How to Feed and Water Turkeys

Learning how to feed and water your turkeys properly can help prevent a lot of problems as well as save you money on feed. Although it may seem simple, there are many different choices of types of waterers and feeders, and different ones may be appropriate for specific situations.

Feeding and Watering Turkey Poults

When you first get your turkey poults, you will want to have feeders and waterers set up and filled, ready to go. This way when the poults first arrive, you can dip their beaks in the water and make sure they start eating soon after settling in.

For these baby poults, a one-gallon chick waterer is the best option. Avoid open dishes, buckets or pans of water, because poults may fall in, get chilled and die, or even drown.

The bottom half of an egg carton makes a good first feeder for poults. Another option is red plastic chick feeders that have oval-shaped openings through which the poults can reach the feed.

After a few days, a metal or wooden feeder can be used. Hanging feeders tend to conserve feed. Just make sure that the bottom of the feeder is within comfortable reach of the turkey poults' beaks. Avoid open pails of feed as well, because besides spilling it, the poults can all climb in on top of one another, hurting themselves.

Feeding and Watering Turkeys

As the poults grow, you can switch to a five-gallon metal waterer, or a nipple watering system. Make sure your waterer is sturdy and rugged, as large turkeys are quite strong.

For feeding, a large hanging feeder that can hold most of a 50-pound bag of feed is ideal. Some turkey farmers use a range feeder that is a trough-style. In either case, ensure that the edge of the feeder is at the level of the turkeys' backs so that they can reach the feed easily, but don't waste too much on the floor.

Once they're on pasture, you will need to make sure the turkeys have access to coarse sand or fine gravel - the grit that they need to digest their food. Most likely they can find this right on the ground mixed with the soil.

Beekeeping Tasks by Season

Beekeeping tasks can be divided by season. Checking on your bees frequently is a good idea, but can be overdone: you don't want to disrupt their hive building and daily activities too much.

Spring Tasks

Spring is definitely the time to get new bees and start a hive! Read up in late winter on beekeeping, plan your hive, buy or build it, and start going to those local beekeeping clubs.

Start a new hive.

Feed the bees if necessary.

Harvest honey from an established hive: when flowers are blooming, harvest any honeycomb not used over the winter.

Complete any needed miscellaneous tasks: take care of any health issues, and do anything else needed: requeen, add room, etc.

Summer Tasks

During the summer your bees will basically take care of themselves - you just check up on them and head off any problems before they balloon into big issues.

Enjoy watching the bees as they work: building comb and brooding comb, bringing nectar back to the hive, etc.

Make sure combs are hanging straight if you're using foundationless or top bar methods.

Harvest honey.

Autumn Tasks

Now it's peak honey collection time, and also time for making sure your bees are prepared for winter.

Harvest honey, but make sure to leave enough for the bees for food for winter.

Reduce the hive entrance, put on mouseguards, ensure adequate ventilation. Complete any treatments for diseases and pests.

Winter Tasks

Before winter, you'll help your bee colony get settled and snug for the long cold spell ahead.

Cover the hive with a jacket - you can use a heavy-duty plastic bag lined with a strip of R19 insulation. Staple along the bottom of the hive. Or use black tar paper.

Make sure all treatments are complete.

Happy New Year

Romaniafarms wishes you a Merry Christmas

Protect Your Chickens From Predators

There's nothing worse than having your chickens or other poultry attacked by a predator - and it seems that nearly every wild creature, and many domestic ones, can appreciate a delicious chicken dinner. So, how do you protect your flock so you don't have to worry about losing hens to raccoons, dogs, weasels, hawks, and more?

Potential Poultry Predators
If you're new to raising chickens, you might not even be aware of just what predators are around. Or you may think that since you live in the surburbs or within city limits, you don't have to worry about predators. But domestic animals can be chicken killers, too.
So, who are you worried about?
Here are the most common chicken predators:

neighborhood dogs
chicken hawks
weasels/ermine/minks
foxes
raccoons
coyotes
feral and domestic cats
bobcats
owls
snakes (chicks)
rats
fisher cats
Some predators, like snakes and rats, are only likely to eat baby chicks or half-grown pullets, not full-grown birds. Others, such as skunks, will just eat chicken eggs, leaving the hens alone.

