How to Raise your own food on a small property or lawn!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer come on guys come on free welcome back to the farm today we're gonna have a little bit of fun out here with our laying hens I'm gonna take you over here and show you what I'm talking about so today is gonna be the first day that we release our laying hens and our laying hens are in this mobile cuprate here they're around 40 laying hens in here and there are around three laying hens that got out it's kind of funny so what that is is a sign to me that it's time to expand the coop just a little bit and what we're going to be doing today is taking our laying hens we're gonna be putting some premier one shock or not fencing right down here in the yard we're going to show you how we raise our laying hens and this is also how we raise our meet Birds up for processing and our laying hens we're getting them ready we're training them to the premiere one poultry netting so that we can put them out on pasture in the mobile coop and we haven't built the mobile coop yet the egg mobile but that's coming soon so come along today as we work with the chickens a little bit give you guys some cool ideas in case you have backyard chickens or in case you're thinking about getting some backyard chickens for laying hens for your family all right alright guys if this is your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm channel welcome to the farm please jump in pound that like button consider subscribing to the channel you got all kinds of fun stuff including fun chickens so let's talk a little bit about the chickens that we have and why we have those chickens we're doing a bit of an experiment for you guys here on YouTube with these chickens so we went to Mary McMurray hatchery we ordered 25 production red chickens and 25 white leghorn chickens they're all hens hopefully everybody's a hint and we probably lost three of those chickens in the first couple weeks and that's a fairly normal thing so if you're raising chickens guys you buy 50 chickens you're gonna lose a few chickens you buy a hundred you're gonna lose a few more you buy 15 or five you're gonna lose some chickens and it's just part of it they're just very fragile animals very beautiful creatures I tell you what birds birds just fascinate me they really do so we live amongst our chickens we have laying hens that are permanent laying hens in our garden spot over here will probably take you over there later in the video but what we're gonna do is move this coop so this is a PVC mobile coop that we've been moving piece by piece by piece square by square by square throughout the yard I'm gonna set this little guide down this is a white leg and a little tip here if you want to know what color egg a chicken lays this little spot right here is the ear of the chicken that ear is white so this will be a white egg layer there you go pretty cool so we love this mobile coop throughout the yard until the birds get to a size that they're a little bit too big for the coop right now I've sold off a few of these birds probably ten of them so we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 38 to 40 Birds in this mobile coop if you think about it we're moving a 120 square feet every single day here on the farm and you can see right here the results in the yard I'll walk you around here see that green stripe and see how it's not as green right there that is where the mobile coop came through here went all the way down edge of the driveway and has come back up and you see it's a little bit dead the grass is a little bit dead as we get closer and closer but once the manure sets in we are doing two fold and operation in other words a two-fold operation by fertilizing without paying for fertilizer we're getting good but fertilizer from our chickens and it's building our soil and it's making our lawn beautiful so it's a whole lot at work right here what we're going to be doing there's a spot here these look like bushes but they're tree stumps and I'm going to be grinding those stumps at some point and this is going to be part of our pasture we're getting ready to build fences all the way across here and if you follow the channel you've seen our wooden fence going in this is our garden over here and it's all fenced in with poultry netting also that poultry netting is what holds the chickens into our garden spot we tilled it up we let the weeds come up for a couple weeks we fenced it off and we released our laying hens that are stationary that take care of the garden they tend the garden we release those into our garden spot and they'll clean it up real good for us and also spread more but fertilizer so it's all about living with chickens and it's all about a holistic way of living in other words we're not putting fertilizers down on the land so the thing that we're gonna do is go right down here I'll show you this will be the last time we use this awesome Cub Cadet Ultima before we donate it to our local fire department for a raffle I'll have that information on the channel if you guys decide you want it this thing is awesome super versatile super quiet just a great machine it really is a great machine so Cub Cadet has sponsored us on this deal and without them we wouldn't be able to donate this sixty five hundred dollar or $6,900 mower to our Fire Department for raffle so way cool so what we're gonna be doing is doing away with this flower bed and I'm gonna in case this or circle it with the premier one shock or not fence the shock are not fence you can plug it in for baby chicks you don't want to shock them so you can leave it unplugged we are gonna energize this fence it's gonna have power on it because the last two nights I have had foxes right out here in the yard the dogs have been raising Cain and foxes have been right up on the chicken coop something we do and something that's probably kept the foxes away I realize this is a lot of information but it's fun it's good living good clean living so we have some solar lights you can see a little solar motion light all four sides this coupe look at my buddies they following me around all four sides of that coupe have lighting on it so what we have to do is grab this mobile coupe and drag it down the hill what I have found over time is that don't feed your chickens first thing in the morning before you move your mobile coop so they're all hungry they're all coming right here to me and they will follow me throughout the yard as I move them so let's get busy first thing we got to do is move the birds down here and then we're gonna start constructing this whole thing after I run the zero