging hens who have their run of the property, from sun up until sun down.

I love that they can free range because it makes a huge difference in our flea and tick population, plus it’s fun to see them meandering up to the back kitchen door many times a day to visit me beg for kitchen scraps.

My guess is because they have all the grass, and clover, and bugs, and worms you can imagine at their disposal, a plate of greens doesn’t do much for them.

But I will dry my herbs and crush them into the chicken food in the winter. A little dried herbs sprinkled over their same-old-same-old layer pellets makes for some very happy hens on a cold February day.

Even so, they seem to love it the most when I put fresh herbs in their laying boxes to spruce up the place. Anything that will keep them happily returning to their boxes, instead of hiding their efforts in a big hide-and-go-seek game around the farm, is a great win in my book.

6 Herbs I Grow for My Chicken

So today I thought I’d list out the 6 herbs I’m growing this year that both my family and my chicken seem to enjoy, to give you an idea of some great herbs to feed your chickens or leave scattered in their coop and nesting boxes.

Then below my current list, I’ve included an even more complete list of poultry-happy herbs. So keep scrolling.

Using MINT for chickens & using MINT in the kitchen

Mint in the kitchen

Mint is such a useful, versatile herb. If you’re only going to grow one, mint is the one I recommend. My favorite ways to use mint, both freshly picked and dried, is to make a soothing, delicious cup of warm tea and to flavor my second ferment of kombucha. While mint is great as a stand-alone kombucha flavor, it’s even better paired with a favorite fruit, from strawberry to blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and beyond.

If you’d like to know more about how to make your own probiotic, gut-healthy, carbonated, delicious kombucha, here’s my library of articles about kombucha, and here’s more information about my course, Simple DIY Kombucha.

Mint for chickens

Just like it does for us, mint can calm a chicken’s stomach if they’re not feeling too great. It also may offer a calming, de-stressing effect for hens, making it a great addition to nesting boxes and even dust bathing areas.

Using OREGANO for chickens & using OREGANO in the kitchen

Oregano in the kitchen

Family pizza night and homemade pizza wouldn’t be quite the same without crushing some of our home-grown oregano into the sauce. But we also love it on roasted veggies and over roasted chicken and potatoes.

Oregano for chickens

Oregano strengthens a hen’s immune system, and folks even argue it fights against common poultry illnesses such as salmonella, infectious bronchitis, avian flu, and e-coli. Now that’s an herb that really knows its way around a chicken’s health.

Using LAVENDER for chickens & using LAVENDER in the kitchen

Lavender in the kitchen

While my favorite thing to do with lavender has nothing to do with the kitchen, I do use it there too. (My favorite use, btw, is to lay a bundle of dried lavender in my drawers and enjoy the wonderful smell when I put on a shirt or socks I’ve pulled out of those drawers.)

Lavender is a key ingredient in one of my favorite DIY Kombucha options: Lemon Lavender. Mmmmm. And lavender sugar is truly delicious to use in any way you use sugar.

Go here for full directions for making floral sugar.

Lavender for chickens

Just as the calming, soothing effects that the smell of lavender brings to us when we get a whiff of it, it has the same impact on a chicken. Which is extra nice if she’s in the daily stressful situation of laying an egg. So this is my favorite herb to line their nesting boxes with.

Using NASTURTIUM for chickens & using NASTURTIUM in the kitchen

Nasturtium in the kitchen

This year is my first ever to grow nasturtium, so I’ll have to keep you posted on how I like using this herb. I’ve been told that both the leaves and the bloom have a distinctly peppery flavor, so I’m intrigued to try adding them to soups, Kung Pao Chicken, vinaigrettes, and tossed salads.

I planted the nasturtium for one purpose only this year. I’m using it as one of many weapons against the dreaded squash beetle that made my blood boil and devastated my squash last year. But I love it that it is useful for both my kitchen and my chicken coop as well.

Nasturtium for chickens

I’m told that chicken enjoy eating both the leaves and the flowers of the nasturtium, which are good for the hens because they are naturally antibiotic. We’ll see if my chickens choose to snack on them (if not that’s okay, it leaves more for my salad).

Using BASIL for chickens & using BASIL in the kitchen

Basil in the kitchen

Pesto. Scrambled eggs with basil, chives, and everything bagel seasoning. And all things Italian.

Then there’s the Strawberry Basil Kombucha. (Just add 1/4 cup frozen, cut-up strawberries & 1 TB chopped fresh basil to your 1/2 gallon second ferment.) Need I say more?

Hop over here for all the recipes for my family’s favorite DIY Kombucha recipes. And make your own everything bagel seasoning too.

Basil for chickens

Basil helps keep the hens healthy with its natural antibacterial properties.

Using THYME for chickens & using THYME in the kitchen

Thyme in the kitchen

Thyme is a nice addition to meat, tomatoes, beans, eggs, and cheese. My favorite use for fresh (or dried) thyme is to add it to my omelets and souffle. It’s also a necessity for the thanksgiving meal, adding extra yum to both turkey and stuffing.

My grandma’s Souffle recipe is one of our favorite (super easy!) meals: See grandma’s souffle recipe here.

Thyme for chickens

Thyme helps a chicken have healthy mucus membranes, so it’s great at assuring your hens have a healthy respiratory tract.

Believe it of not, thyme bundles hung around the coop or sprinkled in the laying boxes are a great way to keep pests at bay. In fact, most aromatic herbs make great insect repellents. Because no matter how wonderful fresh herbs may smell to us, bugs tend to hate (and stay away from) things with a strong smell.

Take a Tour of my Vintage Coop

I say “vintage,” Bill says “falling down eye sore,” but I hope I can convince him it’s worth keeping. Even though he’d much rather tear it down and build a new fancy coop. What do you think?

Some Great Herbs for Chickens, in a Nut Shell

Here is a break down of some great herbs for your chickens & why:

• Basil – has antibacterial properties
• Lavender – highly aromatic and great stress reliever
• Marigolds – another stress reliever for the hens
• Marjoram –  has a laying stimulant for chickens and is a detoxifier
• Mint –  rodent repellent, digestive aid & lowers body temperature naturally
• Nasturtium –  another laying stimulant
• Oregano – strengthens a hen’s immune system
• Parsley – high in vitamins and it’s another laying stimulant
• Rosemary – pain relief and respiratory health as well as a natural insecticide
• Sage – antioxidant
• Thyme – tackles respiratory infections

Oh, and if you’re looking for great herb seeds, look no further than this variety pack, or anything you find at TrueLeaf Market… my favorite source for all our seeds.

The post 6 Herbs I Grow for My Chickens first appeared on Souly Rested.

Are there pros and cons to each kind of bird? Absolutely. Most days, if I had to pick only one to have on the farm, I’d pick chickens. But once in a while, I’d pick ducks. I imagine most people who own both would tell you they have a favorite. More often than not, simply based on my conversations I’ve had with others who raise both chickens and ducks, I would venture to say that most people would choose chickens if forced to choose just one.

Go here to see the products I recommend for raising chicken.

But if you don’t have to choose, why on earth would you?

But there are such redeeming qualities to ducks… The larger, richer eggs for starters. And their ability to keep on laying those rich eggs most of the winter, long after our hens take their winter break. (Mind you, we choose to not heat our coop. Our hens would give us eggs longer into the winter months if they had a heat source.) But, the hands-down #1 reason I like having ducks around? Their stinkin’ cute waddles and adorable personalities. I mean honestly, who can resist waddling duck butts heading off across the field?

What I love the most about having ducks?

I mean, hello! Beatrice Potter moment here! Who doesn’t wanna have Jemima Puddle Duck tottering nearby? I honestly wonder if one day the ducks will come shuffling around a corner wearing blue bonnets and chatting about Sally Henny Penny. But, yeah, the sheer fact that their presence makes our New England homestead feel a little like a farm on the English country side makes me glad we have the room and ability to keep some ducks on our farm.

But a few moments that occurred one evening last week made me so happy. Sure, I know it just looks like a few birds in my back field, but this right here is a picture of male birds–Mr. Big Fat, my rooster, and Winchester, the drake–doing what male birds do so beautifully. They have amazing natural instincts to care for their ladies.

Eagle has always been one of Mr. Big Fat’s favorites, so I wasn’t surprised to see that she was the hen in the picture I had snapped. Eagle has quite a story of her own, part of which you could read about in this post.

But the female duck is the main character of the story today. Lamie was always lame, from when we brought her home as a duckling with 2 other ladies and their drake. But as she grew, her disability became more pronounced. She tried oh-so-hard to keep up with the others, but she was always left behind. Her drake never cared to check on her or encourage her along, but was always fine with the fact that she was left behind and out of his range of protection. While she did become quite a loaner, even down to the fact that she was never able to lay eggs, she always seemed to be much happier when the others waddled back her way and she had some company.

This post gives you a rundown on 10 Fowl Facts you should know that I didn’t know when I first brought home our chickens. (You can pin that one here.)

This post explains how we trained our labradoodle to befriend our birds–maybe the most important accomplishment to date here on our farm. (That pin is here.)

And if you’re considering raising chicks, please read this post to avoid the horrible mistake I made that cost many sweet little lives. (This pin leads you to that mistake as one of a dozen I made that year.)

One day Lamie’s disability saved her life but left her totally empty.

The others had waddled off through the cow pasture one day, and they were carried off for a meal by a local fox. The drake, from the looks of the spewed feathers, had put up quite a battle for his ladies but had lost. It was tragic for us. I got the call during my long stay by my daughter’s side in the ICU, where she battled a rare and ugly neurological symptom during the worst, darkest summer of my life. Part of me had no energy to devote to feeling sad over the loss of a few farm critters, but another part of me was devastated at the news. Alone. Empty. Lame, in my own right.

So to have ducks waddling their cuteness around the homestead again feels extra good. You see, recently, a few new ducks came to live on our farm. But the evening I realized this I was elated…

While we were watching the sap boil, the chicken and ducks all came around. Well, first came Lassie. But our barn cat is always around…

Then I realized Lamie had a new lease on life.

Then came the ducks, the farthest we had seen them wander since moving in. And Lamie was with them! For the first time in a very long time Lamie has friends again. And she is like a new duck. They even patiently wait for her to keep up with them when they go on their wandering, waddling adventures. The new drake seems to be especially fond of Lamie. My heart leaped with happy when I saw this. That and the amazing aromatic maple steam that enveloped me, wow, I’m surprised I didn’t cry.

So, yeah, I’m often asked if I’d rather raise chicken or ducks. Yes.

Go here to see the products I recommend for raising your own.

If you’d like to meet our barn kittens, here’s a facebook live I shared recently over on my facebook page. Of course who wouldn’t? They’re stinkin adorable balls of just-born fluff.

If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (If you don’t remember your password, no fear, we always include a personalized reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

The post Would you rather raise chickens or ducks? first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

This summer one daughter faced more pain in a season than any person hopes to have to endure in a lifetime. She and I traveled for weeks on end to medical trials. Then–praise God–her sisters, Dad, and I helped her pack again. This time for a college campus. For the second time in the last few years, our van was loaded with a semester-worth of necessities and a piece of my heart moved away. She moved into her water-front campus to begin her Marine Biology studies this week. Chronic pain, spinal fusion surgery, and a difficult neurological syndrome delayed her dreams for a few years, but tomorrow she officially begins her collegiate career.

Needless to say, summer days vaporized into fall mornings before I had time to immerse myself in garden time. I snagged early morning or sunset minutes whenever I could, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

But thankfully another daughter planted, weeded, and tended the garden in my absence. Kayla is a driven young woman who feels called to be a lifelong gardener, is considering a collegiate career in Agricultural Economics, and is currently studying at home towards her dual high school diploma/Associates Degree, because that’s where she can delve into every aspect of caring for our homestead. In fact, she is the true inspiration behind our homestead. Even the cows are hers.

So when I do get wonderful hours in the garden on these fleeting days of summer I love doing double duty. No, make that triple duty–this one little gardening tip I discovered offers me:

1. Therapeutic time to escape from the day’s burdens.
2. An easy end to Japanese beetle troubles.
3. A treasured free snack for my beloved feathered friends who always come snooping around the garden when they see me in there.

But no need for me to write about it, when I can just show you:

Go here if you’d like to see the products I recommend for raising your own chicken.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschool, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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Just hover over an image for the Pinterest logo.–>

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

And please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, enjoy musings about my centuries-old farmhouse, or glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades. I hope my focus always helps you Keep it Simple while being Souly Rested on Christ.

As soon as you subscribe, you’ll have immediate access to my subscriber library of resources, which I’m continually adding to, and which includes lots of printables. You might enjoy a great resource to inspire you to learn more about Japanese Beetles with a child or grandchild: my popular e-booklet–5 Things You Should Know About Nature Study.

The post Japanese Beetles Hate Me & My Chicken Love Me. Score. first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links.  See my full disclosure here.

I was up early. Which is very uncommon lately.

Recently, sleep alludes me until the wee hours of the day, then, once I can crash from exhaustion, I tend to sleep a few long, deep hours, with farm chores delayed. I’ll spare you the whys, maybe that’s for another post one day when the pain isn’t so raw and confusing. (EDIT: I never have written much about the raw pain of the days when I wrote this, but I did share, live, my memories as an encouragement in the midst of the pandemic of 2020. That video is at the end of this post.)

But this morning, as my husband’s truck turned toward work, rumbling down the curved drive, off of our rural New England farm, I was ambling down the slope to the back side of the barn, with a plate of stale crackers and ham scraps in hand.

Why we prefer hen-raised chicks to incubated ones.

Last night we decided to add a few incubated chicks to Eagle’s clutch. (With her beautiful white head, our broody hen was fittingly named “Eagle.”) She was proving to be a wonderful momma, and we’ve learned over the past two summers that we greatly prefer momma-raised chicks to ones that mature under the warm but uneducating light of the brooder. So after dark last night we took a few tiny chirping bundles down to the cage where Eagle’s nest is tucked away safely in a dog’s cage, in our hay overhang. (We lock her up there every evening to keep her and her chicks safe from predators until the babies are big enough to traverse the tall ramp that leads into the coop.)

Eagle has been a momma to only one sweet chick (whom I’ve dubbed “April”) since a disaster struck a few weeks ago. That disaster will also be a  subject for another day.

Then this week, chicks hatched in our incubator. So I started wondering if Eagle would like being a momma to more. Would she like keeping more babes safe and warm under her feathers? Would she like training more babes how to be wise with predators and crafty with food collection? Or would she see the new ones as a threat to her precious little April who has been the sole source of her adoration for almost a dozen days?

So I reached out to my readers, on my instagram page, to get a consensus of others who have tried such a thing. Because my followers are amazing, I had answers within minutes and knew I wanted to give it a cautious try. (You really are amazing–thank you all!)

Night is the best time to introduce new ones to a broody hen adopting chicks. She’ll most likely, if she’s a good broody hen, shuttle them right under her feathered belly. Or reject them immediately, in which case you can stand by ready to rescue them if needed.

We were on a mission.

So there we were, my comrades in wings and I, with flashlights and chirping chicks in hand, traipsing down to the back of the barn under cover of night, to rehome a few babes under Eagle’s care. We wore work gloves, because we knew Eagle might not take kindly to foster children and we might have to rescue them from her tenacious bites.

We knew our mission might fail.

At first, the babies had no idea what to do, out in the cold dark night, out from under the protected heat of the brooder. They stood unsure by the open door, shaking. (I should say, not atypical for New England, it was a cold May night outside our farmhouse, with a toasty fire going inside our farmhouse.) I immediately hesitated, wondering if the night temps might dip too cold for them to survive outside. But I decided to watch and wait.

Eagle was torn. She went toward them, then returned to sitting in the corner, over April, when April started to come out from her warm, safe bed under momma’s feathers. Eagle softly purred at the two new recruits. (It really did sound like a purr. Broody hens make unusual sounds as specific signals to their chicks; this one was a new one to me.) They just stood and shook.

The daughter who was still wearing gloves, the daughter who is the most take-charge homesteader, scooped up those babes and determinedly pushed them under Eagle. Content to be safe and warm, in comforting ways they had never known before, they stayed. All night.

When I awoke, they were in the forefront of my mind.

This morning brought new fears.

Armed with meat scraps and mushy crackers, I wasn’t sure what I would find this morning. Feeling it was possible Eagle would have rejected them, irritated at their squirminess. Or she would let them be in danger at their own devices, tired of their possible roaming that would jeopardize her first love, April, leaving her cold and exposed, if Eagle pursued wayward ones.

But instead, as I pulled the heavy, roughly hewn door open on its loud track, I was greeted with a happy chirping momma telling her three little ones that breakfast was here and guiding them off of their nest of hay.

Then this morning brought joy.

I almost cried at the beautiful sweetness, watching Eagle patiently, instructionally feed her newly adopted babes before eating any breakfast herself. I breathed a deep sigh of contentment as I watched Eagle quickly reprimand April when she meekly pecked at her foster brother over a scrap of ham fat.

When Eagle realized the two youngest proteges needed warmth, I couldn’t believe what she did. First, she led them up into the protection of the hay. Then she quickly ran and grabbed a piece of meat to lure April into the hay as well. She sat on the other two while April contentedly pecked away at the ham under her momma’s watchful sight. Once April had her fill, she hopped up on Eagle’s back, and, with the foster chicks under her wings and April on her shoulders, the momma hen was a beautiful sight for my tired eyes.

This morning brought a beautiful allegory to our farm.

There is a newly formed family unit in our barnyard today, and with it, God brought me peace, comfort, and assurance of His sovereignty and love.

Yet, as crazy as it may sound (well, to someone who isn’t a crazy chicken lady), this wasn’t the first time God brought me comfort through a hen. You see Eagle was one of two chicks who survived another devastation one year ago this month. In fact, if you glance back at that post from last summer, you’ll see sweet, pre-momma, pullet Eagle.

In fact, really, take a second to glance at that post. You’ll also see adorable, down-covered, baby Eagle peeking out from her own momma’s wings. She learned her mothering skills from her own wonderful momma. Eagle was one of only a few chicks raised by our farm’s first broody hen, Missy. Eagle survived and prospered, and now she is training new recruits for this sometimes hard life.

God impresses on my heart every time I witness the sweet chicks crawling in and out from under the hen’s wings that He has me under His care and protection.

No, it doesn’t always feel like it. Sometimes I feel I’ve been abandoned in the cold, dark night.

No, it doesn’t often look like it, by the world’s standards. The brooding light looked much better to the chicks than an unfamiliar, cold, plastic cage. Until they understood there was a momma there, ready to enfold them.

No, it doesn’t mean that life isn’t unbearably hard. Sleep sometimes alludes us, and days are sometimes overflowing with grief that seeps into every crevice until there’s no room for laughter.

All the “no”s don’t make sense to me.

But His promises are true.

But I know that I know that I know that He loves me and is caring for me, and my own brood, even in those deep, ugly moments when I see nothing that I would call evidence of His love.

But when I really allow myself to admit it… when I allow myself to think way outside of this minute of heartache… or this day of pain… or even my number of years that God has allotted for me on this earth (Psalm 90:10)… I know I can honestly say what has the earth that I desire besides Him? (Psalm 73:25)

And I can follow His lead. Blindly. With assurance. Even in the cold. And in the dark.

I have been welcomed into His family as a foster child, yet an heir. I was adopted as an incubated, clueless chick who causes Him anguish, yet I am His own, who can claim her place of honor under His wing. Sometimes that’s all I have to cling to, but even then, that is enough.

So I don’t have solutions to grief. I have no power to take away a child’s physical pain. I can’t rid today of hardship or tears. But God has given me a beautiful reminder as I traverse the fields and complete hard work that indeed I am under His wing.

I knew nothing about the subject of a broody hen adopting chicks. Until today. Until I needed to know.

Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away…
Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:10-12

_________

He will cover you with his feathers,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psalm 91:4

I explain the “rest of the story” or the back story to this post live right here:

Meet Eagle, and hear the story of how we almost lost this sweet momma–>

And see Eagle with her growing chicks (and a boisterous bathing duck, none-the-less) in a video here, in this post.

And check out our gardens and farm for just a few minutes.

But I should warn you, the new calf cuteness might be too much to handle.–>

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

Click this image to pin this post.–>

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

The post How to Successfully Encourage a Broody Hen to Adopt Chicks first appeared on Souly Rested.

If you’re following on facebook or have checked out my youtube channel recently, you’ve probably seen more baby bovine cuteness than you can stomach this week, since we’re baby goat sitting for friends. And then there’s our adorable story, with a very happy ending, about our missing-turned-boody hen, Eagle.

Scroll to the end, if you wanna see Eagle and hear her story. Then go here to read all about this broody hen and how I convinced her to adopt more chicks. (And why I wanted to.)

Go here if you’d like to see the products I recommend for raising your own chicken.

But on top of broody chicks, broody ducks, and new baby bunnies, we’re incubating chicks and ducklings, and they’re due to hatch this week. That got me thinking about last year’s incubation and my huge mistake. Hopefully sharing it here will help others avoid the same blunder and save some baby chicks in the process.

So here I am yet again, pouring salt in wounds, and rehashing my silly mistakes, because I really do hope that sharing about my mistakes can help you avoid similar problems.

If you wanna incubate your eggs, you’ll need your eggs to be fertile, so you must have a rooster on your farm as well. If so, you may want to hop over to this post to avoid another huge, deadly mistake that I made with my rooster and my chicks when they were a few months old.

Should I let eggs sit before incubating?

I knew that the earlier the eggs were incubated, the better. While it’s fine to keep them a few days, until you have enough, eggs shouldn’t sit for too long before incubating.

So I kept them for only a few days or less, until I had collected enough fresh eggs to fill the incubator.

My Huge Mistake When Incubating Eggs

Last year about this time things were going well. It was our second year of incubating chicks, and we felt like we knew kinda knew what we were doing. Our first year the only problem we faced was one adorable spraddle-legged chick. Thanks to the Chicken Chick’s awesome site, this post helped us offer our tiny cutie some late-night rehab, via taped-up legs and standing assistance, and she is thriving today.

Fast forward to last year. The first baby made herself known, loud and clear, as soon as she was born. We watched her through the glass for many hours. Then we swiftly took her out, and placed her under the brooding light when she was ready. But her incubator-mates didn’t do much. For a long while. Most eggs showed signs of the chicks working their way out, but no one got further than an exposed foot or a tiny bit of a beak.

I don’t know if one egg in the lot was contaminated and got cracked while the first little guy was hopping around in there, or if the first baby’s shells, which we left sitting in the incubator, harbored bacteria. (After all, bacteria thrive in a warm, humid environment.) But either way, we realized too late that the incubator was a breeding ground for a bacteria that was deadly to the little chicks. All the rest of the sweet feathered siblings died in their shells.

What I’m Doing Differently This Year

So this year as soon as a chick is ready to come out of the incubator, I’m gonna be sure to remove all the pieces of her egg with her.  Removing the broken egg shells will not only lessen the likelihood of deadly germs, but also remove the potentially sharp-edged pieces. That way the little balls of cuteness won’t possibly cut themselves on jagged shells when they’re squirming around, trying to learn how to use their legs.

If you’re like me, you’re wondering how to remove the potentially harmful shells without disturbing the perfect heat and humidity that’s inside the incubator. After all, every time you lift the lid, the temperature and humidity levels drop. The best answer is a really simple one: do it quickly. Work together with one or two family members; one holds the incubator lid while another removes the chick and yet another removes the pieces of shell. The incubator should recover to optimal temperature and humidity very quickly if you keep the lid off for a minimal few seconds.

If you’re still worried that that just may not be “technical enough,” as I was, you can try this advice I found from Anna, on this post at The Walden Effect: “I heat up some water until it’s steaming and top off the wells when I take off the incubator lid since the hot water will keep the temperature in the incubator high and will also increase the humidity drastically. ”

Go here if you’d like to see the products I recommend for raising your own chicken.

Three Tips for a Healthy Incubator

Here are three simple tips to make sure you don’t let bacteria harm your chicks:

1. Place only unsoiled eggs in the incubator to begin with. Dirty eggs are more likely to harbor germs. Okay, that’s a no-brainer. But the next one may surprise you…
2. Use only unwashed eggs. Yep, you read that right. You want unsoiled eggs that are also unwashed. You see, an egg is coated with an amazing, protective coating, called “bloom,” right before the hen lays the egg. This bloom actually keeps harmful bacteria out of the egg. (See #8 of my 10 Fowl Facts for more information.) So as well-intentioned as the act might be, washing the eggs would be counterproductive.
3. Remove old shells from the incubator as you remove each new chick, so bacteria doesn’t have a breeding ground for growth.

Now for Those Adorable Baby Goat Pictures

If you’d like even more details about incubating chicks (and ducklings), I recommend this post by my friend and fellow homesteader, Kathi. (And I LOVE what Kathi does to candle her eggs that won’t cost you a penny. Why didn’t I think of that?)

Meanwhile, I promised right up front this week that I would share some stinkin’ cute baby goat pictures.

With our beautiful Scout, our Holstein heifer who’s due to calve this summer, getting bigger every day, we’ll have plenty of fresh milk daily on the homestead by this summer. So goats will probably never be a permanent addition to our homestead menagerie. But we are tickled to get to be the home-away-from-home for two sweet, 1-week-old baby goats this week while friends are away.

And That Video I Promised, About a Hen Named Eagle

Truly, spring on a homestead is always full of surprises. Thankfully Eagle’s surprise was a good one:

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

If you’re a homeschool family and want to incubate eggs as a school science project, try finding a local 4H group or farm where you can borrow the eggs and incubators for a one-time fee. You get to care for the incubator, watch the chicks hatch, and keep the sweet babies for a few days before the farmer collects everything back from you.

If you’re a homesteader, and want to purchase your own incubator and supplies, go here for my full list of chicken-related products I recommend, including a top-of-the-line incubator, if you’re looking for one that will serve you well for decades.

