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Post by brownrexx on Mar 10, 2018 15:04:27 GMT -5
I think that a few of you may have chickens but have been told that others enjoy a "Chicken Chat" thread even if they do not have chickens so I decided to start one.
I have 12 hens although a couple of them are "elderly" and no longer lay eggs but we like them all and can not bring ourselves to eliminate hens just because they are old.
Several years ago before having backyard chickens became so popular we didn't know if we were allowed to have chickens in our area so decided to just get them anyway since we are pretty rural and rules are pretty lax.
We didn't want any of the neighbors to complain about a junky looking shed so we bought a pretty nice looking Amish made chicken coop and got some chicks. No one complained and now it is approved to have chickens in our area.
DSC00290 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
Here is a look at the inside. Note the plastic bin under the roost where they sleep. It catches their droppings and they end up in my compost pile.
DSC01270 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
Here they are helping me get rid of some larvae and other soil dwelling bugs in my garden last Fall after we tilled..
DSC01755 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
Here are our two oldest hens. They are probably 8 years old and are Bantams which are the size of pigeons. They are my favorites.
DSC00745 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
Hens naturally stop laying eggs when the days get shorter. They shed their feathers (molt) and grow a whole new set of feathers which keep them warm through the winter. Some people use supplemental light to keep their hens laying over the dark winter months but we don't, we let them rest. It's healthier for them and I just buy eggs from the farmer down the road for a few months.
Now that the days are getting longer, they started providing me with eggs again. I like the colored eggs so this is what greeted me this morning in the nest box. Aren't they pretty? They all taste the same of course but I have not had a white egg in years. For me, buying eggs at the store is like buying tomatoes at the store. They just don't taste the same!
20180310_132217 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by ahntjudy on Mar 10, 2018 16:39:25 GMT -5
That's a pretty snazzy lookin' condo your chickens have there! Nice looking chickens and pretty eggs... I can't keep chickens here but I do enjoy learning about them...
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Post by september on Mar 10, 2018 17:05:11 GMT -5
I like hearing about chickens. If we did not travel away from home so much, I would like to keep a few. But there is no one to take care of them if we leave. We have good neighbors, but I already feel like I'm imposing on them when they come over to hand water my garden overflow pots of tomatoes and peppers. Some good friends raised what I think were Buff Orpingtons, fat ginger colored very sweet chickens, that I just loved! brownrexx, you have top of the line facilities, everything is so well thought out and tidy looking!
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Post by september on Mar 10, 2018 17:10:57 GMT -5
brownrexx , your coop floor is raised, and enclosed. What is that little door and screened in area underneath? It looks too small for a human to do much in! I suppose you could put chickens temporarily under there to grub around for worms, or add a cat to catch any mice living there? Now that I look at it again ... can the chickens get under there from the front? Cool place in the summer?
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Post by bestofour on Mar 10, 2018 21:07:27 GMT -5
When they are out in your garden is that a fenced area?
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 11, 2018 9:40:03 GMT -5
september , having the coop up on stilts is the best part about this coop and is the reason that I liked it. We don't have to bend over to feed and water them or clean the coop. If you look at the second picture you can see what looks like a square hole in the floor towards the front. There is actually a ramp there for the chickens to go down under the coop and then they can go to the outside pens from there. There is another outdoor pen at the end of the coop that you can't see. They spend most of their time in the outdoor pens during the days and only come upstairs at night to sleep or lay eggs. They also stay indoors if it is really cold but they prefer to be outside. The space under the coop is really nice because they can be out of the sun when it get really hot in the summer or any time that it is raining or snowing. It is open on all sides so they go down there and can see outside and burrow down in straw or take dust baths. We use hubby's tractor and drag the entire coop and pens to new ground (just a few feet) about once a year and take the old poopy soil to the compost and then re-seed the ground where the coop sat. This is how we keep the area nice and clean and not stinky. bestofour , chickens are amazing. They do not wander that far unless they are free ranging full time. We do not have a fenced yard and we only let them out for about 2 hours per day in the late afternoon when we are home. They usually head right for the garden/compost pile and look for treats. I can't let them out when I have young seedlings because they rip them out looking for bugs. One of the reasons that I like having chickens is for organic pest control. They eat a LOT of bugs. Anyway when it starts to get dark they come back to their coop and get up on their roost and we just make sure that they are all there and shut the doors. It's really easy and we do enjoy seeing them running around the yard. We have a 4 acre yard BTW.
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Post by september on Mar 11, 2018 10:52:28 GMT -5
What a great idea to have the coop be moveable! It looks so solid, I never would have guessed. So when you let them out to free range, do they use the little dwarf door, or the people gate?
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 11, 2018 13:21:04 GMT -5
september , the coop is not exactly lightweight but it has a very sturdy framework at the bottom so we use our compact garden tractor and some straps or hooks to pull it.
The chickens use all 3 doors. Here they are asking to be let out of the big outdoor pen door.
DSC00630 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
And here they are after jumping out of the coop or running out of the little lower door. There is one in the doorway ready to hop down right now. The outdoor pen was at the opposite end in this picture. We move them around so that they can have fresh grass. DSC00639 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by september on Mar 11, 2018 18:36:59 GMT -5
We bought my garden shed from a guy that built it on kind of a sledge bottom. It could be dragged to another site if we ever wanted to, although I suspect it has settled well into the ground by now. I wonder if the chicken coop has a similar bottom. I love all the windows in the coop, the chicken ladies have lots of light!
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 12, 2018 9:45:32 GMT -5
built it on kind of a sledge bottom That's exactly what the bottom is like. They pick these coops up with fork lifts and put them on trucks. Ours settles into the ground too but we try to keep the soil dug back from the 6x6" bottom boards to keep them from rotting. That's another good reason to move it every year. It will make it last longer without replacing any boards. Those windows are great. We open them different amounts depending on the weather to give them a good airflow. That is important for healthy chickens even in the winter.
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Post by ladymarmalade on Mar 12, 2018 12:01:35 GMT -5
Gorgeous!
Do you need to provide a heat source in the winter? One of the things we want to add to our homestead in the next year is chickens. We are allowed to have up to four chickens (no roosters). DH has all kinds of coop designs in his head, but we get some awfully cold winters here.
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Post by horsea on Mar 12, 2018 13:33:39 GMT -5
Exceptionally nice operation in every respect! I have a hen who will soon be 7 years of age and she still lays like crazy, except for when she decides to take a few months off. She is a Delaware and is in good health.
About Buff Orpingtons and Black Australorps - the roosters can be nasty toward humans. I had bruises and scratches to prove it. They will attack from behind. A true Wild Bunch.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 12, 2018 17:37:56 GMT -5
ladymarmalade , the first couple of years I though that we needed extra heat and we provided a heat lamp but chicken keepers are divided on this subject and many of them think that it's dangerous due to the risk of fires. A coop is a very dusty place because the chickens are always scratching and making dust. Different breeds of chickens are more cold hardy than others so be sure to choose a hardy breed for your area. Our Japanese Silkies (the fluffy white ones) are supposed to be very cold hardy and they have feathers on their legs. Another good thing is to get a breed with a small comb because the larger combs can get frostbite in severe cold weather. We do have a heated platform with a thermostat to keep their water container from freezing but we no longer provide supplemental heat or light. A little trick to help them stay warm is to give them deeper straw in cold weather and also to feed them cracked corn along with their regular feed. The corn takes more energy to digest and it creates heat as it is slowly digested. In other words it heats them from within. The hens will huddle together on their roost and help to warm each other too. Thank you horsea, sometimes we get chicks in the spring and some develop into roosters. We always think that maybe they will be nice but they almost never are and we end up taking them to the animal auction at the farmers market. I hate to do it but they either attack us or they try mating with the hens so often that they actually get bloodied from being grabbed and we can't have that. Our flock is too small to support a rooster. We have a rooster right now that we thought was a hen but last week "she" started crowing. Darn.
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Mar 12, 2018 19:08:44 GMT -5
Coq sure Vin is a nice solution for aggressive or surplus roosters.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Mar 12, 2018 23:24:41 GMT -5
I love raising poultry. I once had chickens, ducks, quail and doves. You ain't lived till you hatch out a bunch of quail. They are so tiny and so fast! We travel too much to have them anymore, but if we ever stop, that's one of my first things I would like to have.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 13, 2018 12:10:41 GMT -5
We hatched out and raised some Bob white Quail about 30 years ago and I just loved them. They were adorable and we kept them for a while and they laid eggs for us. Eventually we set them free because they are native in PA but it was so pleasing to hear their little Bob White calls.