turn around and mow the grass down a little bit here's how the mobile cook works there's a rope right here this is my design this is all PVC with silver aluminized ten on the roof it keeps the heat down for the chickens it keeps them happy it keeps them healthy and it gives them enough room so we're gonna cruise around we're gonna pull these guys this way [Music] successful bird move and the birds are nice and cool there in the shady spot that's provided by the coop a lot of questions about this coop man oh don't forget me sunlight yes the Sun moves through the sky and the Sun shines in there on the birds and they can choose whether they want to sit in direct sunlight or whether they want to be in the shade now they can't choose whether I mow the grass or not because with this premier of fencing this electrified poultry net you want to have fairly short grass and the lawn needs to be mowed anyway so I'm gonna zip around this a little bit and then we'll put the birds on it [Music] I think the birds figured out that the lawnmower scares up cricket so all those little birds that are out right there you see them and they are ripping it up through the crickets right now and it's so awesome to be able to just let our chickens be chickens let me take you over and I'm going to show you our feeding setup and our feed is a little different than any feeding setup you probably have ever seen and then we're going to set up the poultry netting I'll show you how easy that is and I'll show you how we electrify the poultry netting with a solar fence charger called the IntelliJ they'll be links to all this stuff down in the video description as well as a link to the zero turn mower if you want to check one out let's go up here and I'll show you the feed setup that we have the devil is in the details the Devils in the details when it comes to farming and being successful at raising egg-layers what you're shooting for is as little labor as possible as good a bird as possible that can get as good a forage as possible good food in low food waste and not burning all of your energy keeping them fed and watered so let me show you what we do and I had to restock the feed barrel today typically we go to Reedy Fork farm and we get all organic feed I had to run out because of this whole crisis that's going on in our country right now I had to run out and get feed was quickly as I could wherever I could get it just for your sake of knowledge if you buy 50 meat birds it takes a thousand pounds of food to finish off 50 meat birds so if you go and get the commercially available feed and don't buy in bulk you're gonna spend quite a bit of money okay so just a little bit of food for thought sometimes it's hard to find there we go through the right string to pull now I want to show you something that you may not have ever thought of this is the commercial feed available from tractor supply from your local farm store we do crumbles for our young birds and pellets as the birds get older so as soon as they finish up all of this chick starter that we're using right now will move on to a formula that has pellets they waste less with pellets I'm telling you right now but as our young birds are growing here's what we do so this is the feed from performance okay look at it look how palatable that is let me compare the two side-by-side this is chick starter from tractor supply this is chick starter from the other livestock store this is much more palatable than this because this is so powdery I'm going to chuck that in there this is so powdery man it's like dust look at that look at my hands the back of my hands are covered with dust a chicken look at this chicken can't eat that imagine being a bird and trying to choke down that dust it's like eatin sawdust it just it's not gonna work man I'll be honest with you I'm not happy with that feed at all I don't think that that's appropriate to feed chicks and even digging down in here there are whole kernels of corn I think it's a lot of filler I don't think it's good for my Birds once we get done I've got to use it all up and once we get done with it then we'll be moving on to an organic food from Reedy Fork farm there'll be a link in the video description to read a fork farm there are wonderful people let me show you what we're doing with our feed that's different than everybody else so for simplicity's sake we're gonna say we have 40 Birds down there I take a one gallon scoop just like this and I pour it over in my bucket and it's gonna take to 1 gallon scoops it's gonna take to 1 gallon scoops per day to feed these birds look at that cloud of dust flying off there you don't want to eat that look at it it's it's unbelievable now we'll take this and you can see how much is in there probably about a quarter of a bucket sometimes we do two and a half I think we'll do two and a half and this is enough feed to feed these birds for the day again that's around 40 Birds next thing we're going to do is our secret recipe water is our secret recipe alright we've wet the food look at it it's already getting more palatable shake it around in there a little bit get her wet let her soak it up a little bit so we wet our chicken feed even if it's a commercial chicken feed once we're out of our brooder which is inside the garage we move them out on the pasture and we start wetting our feet we keep three buckets one bucket is for today's feed one bucket is for fermenting and the other bucket is for fermenting so we stay three days ahead each bucket of feed has fermented for two days in the bucket of water it doesn't hurt anything the chickens gobble it up it reduces food waste because they eat every single tiny morsel of food and they don't drink as much so if I have the five gallon water which I have back here if I have that right there boom right those are from Brower if I have those in there the feeders and the waters then the birds will only drink maybe two gallons of water so I only filled out five-gallon water up sometimes somewhere in the neighborhood of once every two days or so that is what we're doing the birds digest the food the meat birds when we do our meat Birds put on weight faster and they poop less in other words this food is going to build muscle that's what we want we want our Birds to be jacked up we want them to be muscley that big breast we don't feed on hormones we feed them wet food we feed them fermented food it's predigested so it helps with the birds digestive tract it helps with their digestive system and it puts late on the meat bird so it's pretty cool these aren't meat birds these are laying hens and what I'll do is take this bucket right here I got behind