And, of course, if you wanna incubate your eggs, you’ll need your eggs to be fertile, so you must have a rooster on your farm as well. If so, you may want to hop over to this post to avoid another huge, deadly mistake that I made with my rooster and my chicks when they were a few months old.

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The post A Huge Mistake I Made When Incubating Chicks first appeared on Souly Rested.

In my new book, Sweet Maple, (aff link) I wrote a lot about how my parents’ farming experiences impacted my decision to start a homestead.

But if you weren’t raised on a farm, but you hope to some day own a family farm, scroll to the bottom for some insightful questions to help you know if you have what it takes.

When I first moved to this pie-shaped piece of rocky soil that runs along the bank where the lake empties into the sun-kissed river…

I never thought Dad would walk the land with me. I never thought he’d help water our garden, or walk to our coop with me, or watch the sun paint the evening sky beyond our tree line while standing by my side.

You can’t take the farm out of the farm boy

While garnering a factory job and raising a nuclear family in suburbia called him away from rural farm life long ago, I have no memories of summer heat when I didn’t spend time in my father’s little suburban gardens…

I longed for him to spend time in my rural rows of green, edible growth. Rows that resembled those of his farm-boy memories.

I’m thankful I was wrong. I’m thankful he’s seen two of our New-England-summer gardens…

… and learned about our sugarmaking operation here on our homestead. (Read this article if you’d like to know more about how to make delicious all-natural maple syrup. This one about why it’s a fabulous family activity. And this one if you’d like to know how we bake with maple instead of refined sugars.)

…and even opened gifts beside me last Christmas morning. His visits have taught me that his boyhood farm, long-since overrun and deserted in the rolling hills of West Virginia, is still an intricate part of him, now in his 80th year.

The Downhill Egg Shuffle

One of his first days of his recent visit, his elderly feet shuffled along on the downhill walk to the chicken coop and the duck house. His knees weren’t too sure of their ability to navigate the slope, but his feet were slowly determined.

He was unsure footed stepping up, and then back down, the concrete-block steps of our old chicken house. His unsure balance wouldn’t allow him to bend into the 3-foot-high duck house to confiscate the duck eggs, so I gathered those jewels for him.

He gingerly placed each egg in his bucket and slowly shuffled back to the house. I asked him if he’d like to collect the eggs every day of his stay with us. His unhesitant smirk made it clear that his comment was joyful nostalgia of sweet boyhood days long gone by. “It’s been a long time since I gathered the chicken’s eggs.”

He slowly transferred the eggs, one-by-one to the basket on my counter. (You can get a similar egg basket here. –aff link)

I knew he’d be doing the downhill egg shuffle again tomorrow.

A farm brings youthful joy

What IS it about a farm that brings out youthful joy? Maybe it brings such pleasure because it was what we were originally made to do. It was, after all, the first occupation. Whatever the reason, it’s undeniable. Being raised on a farm is in the fiber of his being; it sinks down to his achy knees, shuffling along to the coop, and runs through the weathered veins of his hands, cradling the day’s crop of eggs.

Last weekend Dad celebrated his 80th birthday. I love that old farm boy who himself is part of my own fiber. I hope to soon convince him to retire to our little farm. Retire back to his youth.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Wonder if you have what it takes to own a family farm?

So if you weren’t raised on a farm but you wonder if you have what it takes to own a family farm, read through these statements and see if they sound like you…

And if you’re looking for just one small way to live more sustainably, no matter where you live, you’ll love Sweet Maple, (aff link) Go here for a peek inside and to see what others are saying about this book that Joel Salatin says is a perfect addition to everyone’s self-reliant bookshelf. 

Or check out my mini crash course for all you need to know to Make Maple Sugar in your own kitchen today.

1) I prefer to work outside no matter what the weather is like.

2) I don’t mind bugs, mess, mud, and slimy stuff that other folks may call “gross.”

3) I am good at deciding what needs to be done, and I can prioritize tasks pretty well.

4) I like to notice details, and I generally see details that a lot of other people miss.

5) I’m mechanically inclined.

6) I am pretty thrifty, and I can make due with what I have rather than buying new things.

7) I don’t tend to wallow in my mistakes. Instead I look for a lesson I can learn in the midst of my mess-ups.

8) I like physical work, and I like being tired at the end of the day.

9) I am not easily bored by mundane tasks.

10) I like to get up early, and I usually work hard until I feel like I’ve accomplished all the things I needed to get done.

11) I don’t need confirmation from others in order to feel satisfied with the things I accomplish.

12) I’m a good long-term planner, and I realize that the simple joys in life require hard work.

Other Articles Like This One:

So you think you’re ready to be a homesteader? Take this quiz & find out!

Meet my 200-year-old farmhouse (and the joys and heartaches it brings us) right here.

And then there’s this post about how I have 3 jobs that I love & 12 ways you can make money on a small family farm.

Print out this Checklist of 54 Things to do Every Season on a Homestead.

But whatever you do, you should glance at the 8 Things Every Wanna Be Homesteader Really Needs to Know.

Those Things I’d Hate to be Without on our Farm:

Hop over here for my favorite items in my farmhouse kitchen.

The things I wouldn’t want to be without, for my chicken.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Genesis 2:15

You’ll love these other posts too:

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? You won’t find this deliciousness anywhere else… until Sweet Maple is in print this fall.

The post So you want to own a farm… first appeared on Souly Rested.

I make mistakes. A lot of them. Sometimes I wear a brown belt with black shoes and don’t even notice.

Last week I went to a dentist appointment and didn’t notice I had duck poo smeared on my boots until I propped them up on the end of the long, vinyl dental chair. Truth.

Occasionally I stop at the grocery store for milk and drive home with 5 bags of groceries only to realize I forgot the milk. Since said store is 18 miles from our out-in-the-country homestead, everyone feels the brunt of that mistake for a few days. Scout, our holstein, is bred but not due to calf for many months, so no fresh milk on the farm yet…

My mistakes on the farm also turn out to be more costly than a fashion faux pas or a forgetful trip to the store. Egg, meat, and milk production can be affected dramatically. Plants can suffer beetle infestation and delicious vegetables or fruit never make it to the table. But last week, animals died. Because of my mistake. I’ve felt sick over it, and I wanted to  write about it hoping I can help others avoid making the same mistake I did.

Read here if you’d like to know the 3 Secrets Legit Homesteaders Might Not Tell You, but you really oughta know. Or just PIN IT for later.

Or hop over to this post if you’d like to know if I prefer raising chickens or ducks here on our homestead.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links.