Coop Security
There are some simple steps you can take to protect your precious hens from predation. The first order of business is to have a secure coop with a door that shuts securely at night. Some other tips:

Dig a trench 12 inches deep around the entire coop and bury hardware cloth there. This will prevent digging predators.

Elevate the coop off the ground to help prevent mice, rats and weasels from getting into the coop.

Inspect the bottom of the coop and patch any holes where predators could gain entry.

Put lights around the coop at night; motion-sensor lights work well.

Keep your compost pile far away from the coop and don't allow food scraps to linger - clean up any food scraps that the chickens don't eat before nightfall.

Keep the area around the coop mowed and clear - an open field without cover is a deterrent to predators.

If you have serious problems with hawks and owls, consider covering the chicken run with hawk netting.

Poultry Protectors

There are other ways to protect poultry and some of them will work for any animal on the farm. Dogs are great protectors of the small farm or homestead, and will keep everything from sheep to cattle to baby chicks safe from marauding predators - usually including other dogs.

Still, there's a catch: some dogs just love to chase and tease chickens. They will often kill them without even realizing or intending it. If you get a livestock guardian puppy, be sure to supervise its interactions with your chickens when it is young, and deliver a correction any time it gives chase to your feathered farm animals.

If you're not up for getting a dog, guinea fowl are also great guardians of the flock. They will chase off everything from the mailman to coyotes - but beware, their protection comes with a noisy price. Guineas are not quiet animals, and you can't just train them to pipe down like you can with (some) dogs. Still, they have an added benefit: they'll eat every bug you can imagine that might plague the garden and barnyard, from ticks to flies.

TomTato: 'mutant' plant that grows tomatoes and potatoes unleashed

A bizarre plant which produces both tomatoes and potatoes, providing a 'veg plot in a pot', has been launched in the UK.

The ‘TomTato’ can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes above ground, while beneath the soil it produces white potatoes that are suitable for boiling, roasting or turning into chips.

Horticultural mail order company Thompson & Morgan, which is selling the plants for £14.99 each, described their new product as a “veg plot in a pot”.

The hybrid plants are not a product of genetic engineering, but are each individually hand-grafted. Like potatoes, tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which makes them compatible for grafting.

Grafted potato/tomato plants have been around for decades, including from some small British nurseries, but Thompson & Morgan say this is the first time the plants have been widely produced commercially in the UK.

Top 10 Reasons to Keep a Jersey Cow

1.  Personality.  They don’t know they are cows.  Picture a giant milk giving dog who will lick you from fingertips to armpit if it thinks you have a treat.

2.  Ease of Milking.  I milk goats and a cow.  Amazingly, the cow is easier to milk than any of the goats.

3.  The Milk is Amazing.  Just amazing.  It is so sweet and delicious and unlike anything you will ever find in the grocery store.

4.  Cream:  Jersey cows give amazing quantities of the good stuff.  (Note:  they don’t give as much as Holsteins, but their milk is much richer!)

5.  Fertilizer for the Garden:  The other thing cows produce in quantity is manure.  Luckily it enriches the garden and pasture!

6.  Calves!  So precious!

7.  Save on chicken feed (part 1.)  Chickens love the milk and whey we give them.  Feeding it to our feathered friends is certainly preferable to wasting it!

8.  Save on chicken feed (part 2.)  This one may be a bit much for the non-homesteader to handle, but chickens are huge fans of cow manure.  It sounds gross, but it keeps the pasture clean, because they spread out the cow-pies while searching for loose grains and fly larvae.  This is part of nature’s plan for sanitation!

9.  Butter!  Imagine the butter you can make when you get inches of cream in each jar!  Spectacular!

10.  Cheese!  Cheese making ranges from seriously simple to extremely complex.  Either way, I’m all for a hobby I can eat!

So there you have it!  Equal treatment for the dairy cow.  She may be bigger than you, and that can be intimidating at first, but she’s a great asset to family farms and homesteads!