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Post by brownrexx on Apr 1, 2018 17:19:08 GMT -5
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ceresone
Junior Member
Posts: 33
Joined: June 2017
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Post by ceresone on Apr 3, 2018 17:46:02 GMT -5
i decided i'd get some bantams last year. paid wayy too much, had a house built on wheels. moved it into my attached garage for the winter. easy chores--but ohh the dust. so--i've bought a bigger pen when i move it outside--if it ever quits raining. tomorrow, i am pitching 12 dozen eggs, many for someone who wanted the for hatching, others that just needed a bunch for baking--not the smartest decision i ever made
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Post by brownrexx on May 9, 2018 19:05:47 GMT -5
Here is how I turned the compost pile today. One of our baby chicks turned out to be a rooster. His name is Mr. R. ( Our roosters are always named Mr. R.) 20180509_174600 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 13, 2018 9:04:05 GMT -5
I have a broody hen!
Broody means that the hen wants to raise a brood and is sitting on eggs. It is controlled by instinct, hormones and lighting. It is one of the all black hens and she has never been broody before.
When a hen becomes broody she will sit in the nest box and not come out. She will make little clucking sounds to us meaning "stay away" and will peck and bite if we put our hands near her. We marked the eggs that she is sitting on with a pencil so that we know which ones they are because the other hens will try to lay their daily eggs in the same box with her even though they have other choices.
We put a couple of fake wooden eggs in one of the other boxes to give them the idea where to lay their eggs but they usually get an egg or two in with the broody one and we have to remove it.
A hen will sit on eggs for 21 days until they hatch. We do have a rooster so I am assuming that the eggs are fertile. It should be interesting to see what the chicks look like because we have several different kinds of hens including silkies which are small fluffy looking white hens. Scroll up to see some pics of our hens.
The eggs that she is sitting on are not just hers but some from the other hens. I did not get a count or a good look at them because she was really being protective and biting hubby's hand when we were marking the eggs. We had to be really careful because she could easily have broken the eggs by pecking at us and thrashing around.
Chickens don't "bite" like you would think of an animal biting because they don't have teeth but they can pinch really hard with their beaks and even draw blood and it hurts!
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 13, 2018 11:43:59 GMT -5
Oooo, baby chicks soon - how exciting!
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Post by Hensaplenty on Jun 13, 2018 12:05:03 GMT -5
Love your chickens, Brownrexx! I miss having chickens! Would love more. Maybe someday!
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 13, 2018 13:34:22 GMT -5
They ARE fun Hensaplenty, and I always enjoy seeing the mother hen raise her chicks BUT when I have a newly planted garden like now I can't let them out unless we sit near the garden in lawn chairs and chase them away all evening long. Their digging is not compatible with newly planted crops! My corn is only about 2" tall right now. Once the corn and potatoes are bigger and the pole beans have started to grow up onto their supports they can't hurt them too much and they will be free to roam again without constant supervision. They are mad at me right now because I don't have the time to let them out and sit and watch them every day so they are confined to their coop.
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Post by ladymarmalade on Mar 4, 2021 20:43:58 GMT -5
Last week during a meeting my direct report at work was discussing his backyard chickens and wanting to add two more chicks to his brood this year. That led to a discussion about me wanting chickens someday, and THAT led to a few days later him coming up to me and asking if I was serious about wanting some chickens, because he was wanting to order some chicks but needed to meet a minimum. Totally offered to brood them for me in his brooder too! We're still discussing the logistics, though we have a deadline if we're going to order in advance of this special Chicken Days event. If we don't order ahead, we'll go in person and take our chances with what we can find...
It looks like we're taking the plunge! I'd previously wanted to hold off on chickens because we did a lot of traveling with the kids for dance and other things, but it occurred to me last week that other than one overnight to Iowa last month, I haven't been away from home in over 18 months. It seems like a good time to see how I like being a chicken mama! Homegrown eggs sure are appealing!
So now DH is tasked with building me my Chicken Palace. He kinda sorta knows what he's doing. I'm only a little concerned that in the end my coop won't quite be what I want, but I think we're on the same page that I want it to look something like what brownrexx's coop looks like, definitely raised on stilts.