I thought we were doing everything right with our now 8-week-old chicks that we incubated this spring. This is our second year of incubating and assimilating chicks into our flock. (Read this post to find out 10 Foul Facts I learned from my chicken the first week we were brand-new chicken owners.) We kept them under a brooding light until they were old enough to venture outside for brief intervals, always keeping them corralled under our watchful eyes. Then we’d gather them back in their box and situate them once again under their warm light.

We introduced them safely to the other adult chickens, placing them in a large pen in the midst of where the chicken were free ranging. After days of doing that, we carried their pen into the coop and let them sleep there for many nights, behind the safe wire cage.

Then we set them free around the coop for just a brief time for many evenings in a row, knowing all the chickens would soon be coming in to roost for the night. They would file right by and around the new chicks and right up to their roosting spots. This allowed the older hens to get “acquainted” with the young ones at a time that they had no interest in harming them.

I knew drakes sometimes try to mate with hens, so I kept a close eye on how the male duck interacted with the chicks. He kept to himself, with his 3 ducks, and showed no interest in the chicks at all.

Here are the 10 things I think everyone oughta know about chicken.

But I had no idea that my rooster could be a threat to the well-being of my sweet new chickens.

So I was clueless when I stepped in the coop one morning last week and saw my favorite young hen dead in the corner. My first thought was that a predator had entered in the night, but I realized that made no sense since all the others were fine, but then I noticed they weren’t fine at all. Six of my eight chicks were acting painfully lethargic, barely lifting their heads and not hoping outside when I shooed them to do so. They let me pick them up without any resistance and felt almost limp in my hands.

Before I even had time to run to the computer and research what causes such odd behavior I realized that Mr. Big Fat–my rooster who was named by my daughters, in honor of his inflated self-image, not his actual size–was the source of the problem.

Big Fat grabbed the neck of one of the two surviving young girls and jumped on her to mate before I could stop him.

If you haven’t seen a rooster doing his manly business, you may not know why this would be a problem. I’d seen it hundreds of times–truly walking around the homestead with free-ranging chicken and ducks can get kinda “R”-rated sometimes. So I was immediately mad when I saw the full-size male mount the little, fragile hen who was half his size. His beak sank into her little neck, holding her in place while he hopped on her back and dug his sharp spurs into her, holding on viciously while balancing his cloaca, trying to meet with hers. (“Cloaca” is the official name for both the roosters’ and the hens’ “vents.” Semen exits a rooster’s cloaca and enters a hen’s cloaca to fertilize the eggs.) The vicious balancing act was futile because she was way too small for his cloaca to ever be able to meet with hers.

If that was a little more than you cared to know, sorry, but it’s safe to keep reading. No more chicken anatomy will be mentioned in this post. Promise. If, on the other hand, you’d like to know more about the birds and the bees, chicken style, hop over to this post on the Frugal chicken. If you want to understand the fertilization process of an egg, I think this post from Natural Chicken Keeping is a great resource.

After I witnessed Big Fat carelessly, and pointlessly, hurting her, my pretty little hen seemed okay at first. But his savage act caused terminal internal damage. Within minutes, she looked lethargic like the others had that I had just left in the coop. She was spitting up; then she laid down, convulsed a little, and died by my side within 10 minutes of Big Fat’s pathetic, meaningless act.

The others all died as well, except for one that had eluded the rooster’s lousy attempt at charm. I scooped her up and quarantined her to safety. In a short while I noticed the Roo heading for one of the four youngest chicks on our farm, the babies who hatched by a broody hen a few weeks after our incubated chicks.

In the first 3 or 4 weeks of their life, the momma hen (“Missy”) kept her chicks right by her side, even clucking to them, directing each one to climb in close under her wings if she perceived possible danger nearby.

But the last few weeks, they’d grown (doubled in size since this picture) and she’d given them complete independence. So Missy wasn’t around when Mr. Big Fat started sauntering over to one of the little ones. Thankfully, I was. And they too are tucked away safely now.

I didn’t even consider locking up Big Fat instead, because he’s needed around the homestead. As angry as I was with him, there are truly important reasons to have a rooster. in fact, we always have a rooster around for two reasons. The first is unnecessary now until next spring… fertilization of the eggs; we incubate new chicks every spring. The other reason though is a daily need that is also rather ironic, given the problem we’re having with Big Fat… protection of the hens. Even though he doesn’t seem to have any qualms about killing them himself with his irrational, insatiable sex drive, he’s crazy protective of them against natural predators. Since they free-range around our very rural property, his aggressive, protective nature has saved their lives many times. We’ve witnessed him puff up and make crazy angry calls to safeguard his women from chicken hawks that nest in our woods. I’m sure he’s also helped them avoid consumption by fox, raccoon, and maybe even coyote. He also does a great job of directing their activity and keeping them in generally “safe” areas, not letting them venture too far from the coop. In the two years we’ve owned free-ranging chicken, we’ve only lost one hen to a predator. And that was one day that the rooster was penned up and his ladies were roaming without him. So, yes, there are definitely many good reasons to have a rooster.

I’ve talked with many other homesteaders–locally and on-line– in the last week about my problem. I’ve come to the conclusion that typically 8 weeks is a safe time to assimilate new chicks with older flocks and typically roosters are, well, wiser sexually than good ole Mr. Big Fat. So I’m not giving up on roosters, just maybe Big Fat.

In my numerous discussions I’ve held with other homesteaders this past week about rooster rituals, I’ve learned that the two roosters we’ve owned over the past two years were both atypical roosters. Our first was extremely aggressive toward people, including young children. He wasn’t around long. Our second rooster, Mr. Big Fat, while he is very friendly towards people, is not the suave Don Juan that most roosters are. You see, Big Fat runs right on up to his hens and attacks them from behind, having his pleasure whenever he wants. Most roosters are mush smoother, kinder “courters” of their hens. A rooster typically does a dance for his lady and then only has his way with her if she is in agreement and bows down for him, welcoming him to hop on her back. A hen who was too young would ignore his dance, if indeed he even attempted to woo her.

I’m thankful we do have one young rooster who we’re hoping will take on his responsibilities in a wiser, kinder way than Mr. Big Fat, and then we’ll decide what Big Fat’s fate is. For now, our young hens are safe, separated from the rooster.

And I’ve learned–the hard way–an important secret to keeping my young chicks safe: A homesteader needs to understand each rooster’s temperament before introducing him to young hens.

But I’m certain I’ll still forget the milk and mismatch my belt and shoes every now and then.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. II Corinthians 12:9

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The post A Big Fat Mistake first appeared on Souly Rested.