on my buckets you can see it's already basically soaked up all that water so there's no liquid in there anymore it's just wet food we'll take that over and I'll pour it out on the ground because these are birds that forage on the ground we'll pour that food out on the ground after we get our fence all set up right here and then we're going to Jack that mobile coop up we provide the birds with shelter and we provide them with protection with the première one shock or not fence and that's this right here I'll show you how that works we keep a feed barrel down here by the chickens these little guys are looking for it right now we keep a feed barrel with the chickens basically out here when their own pasture now once we build the egg mobile we'll have a food storage setup right there on the egg mobile I get it I get that this is real food this is real chicken feed but I also get that it this is me griping it shouldn't be like that it shouldn't be dusty okay shouldn't be that way I don't want to buy a bag of dust when I go to buy my layer crumbles actually gonna have a phone conversation with those guys about that because it's if I didn't wet it the chickens couldn't eat it almost now when you go to buy organic food that has all sorts of good yummy goodies in there it's gonna be a little powdery like that too and again that's why we wet our food awesome let's setup the premiere fence okay Jacques are not poultry netting this is the shoc or not so you see on this side there is a coarser nylon with a wire built into it and on this side there is a mesh with no electrical in there and let me get you a little close-up so you can see it it's kind of tough to see but there's a metal braid inside this wire that is energized pretty simple and you basically just step on these pegs right here I've bent this peg right here but we can easily or kind of easily stretch it out if you've got really hard soil so you want to put this in the ground when the ground is moist okay you don't want to come out here and try to stab it into a brick if your ground is really really hard so it rained about two days ago we still got nice moist soil and we're gonna put this in sometimes installing this net can be a bit of a challenge because it gets tangled up a little bit so if you pick it up and you store it correctly you won't have to worry about it it comes with strings to tie up these rolls so that it doesn't get all tangled up so save those strings if you buy some of this and you'll use it again this is around the rolls come in about 120 to 150 foot rolls we're going to start right here where we're gonna stick our energizer and where are all of our feed and stuff yes so we can walk in and out of the coop in case we need to at any time so it's easier with two people and I prefer to put this mesh the thinner mesh to the coat inside of the coop to the inside to where the chickens are going to be okay the reason being is that if you're having baby chicks out here on pasture that's what this is for to keep them from getting shot and this is to shock predators when they come in so this will solve our Fox problem [Music] all right awesome right here is the net going all the way around encompassing this entire area and the birds should be ready to set free I can set them free now without putting any kind of electricity to this fence so I'm gonna let him loose and I'm gonna run and get the charger and I'll show you how it took tup this is the watering set up whenever you fill up the water it's a easy pour easy fill water you always want the spout facing down the hill so all the water doesn't run out so we'll set this in here pretty flat right here so really don't have to worry about it I'll set that in here we'll get our five gallon bucket and pour some water in there numerous numerous questions how do you get over this fence Josh the easiest way I found is push one pull one way and just lift your foot right over just like so very very simple we're gonna take a bucket and we'll prop up our coop and ain't rocket science it's chicken science watch how they go nuts for this food all right number one lesson when pasturing poultry if you're gonna be moving your birds make sure your birds are hungry they'll follow you because you are the source of food so you got to think about that make sure your birds are hungry make sure they're protected I'm gonna go get the electric fence charger and we're going to get her all set up so that the birds will be safe tonight and this will be where they stay for the next ten days and then we'll rotate them again and we'll move them over here and we'll move them over there and that's how we do it man that's how we keep the yard fertilized and keep our Birds happy this is the until a shocking pretty cool so it's a built-in fully adjustable solar panel this again is from the same brand premiere one from your fencing products I'll post a link down the video description I'm a true believer in this thing you can angle this you want it pointed due south depending on where you are in the hemisphere or in the world you own this solar panel facing due south it's simple all you do is the ground which is black and hook it to the ground and the red which is the hot and hook it to the fence pretty cool now it's self grounding this whole setup is self grounding so there's a little channel underneath here and this is your grounding rod it slides right in there and then that spike sticks in the ground now we've used this for years okay no battery replacement no issues whatsoever and what we've got to do if I can get this guy out with one hand we'll set this back down on the ground out of the way make sure you have safety glasses when you do this but you see how rusty this is so when we move it if it gets a little corroded or rusty just take a wire wheel clean it up dress it up and that way it sticks in the ground and it gets good ground contact it's very important to have good ground with any electric fence okay now let's talk about how electric fences work because a lot of people don't understand it so this is the solar panel the solar panel absorbs solar energy and takes it in through a circuit board here it charges some batteries that are inside this unit now the own off switch for this unit and you'll see it flashing hopefully I don't have it touching me look here it pop got me so you see it flashes it gives a little pop a little zap it doesn't give constant electricity in other words it gives a pulse of electricity and what you want to do reason we cut the grass right here is so that that pulse of electricity wouldn't go straight into the grass if we got tall grass we need to make sure that we…