Just curious for the chicken owners, if you could start over, is there anything that you would change or add to your chicken coop?
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 4, 2021 21:25:55 GMT -5
How exciting ladymarmalade , Our coop was Amish made so we just bought it that way and DH built and added our outdoor pens. I love the coop up on stilts because I don't need to bend over to access it and the chickens love the part underneath to get out of the coop but be able to lay in the shade during the heat of summer. You can see that we have a small door down there but if I were building it I might put in a bigger door because it is hard to clean out. I use a rake to rake out the stray that they take down there as well as their manure. It is hard to reach in that small door. We actually use DH's tractor and move the whole coop about once a year. Make sure that you have nest box openings on the outside so that you do not need to go into the coop to gather eggs. See the little doors on the side of my coop? Make sure that any wire that you use has small enough openings that predators can not reach into the coop or even crawl through the wire. Do not use chicken wire because raccoons can bend that and gain access I am told. You do not need lots of nest boxes because they will lay their eggs all in the same box. Don't ask me why but they do. I have opened the door to find one chicken sitting on top of another in a nest box and 5 others are empty! Do you have Tractor Supply Stores? Right now they are having Chick Days and I was just looking at the chicks today. I was very tempted to buy the ones called Easter Eggers that lay the colored eggs. I had these in the past but now all of my hens lay brown eggs. Nice but not as pretty as blue. Tractor Supply also has all of the feed and accessories that you may want.
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Mar 4, 2021 23:55:15 GMT -5
I was looking at all of the chicks today at tractor Supply. Unfortunately they were all straight runs(both sexes) Hens are legal in town but roosters aren't. I'm too busy going back and forth seeing to the folks anyway.
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Post by ladymarmalade on Mar 5, 2021 5:56:15 GMT -5
Tractor Supply is what started this whole mess! Our location here has a requirement that you cannot buy less than four chicks, and my boss needs just two, but can't get more than two due to his urban location. Hence where I come in to take the other two, now up to four. However, yes, they are straight run, and a little searching brought him to a little local hardware store about twenty minutes away offering a huge variety of chicks, and if you're willing to pay a little more can have them sexed. They have an even bigger minimum, but he's making some plans for the additional birds.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 5, 2021 9:24:00 GMT -5
4 chick minimum here too. They do that so that the birds can keep each other warm until they get their feathers. I can't kill and eat the roosters but I have never had any trouble giving them away. I used to use Craig's List but now I would use FB Marketplace. Too many scams and bad people on Craig's List anymore.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2021 14:28:49 GMT -5
LOL; These conversations tickle me. I was once proud owner of a dandy chicken house---buff orps, Rhode Island reds, silkies and golden Sebrite bantams.
I once saved a rooster from a hawk only to eat him myself several weeks later.
I had the heated water platform, but I used lights in winter to keep the hens laying. I did not get attached to my chickens--they were not pets.
Chicken house had outside nests---I could gather eggs by lifting a door. Floor, all of it, was covered with litter so that I could open one end of the building and rake the litter into my garden cart and pull it with my ATV to the garden.
Silkies, black meat, I sold to a Chinese lady at her store. Sebrites were pets---One little rooster kept my ankles in danger---flew up on a feed barrel and got me on my bare head once. They were all free range---in the chicken house only at night-Old Daymond the border collie watched over them during the day. I lost almost nothing. A big auto incubator made chick sales in the spring.
Time and travel make a difference--If you do not have a handy neighbor kid or a willing friend to tend your animals you cannot be gone for very long. A kid taught to take good care of animals will take good care of his own kids. It was my good fortune to have two good families with teens living close by. The kids liked to earn the money and I liked to know that my critters were not going without.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2021 20:42:54 GMT -5
In east Texas, I had up to 80 chickens at times, both for laying and eggs and because chickens are not only good bugger and baby snake eaters, but they are funny to watch and get to know the personalities. Nver stopped me from eating them later, but I was a farm kid when young. All animals earned their feed, one way or another.
Extra roosters I just turned into capons and we enjoyed those a lot when cooked.
Only chicken that got to live after whipping on many of us, LOL, was a little fighting bloodline hen. She wasn't much bigger than a bantam, but she would go broody and hatch out as many as 15 live chicks; she sure would try to flog you if you got too close to her fave nesting spot under an old stock trailer!
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