But training my dog to like my birds? For that I do deserve some credit.

As I type tonight, my labradoodle is a black-and-gray-streaked crescent curled at my feet. His long nose wraps across his front paw to lie down parallel with my right foot, and his back paw nestles behind my left foot. While enjoying the glow of the fire beyond the computer screen, I realize I can’t imagine my life without him.

He’s always at my feet. By my side. An innate part of my day. An innate part of the farm.

So training him to be bird-friendly was absolutely necessary when we decided to raise free-ranging birds on our homestead.

Bixby was a two-year-old, great big puppy when we moved to Restful Falls Farm… when we packed up our suburban life, out of our house that was 1 of 22 on a tiny cul-de-sac, on a tiny, pie-shaped, 1/5th-of-an-acre lot… when we moved 400 miles north and sprawled out on 14 acres that meet up with the lake and stretch along the curving rocky river and up the gradual wooded slope behind our home.

We used to attach a long lead rope to his collar whenever we let him out into our narrow strip of backyard, behind our brick ranch. Now we open any door of our 215-yr-old red cape, and he has free range of fields, marsh, river bank, and sun-streamed woods.

Sign up for my Resource Library for our recipe for our homemade peanut butter dog bones–our dogs’ favorite dog treats ever. Just click below, sign up, and you’ll soon have treats on hand that will make your pup wanna please you and–hopefully–leave your birds alone.

And order your dog’s favorite training treats at my favorite online dog food store and take 15% off your order–every order, anytime–with coupon code RESTED15.

The only problem was when we brought home some hens that Bixby saw as a challenging chase and a savory snack. (Last spring, I shared my step-by-step directions on how I succeeded in training my dog to like my birds.) A few months later we added our precious, waddling fowl.

I honestly was a little worried about adding the second type of free-ranging bird. It had taken pretty detailed, daily training for more than a month before Bixby was safe to leave unattended around the chicken. I really didn’t feel up to going through the whole process again only a few months later.

But the baby ducklings were way too cute to resist, as was the thought of their delicious, rich, jumbo eggs. So we brought the yellow-down adorableness home.

It was pleasantly surprising how easy it was to do the first step in the training process without even needing to restrain Bixby on a leash. (Lupine leashes are hands-down my absolute favorite dog leashes, if you do need one.) Since he was accustomed to seeing us hold the bigger hens, I guess the small yellow birds were even less appealing.

. . . By the way, I would love to share with you my recipe for the best homemade training treats we’ve ever discovered, along with all the other resources in my Resource Library . . .

The ducklings didn’t free range for quite a few weeks, so he quickly got used to roaming near their cage but, for the most part, ignoring them. When they were ready to test out their free-ranging skills, we had to keep an eye on them anyway, so we sat nearby and closely monitored Bixby, keeping him in check simply with voice commands. So, like step one, step two was completed pretty easily without a leash. After a week or so with 1/2-hour sessions of letting the ducklings roam under our watchful eye, and Bixby under our ever present voice commands if he started to inch close to the ducks, Bix was ready to skip right on to step five.

For another week or so we continued to keep a close eye on him whenever he was in the vicinity of the ducklings, but the detailed training we went through with him and the hens most definitely paid off, two-fold, making him almost automatically duck-friendly as well and, I’m hoping, fowl-friendly with any feathered friend that we add to our menagerie. So here are the steps, in a nut-shell…

5 Simple Steps to Make Your Dog Fowl-Friendly

Every morning Bixby accompanies us on our chores, watches us let out the birds, fill their feed bowls, and replenish their water. Because he’s always at my feet. By my side. An innate part of my day. An innate part of the farm. And, thankfully, after some heartfelt training sessions, he defines himself as the birds’ watch dog, not their predator.

So, can you train a dog to be off leash around your ducklings? Yes, at least in our situation, with our labradoodle, yes. I realize all breeds are different. In fact, all dogs are different. But I hope our successful process works for you too.

I have all these training points laid out in an easy-to-read, printable page for you over in my Resource Library. You’re gonna need to refer to them often, so head on over there and print them and keep them in an obvious place in your home. For us, that’s the front of our fridge. (And yeah, I gave up long ago trying to keep the front of the fridge pretty.)

You’ll want to make sure everyone understands the training process so everyone is on the same page, giving your dog the same message. And, bonus, when you subscribe, snag a recipe for Bixby’s favorite homemade dog treats EVER!

You do need to subscribe to SoulyRested and then you’ll immediately be assigned a password to access a slew of info in my Resource Library.

Have you discovered your own successful techniques at training your dog to be bird-friendly? My post on how we trained Bixby to be chicken-friendly is one of my popular posts here on SoulyRested, and the reader comments are very insightful, so please add to the discussion here as well!

In all toil there is profit. Proverbs 14:23

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

Meet Bixby & see him “perform” for his absolute favorite treats–>

Order your dog’s favorite training treats at my favorite online dog food store and take 15% off your order–every order, anytime–with coupon code RESTED15.

Bixby’s favorite items that we order at Raw Paws:

These chicken & potato treats are the ones in the video above that I give Bixby every day.

Venison Jerky Bites are awesome. I give him a whole one for an extra special treat or break them into 3 or 4 pieces for training.

Freeze Dried Chicken Necks–Oh my WORD he seriously loves these!

And I sprinkle this organic sea kelp on his breakfast every day. The trace minerals are super good for him and–bonus!–this gives him good breath (it really works!)

Remember to use coupon code RESTED15 and take 15% off your order–every order, anytime.

And here are more dog products I love:

You’ll love the doggie treats, toys, and training items Bixby and I share on this page.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post Training My Dog to Like My Birds in 5 simple steps first appeared on Souly Rested.

But you’re a homesteader. You never expect quick or easy. You know good things require hard work. So read on…

Here’s the low-down of our difficult, time-consuming, but oh-so-worth-it efforts to train our dog to not chase chickens. (Meet Bixby in the video at the end, or just click here.)

It was a colder-than-typical New England April. In fact, I had joked that the best way to hide the Easter eggs would be use store-bought ones and simply lay them on the snow.

With pending spring seeming so far away, we longed to pretend it had arrived. It was the perfect time for her third homesteading dream to come to fruition. She had already turned over and cared for an amazing vegetable garden and had planted many fruit trees last spring.

This spring would be a time for livestock. But we would start small. While she was preparing for her BHAG (our family’s code word for that really big dream: a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal) of adopting a dairy cow, we adopted rabbits and chicken.

If you have a rooster, please read this post so you can avoid the awful mistake that I made.

And read this one if you’d like to meet not only the cow she did soon adopt, but also that cow’s sweet calf.

