Using apple cider vinegar in various ways around your flock and coop can do the following:
• Improve the digestive health of your chickens by maintaining proper pH balance in the digestive tract
• May increase egg production
• Kill germs that cause respiratory illnesses among chickens
• Keep your chickens’ water free of harmful bacteria
• Eliminate mold, mildew, dust, and odors from your chicken coop
• Disinfect your chicken coop and your chickens’ feeding and watering system
• Repel flies and ants
• Act as an abrasive for difficult-to-clean surfaces such as brooders, window panes, and cages.

Giving your chickens apple cider vinegar directly
Adding apple cider vinegar directly to your chickens’ drinking water can help to maintain digestive health by lowering the pH in their stomach. It can also act as an antiseptic, killing any harmful mucus or bacteria in the throat that can cause respiratory ailments. Some folks report that feeding chickens apple cider vinegar increases egg production.
To add apple cider vinegar to your chickens’ water use organic, raw, unfiltered, and unpasteurized vinegar, such as Bragg’s. Use four teaspoons of apple cider vinegar for each gallon of water. CAUTION: Never add ACV to a galvanized metal waterer as it will poison your chickens. Always use plastic!

Using apple cider vinegar to clean your chicken coop, feeders, and waterers
You can use apple cider vinegar to clean your chicken coop walls, floors, roof, windows, feeder, and waterer. Just add a few teaspoons of apple cider vinegar to a spray bottle filled with water. The raw, unfiltered, and unpasteurized apple cider vinegar is always best, but for cleaning purposes, any type of apple cider vinegar will work.
To clean with apple cider vinegar, just spray any dirty surface with your solution and wipe clean with a rag or towel. Frequent cleaning with apple cider vinegar will disinfect any surface and prevent mold, mildew, dust, and unpleasant odors from building up in your coop. Many homesteaders report that cleaning the chickens’ area with apple cider vinegar prevents flies and ants from congregating around chickens as well.
Using apple cider vinegar as an abrasive cleaner
Apple cider vinegar makes a great abrasive cleaner for areas like cages, cracks, and brooders that may get particularly dirty but are difficult to clean effectively. Mixing apple cider vinegar with coarse sea salt will help to safely rub off any build-up on dirty surfaces.
Or try mixing baking soda with a small amount of water to scrub surfaces thoroughly and then spray with an apple cider vinegar solution to disinfect.

Enjoy your chickens and their health!

Some of the changes you can expect to see are:

• Bags printed with Scratch and Peck logo
• Feed offered in 25lb and 40lb bags
• Supplements packaged in biodegradable bags
• Addition of Sheep Feed
• Rabbit Feed coming soon!
• 350lb barrels (custom order)
• Extended summer retail hours at our Mill in Bellingham (9am-7pm Monday through Friday)
• Scratch and Peck T-Shirts (coming to our online store soon!)

Thank you for being a part of this wonderful journey!
Here’s a little morsel to peck at:
Everyone should have a place in the pecking order. Strive for your place in life, not someone else’s.
Someone else’s bread isn’t necessarily tastier than your own. Envy will cost you dearly.

The Snohomish Co-op offers a large variety of items to meet all your farming needs and more! Check out their “about us” page at Snohomish Co-op.

If you are looking for Scratch and Peck products the Co-op recently stocked:

• Naturally Free Starter
• Naturally Free Grower
• Naturally Free Layer
• Scratch n’ Corn

If you would like to see other Scratch and Peck items at the Snohomish Co-op, please let them know and I am sure they will be accommodating!

• Wait until the birds eat most everything before re-feeding.
• Add moisture (water, yogurt, broth, milk) to the fines to make a delicious mix they can easily eat.
• Call them names and make fun of how the walk. Just kidding!

When introducing a new feed to your animals, it is a good idea to transition gradually by incrementally adding our feed to your current one until you are feeding 100% Scratch and Peck.
If you are adding moisture, make sure it is only to a quantity that will be consumed in a timely manner as you do not want to let the grains turn rancid!

Acadian Seaplants’ Kelp Meal contains a wide range of dietary nutrients, including over 60 naturally-chelated minerals and essential elements that the kelp absorbs from the life-giving ocean waters. The minerals contained within their seaweed are reported to be almost entirely attached to the carbohydrate fraction, making them highly bio-available to your animals. Other nutrients include vitamins, amino acids and carbohydrates. Kelp is also high in iron, potassium and calcium.

The naturally high iodine content of Kelp also helps it act as an antibiotic in the body. When there is an infection in your body, Kelp will help assist the thyroid to release more iodine into your blood stream and iodine kills infections.

Kelp can be sprinkled on top of feed or offered free choice to most livestock animals.  (Not recommended for Rabbits).

You can even sprinkle small amounts onto your dog and cat food too.

HAPPY EARTH DAY TO YOU

In honor of our Mother we are switching from petroleum based plastic to certified biodegradable and compostable bags made from cellulose acetate  (a wood based fiber) for packaging our supplements like grit, oyster shell, diatomaceous earth and kelp.  Our feeds will continue to be packaged in brown kraft paper which is recyclable and compostable.

Stop by the mill as we have everything priced at 10% off today.  PEACE

Also known as the Country Stores in Lynden, Ferndale, Bellingham and Everson this cooperatively owned and operated business does not just support local economy but also provides these great services: