 There once came a time where the egg was scarce. The chickens, they couldn't figure it out. They searched their little tiny brains. How can I make an egg? But they sat inside their little tiny boxes and nothing came out. What were Americans to do? The egg, it was the staple of the American diet. The morning breakfast that brought joy and protein. A simple piece of fruit, maybe a crusty piece of bread, not going to do. It caused fighting. It caused discrepancies in the family. Americans were torn. But then there did come a roost. A roost so squawky. So eggy it couldn't be stopped. It was the wrackly roost. That wrackly roost was popping out little balls of protein every day. Just plucking them out of that nested box, putting them in my wicker basket thing. Magic pastel balls of protein, giving them that delicious feed that couldn't stop eating, making beautiful feathers and eggs. Look at that frizzle. This is its male counterpart. It doesn't look so good. Looking dead and in. There was the Oster Lorb dance. So happy. Beautiful eggs on the counter. Blue and brown. Yolks going in that sizzle pan. Making that protein breakfast we all dream of. Then that rooster got up. Welcome all back to the Treehouse, everybody. Hopefully you enjoyed that little snippet. If you did, smash that like button. Today we got a little home vlog for you. But we're also looking at what is going on with it. What is going on with eggs? What is going on with these feeds? This conspiracy. If you've been to the grocery store lately, looking at eggs, you might notice that there's not many there. They're highly priced. And also recently, in the news I've seen just backyard chicken people like me are having trouble getting eggs out of their chickens. So they're trying to skirt the game of buying eggs at the grocery store. I will say it is, in most cases, more expensive to produce your own eggs. But at least you know where they're coming from and it's fun to have some chickens around. But why the lack of egg production from backyard chicken people? Now, this time of year is like the worst time for egg production. It's cold. A lot of chickens get cold and flues just like we do. Illnesses, that stops them from laying. And so I usually get the least amount of eggs during the winter, just like everybody else. Now, luckily, I'm here in Texas so we have a very light winter. But I notice when we have real cold weeks, you know, the egg production does go down. But the rumor is if you're using certain brands of feeds then the hens just stop laying. And if you go full tinfoil hat, you know, they're trying to stop us. They're trying to stop backyard chicken people from growing their own eggs. I don't know. I'm here to tell you that I do not have that problem and I'm going to show you guys the feed that I use and then also just my routine with the chickens. I don't just give them straight feed. They always have on-demand feed but there's other ways of feeding your chickens that don't involve buying feed from the store. Oh, look at that. Look at that little saddle feather out there, isn't that cool? Some people use that to make flies. That's out of Colonel Sanders. So if you've got the space you just let them run around. I know it's wintertime right now but in the springtime there are bugs everywhere. There's things growing and since I live in Texas we've got chickweed growing all over the ground. There's grasses for them to eat. They love to eat grass and bugs. That's like their primo diet. Besides scratch, which is grains and corn and stuff like that those are treats. But good protein, good sustenance just literally just let them eat grass. Not long grass so long grass can get caught up in their crops cause some issues. Stuff that's a little bit longer than this but short grass just let them munch on that. It's good stuff for them. One of my bluebies she's getting ready to pop one out right now she's getting squawky. She's on top of them on the box. She's getting ready to go in there and squat one out for us. Another thing that we do is we just have a little basket we keep in the kitchen. It's called the chicken bucket basket thing. We put ends of sandwiches spare meats, not chicken of course stuff the kids don't eat extra berries salad that may be turning a little brown mushy that you don't want to eat just throw it in there and they'll just scarf it. Another hack is buying spinach at the grocery store and not like the stuff in the plastic container but the dirty unwashed spinach that they just slap a rubber band around and it's only like a couple of bucks and that stuff is just full of nutrients and honestly some of the darkest orange just yolks that we've ever produced have been when we're just slamming that spinach at them. It's just cheap obviously it doesn't last very long but if you're at the grocery store, pick some of it up give them a couple of servings of that throughout the week and that's really good stuff for them. If you're feeding them the veg they've got to have grit to work that stuff out in their crop they don't need grit if you're just giving them feed they always keep an on-demand feeder in here literally I think it's a five gallon maybe it's a two and a half gallon so they always have something they can pack on so this is how I give them on-demand feed right here this will usually last when I fill this thing up about a week and I buy one bag of feed a month and I think it's about 24 or 25 bucks something like that and it's a layer crumble 16% protein I actually don't need to go get any I've got plenty in my bucket but I'm going to go buy some more because I suspect I suspect there might be a little run on some of the other brands that are we're not on the list that was posted on social media and the news okay the guys are ready to lay so it is like mid-morning right now and they are when they get ready to pop them out they just start squawking like that then they go into the nesting box and they start doing their thing this one is just surprisingly loud this is my little frizzle right here and she produces some some cute little eggs she's actually pretty consistent with her egg laying but they're tiny and there she goes they're happy healthy chickens let's go to the store I'm going to show you what feed that I use that I think is pretty good I think it's a pretty good feed I'm not a scientist but I bought it because it smells like pizza okay all this is my layer feed this is what I use I use this brand when they were chicks as well for the grower feed but this one is a 16% protein it literally smells like pizza because they use oregano oils which is supposed to promote healthy egg and weight size and all that stuff so I don't know the big differences between the other brands but this one I never tried it I decided to go with it for my chicks and obviously when they got to 16 weeks started them on the layer feed and the roosters use it as well they're happy and healthy and do it I mean just look at that wide dot right there just looks beautiful silver