Saturday Linkages: Goats, Chainsaws and a Big Blue Rooster

July 27, 2013

...tp://hencam.com/thevintagehen/2013/07/put-the-goats-to-work/ … How Long Do Chickens Live? | HenCam http://hencam.com/faq/2012/10/how-long-do-chickens-live-2/ … Woman fined for letting horse poop inside UK McDonald’s http://barfblog.com/2013/07/woman-fined-for-letting-horse-poop-inside-uk-mcdonalds/ … Be careful out there . . . Chainsaws — Can We Talk? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lloydkahn/~3/DWbMVDFUSEE/chainsaws-can-we-talk.html … Home Canning...

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Texas Town Outlaws Common Sense

Mr. Homegrown

March 9, 2009

Animals, Chickens, Thoughtstylings

16 Comments

...ster Texas city officials have decided to enforce codes outlawing backyard chickens and Marye Audet a food writer, author and owner of nineteen heritage breed Barred Rocks has been pulled into their poultry dragnet. She ain’t happy about it. “My dad and my father- in- law were WWII vets. I am a veteran. My husband is a disabled veteran. My oldest son is in Iraq currently, for his second tour of duty. And this afternoon, as I shut the door, in tear...

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Maintaining a Worm Bin

Mrs. Homegrown

July 19, 2013

Composting, Miscellaneous, Vermiculture

31 Comments

...all my kitchen scraps, except for the really choice stuff that goes to the chickens. The second selling point is that the wood breathes, and that seems to make the worms happy. Maintaining the Bin The Conceptual Divide I divide my bin into two areas, left and right. There’s no physical barrier between the sides, just a conceptual distinction. Usually one side is working and the other side is resting. This division is easy to make in a long, skinny...

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On the Difficulty of Finding Pastured Animal Products

Mr. Homegrown

March 12, 2013

Animals

22 Comments

Chickens on pasture. Image by MentalMasala. I was hoping to bring some good news this morning, specifically about a non-profit animal welfare rating service that I found out about at the National Products Expo. There were two animal welfare rating organizations at the Expo, one I decided not to write about because I considered their standards too loose–specifically they do not mandate pasture. The other requires pasture and I was looking forward...

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Hay Hooks–The New Hipster Accessory?

Mr. Homegrown

January 14, 2013

Animals, Chickens, Composting, Gardening

9 Comments

With so many city chickens I predict that hay hooks will become just as indispensable to the urban hipster as is the fixed gear bicycle. After years of hauling staw bales up the 30 steps to our house (to use as bedding for the chickens) I just broke down and bought a pair. A vaquero at the feed store intervened with a neat tip when he saw me struggling to use my new hay hooks to load some bales into a friend’s truck. Here’s what he showed me. Not...

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