As for Bix, I wish I could train him to not chase a wild animal. Find out what we did after he chased a skunk here in this post. (You might wanna pin that one right here… you never know when you might be glad you did.)

We named the rooster Mr. Darcy–hoping for the best with his overbearing personality, hoping he was surely a nice rooster who was simply misunderstood. (Mind you, we have had many more learning experiences with roosters since that day we first added poultry to our farm.) Mr. Darcy was definitely a protector to his hens, which was why we put up with him (and the fact that he is a handsome fellow).

While Mr. Darcy would probably have fought off a chicken hawk or given his own life to save his hens from a prowling fox, there was one factor on our homestead that we didn’t have the foresight to see as a nuisance to our chicken. Bixby–our sweet, protective, salt-and-pepper Labradoodle–gave Mr. Darcy and his 3 hens quite a run for their money on their first encounter. While Mr. Darcy did deter our labradoodle from snatching up a hen at first sight, everyone got so frazzled and upset, mainly me, fearful that one of our wonderful egg-providing newest farm members would be lunch for Bixby before she even provided one egg lunch for us.

We suddenly realized we needed to do the impossible: train a dog to not chase chicken.

Sign up for my Resource Library for our recipe for our homemade peanut butter dog bones–our dogs’ favorite dog treats ever. Just click below, sign up, and you’ll soon have treats on hand that will make your pup wanna please you and–hopefully–leave your birds alone.

And order your dog’s favorite training treats at my favorite online dog food store and take 15% off your order–every order, anytime–with coupon code RESTED15.

 DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

So we searched the web and asked online homestead support groups for help in training Bixby to love our hens as much as we did. But when we searched topics such as “train a dog to be off leash” we didn’t find any help overcoming a temptation as exciting to a dog as a chicken chase.  So we did our best to create our own training program. I would never say it was easy to train a dog to leave chickens alone. It took us over a month of daily training sessions, and many times we thought we’d never see success. But, with patience, this is the process that worked for us:

1. Show him she’s your friend. 

Stand with the dog on a tight leash, seated on a “stay” command, by your side. (Lupine leashes are hands-down my absolute favorite dog leashes.) Have someone else catch a chicken. (It’s important to do this OUT of the dog’s range of vision. NEVER let him see you chase a hen.) Then have them approach you and your dog, all the while speaking kindly to the hen and petting her. In the beginning, you’ll probably have to keep a tight, constant grip on your dog, making him stay seated as the chicken-holding friend approaches. We spent a good week or two on this step alone, advancing a little closer each day until Bixby would stay seated (without a tight hold on the leash) while both of us talked sweetly to the hen and petted her, in front of Bixby.

After he was rather bored with this step, we scooped up hens randomly (still never letting Bixby see us ever chase a hen) and walked with them in our arms inside the house, talking sweetly to them the whole time, while Bixby followed us curiously. Our point was to let Bixby know that the hens were a permanent, valued, new addition to our homestead, not wild birds in his right-to-chase jurisdiction.

2. Show him they’re allowed to roam where they please.

Then we started leashing Bixby and walking him to wherever the chicken were free-ranging. We always kept him on a very tight leash. At this stage, he still would have chased after the chicken in a heart beat, if he had enough leash room to do so.

3. Show him they are rather boring.

When he was ready to do so without us having to continually choke him with the leash, we took him close to the roaming chicken and had him sit outside of their coop as they roamed in and out and close to him. At this point, he was starting to get bored with the whole chicken exercise and we finally knew we were making headway.

4. Show him their house is rather boring. 

He did gain a little interest again when we stepped things up a notch by taking him INSIDE the chicken coop. We were always certain to make him stay seated outside the door of the coop until we gave him the “okay” command to step inside with us. We only had to do this step a few days in a row before he got bored with it too and didn’t even want to go in the coop.

5. Give him a little freedom.

After a full month’s worth of almost daily training, we decided Bixby was ready for a test. We called him to accompany us outside, intentionally walking to the area where we knew the chickens were grazing. We kept talking to him soothingly and telling him to stay with us once the hens were in his sight. He started to jog towards them, but with our stern “come” command he returned to us. A few days of working with him and keeping a very close eye on him when he was in the vicinity of the chickens, and the training was complete.

He even stood outside the coop, with chicken walking nearby, and simply watched them go, almost in a guard-dog way.

I have all these training points laid out in an easy-to-read, printable page for you over in my Resource Library. You’re gonna need to refer to them often, so head on over there and print them and keep them in an obvious place in your home. For us, that’s the front of our fridge. (And yeah, I gave up long ago trying to keep the front of the fridge pretty.)

You’ll want to make sure everyone understands the training process so everyone is on the same page, giving your dog the same message.

You do need to subscribe to SoulyRested and then you’ll immediately be assigned a password to access a slew of info in my Resource Library.

Today, he barely even seems to notice that the chicken are around. And we are so glad to once again be able to allow our sweet Labradoodle full-range of the homestead with no worries of any fowl play.

The Night Bixby Met a Skunk

Of course along with Bixby’s ability to roam the homestead as he pleases also comes the possibility of getting SKUNKED. Read about the worst night of my dog-owning life–and the solutions that finally saved us!–right here.

I hope these techniques work for you! They do take a lot of perseverance and patience, but it’s so worth it now, to watch our labradoodle actually guard our chickens and just watch them mosey around in front of him. Remember, if you’d like my easy-as-pie dog training treat recipe, just subscribe to my e-newsletter at the end of this page.

So, can you train a dog to be off leash around chicken? Yes, at least in our situation, with our labradoodle, yes. I realize all breeds are different. In fact, all dogs are different. But I hope our successful process works for you too. And remember to follow along below if you’d like my recipe for the best homemade training treats ever. (Oh, and the the resource library also includes a handy printable page of this 5-step training process–How to Break a Dog From Chasing Chickens.)

In all toil there is profit. Proverbs 14:23

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

Meet Bixby & see him “perform” for his absolute favorite treats–>

Bixby’s favorite items that we order at Raw Paws:

These chicken & potato treats are the ones in the video above that I give Bixby every day.

Venison Jerky Bites are awesome. I give him a whole one for an extra special treat or break them into 3 or 4 pieces for training.

Freeze Dried Chicken Necks–Oh my WORD he seriously loves these!

And I sprinkle this organic sea kelp on his breakfast every day. The trace minerals are super good for him and–bonus!–this gives him good breath (it really works!)

Remember to use coupon code RESTED15 and take 15% off your order–every order, anytime.

And here are more dog products I love:

You’ll love the doggie treats, toys, and training items Bixby and I share on this page.

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

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