laced beauty great imagery there natural oils, good marketing then it says right here it's what's inside that counts and then it shows you the actual production facts I mean there's soybean oil soybeans which I'm not not a huge fan of I used to buy a feed that was completely soy free because Stephanie is allergic to soy and it was just way too expensive it was twice as much as this so I stopped feeding it I would have to get Stephanie to look at this and see if this is decent or not I'm producing some fatties speaking of that let's roll into the coop right now and see who has laid an egg since it's been about an hour and a half I bet you at least got one in here got one bluebee in here gals how we doing gals yep little rooster fighting Mr. Penny here he's still the dominant crore and poor Colonel Sanders he's become more docile sometimes he'll even let me just pick him up which is he used to never let me pick him up oh wait a second uh oh frizzle what are we doing here frizzle oh no you guys this happens sometimes this one right here a naked neck sometimes she will lay an egg that's not in the nesting box and then they all fall a suit so we end up with eggs not in the nesting box so now we got our three for the day whichever one lays next will lay in there and we'll probably get four yeah and it smells like Irish spring in here still that soap is stuff is going on in there but that stuff smells forever I've got it in my camper too my camper smells like Irish spring that scent is just crazy the reason I put it in there is for mosquitoes mosquitoes do not like it keeps them out of there so Irish spring stuff little chicken coop hack speaking of the camper big upgrades coming we're basically going to rip out the uh the current wiring of the camper and go full uh extended off-grid conversion with lithiums and new uh solar um charger system so all that's coming on another video if you guys are going to be uh doing some off-grid stuff you want to get crazy with your chicken eggs your off-grid camper you can never be seen again you just go out there and have a full system I've even got the batteries ready to go and I'm going to be doing an upgrade on the bass boat as well which is coming really soon like probably next video so ladies and gentlemen this is about half a week's worth of eggs it's just a little egg tray that I built it's raised in the back I don't know if y'all can see that so they'll sort of roll down there some spare wood I had I made a desk out of thought it'd be kind of cool to make a little egg uh egg deal for the kitchen countertop but this is about half a week's worth so when we use eggs these will roll down and there's something to roll on the eggs I don't I don't know exactly they're supposed to all roll down like that kind of rotates them keeps them going these are a little frizzle eggs you know they're not that big but then we got these big blue whoppers that are just awesome these are my pride and joys right here so these are ones that are unwashed if they're like really poopy muddy, nasty we'll throw them into the fridge got an egg tray in here it's empty right now but we'll wash them and then refrigerate them once you wash that protective coating off the egg then you gotta refrigerate it so the ones you buy at the grocery store they've been washed and everything that looked clean but you get your own eggs there's a lot of them that look kind of poopy and muddy on them rainy days but no big deal it's what's on the inside that counts now here's the other deal that we just keep in the kitchen right here so this is the chicken bucket basket thing chickens absolutely love strawberries we eat a lot of strawberries, berries, other stuff like that super acidic fruits like oranges not the best for them but we'll just throw that in there anyway little bread ends any sort of little scraps as long as it's not chicken that goes out to them so we'll give them a special treat right now after laying a couple eggs the other thing that you can do if you're worried about predators and you still want to feed them all the natural stuff that you may have in your yard is you can just pluck out the clovers and the chickweed and the dandelions and all that other stuff and put it in there in the coop and you just go pick it and put it in there you don't want to let them free range where you got coatties, foxes, hawks all that, you know, predator stuff oh yeah, that's like something a deer would eat right there yummy this is the chickweed that's the chickweed just gobble that up you guys good afternoon strawberries have a little citrus delight might as well be a mimosa for you here now I need to add one more bird to the mix here so you guys know the rat problem we've had here recently we've had coyotes just swarming the property they come in just about every day it was like totally ice and sleet out here the other day and I came out here and heard the chickens squawk and they were all going nuts and there was a coyote out in the yard and I ran him off and he was literally breaking the ice branches 100 yards since we've had the coyotes around honestly the rats have been at a minimum and I'm sure there's bobcats and I haven't seen any foxes in a while but to get an aerial defense on these rats we're coming in hot with an owl house LFD made this for Stephanie for her birthday well, birthday owl house and I'm going to stick it in one of these oak trees that's sitting above the coop so at night we get an owl that takes residence in here it's not going to be a big owl it's not going to be one of those big barred owls that might actually eat chickens let me know in the comments but a little owl get an old rat eater just have him live in there come down at night get the rats to be a perfect scenario building a sustainable ecosystem in the backyard that's what we've got going on solar capabilities we're going to be fully off grid the power goes out if the balloons come over EMPs, I'm ready baby I'm ready to go alrighty, all of that is going to do it for today's home vlog here at the Rackley Roost if you're thinking about getting hens getting some chickens, the springtime is a good time to do it there's so many little bugs and critters running around on the ground easy to raise them and it's not frigidly cold so in the next month or so across the US I would say it would be a good time if you live down in the south go ahead and get your chickens right now start raising them and in 16 weeks you should start getting some eggs if you're having problems getting eggs try the feed that I use and start giving them your scraps if there's something in the feeds if you have bad batch of feed I don't know feeding them bread scraps can't be worse than what's going on if you're not getting any eggs but I have not seen any issues I don't know anyone personally I've just seen online people have problems getting eggs so it ain't a problem here alrighty, all wishing you plentiful bounty and godspeed in the great outdoors I'll see you on the next adventure