site banner
ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  5mo ago (text post)   779 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for February 25, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My backyard is fenced- will that make a difference in going rogue? I know chickens can fly but generally prefer not to.

The only daytime predators are hawks, feral cats, and coyotes. I’ve never seen the latter but the city government and Nextdoor assure me they’re present. I have seen hawks and feral cats in my yard, both of which would necessitate keeping chickens confined to a coop or run. I’m an HVAC tech with construction experience, so ‘being handy’ and ‘set up well’ isn’t a high bar to clear for me. I can get a house sitter if I go out of town who won’t think ‘bring water and food and let the chickens in/out’ is a big deal. Again, it’s possible for me to find someone to split costs, but not labor.

If you have hawks, then you need to build a very large movable enclosure for them to forage in during the day or buy chicken feed.

Not entirely necessary unless the wife or kids get unreasonably attached to them. Just some shiny strands overhead and a tolerance for losses is all you need. I only ever had one taken by a hawk, out of a few dozen lost to coons, cars, and Mysteriously Stone Dead Syndrome.

Damn thing must have been desperate to make the run, because it nailed her on the back of the neck and realized it couldn't carry her up out of the clearing. Dropped her after a few ft.

They're a very good animal for introducing kids to the mysteries of life and death, and answering where we go when we die (the compost pile)

Your hawks must be chill, then. I know of a prepper from Kiev who stopped having chickens because he had no recourse against hawks and wouldn't pay for feed, trying to be a 100% self-sufficient prepper and all that.

I assume I’m missing something obvious, but can’t you just keep the chickens in a coop/cage to stop the hawk getting in?

You have two options: keep them in a coup and feed them or let them eat whatever they find in your backyard but leave them unprotected.

It's "free eggs" only if you don't have to buy chicken feed.

I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to put a cage or net over the entirety of your backyard, would it? Aesthetics would suffer, of course.

I believe the "standard" practice in this situation is to use a movable chicken coup called a chicken tractor. You move the tractor from spot to spot in the yard as the chickens exhaust the forage the tractor is over. Feed would still likely be needed, though less. This is what @orthoxerox was referencing with the need for a movable enclosure.

The eggs may not count as "free range" if the chickens are raised this way, but it's arguably more humane than exposing them to predation. Chickens are a type of roosting fowl and tend to exhibit less stress if they have a place to safely roost at all times. As @SteveAgain mentioned modern chickens were bred from birds that can fly into tree tops to roost, it seems this instinct isn't completely gone with modern breeds, they just can't make it to tree tops.

I've always thought chicken tractors are a pretty bad kludge for having chickens on open pasture with no tree cover (and not much decent forage for them). They prefer woodland with lots of insects in rotting logs, which also protects them from hawks that rarely dive in without a clear exit strategy.

Chicken-scratching is how they find insects under a layer of fallen leaves and sticks. It's not a motion made for lawns.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats