Chickens!

[bolophonic]

Update: I believe that one of the box-roosting Plymouth Rocks just laid its first egg!

 

[RED J]

You guys grabbed my interest re: chicken heirarchy. I found among other things,this !

 

[Downunderwonder]

Now that you mention it, I probably do need to add a third pole. Maybe that will do the trick. There are six that roost on the top pole and two that roost on the second pole. I had assumed that they would be able to figure it all out with two, but maybe not.

You seem knowledgeable. What is your chicken rig?

not since I was a kid. We had a small rural holding with pigs sheep and poultry. We got rid of the ducks after a couple of years of duck population explosion / cull cycles. They nested in the hedges and prolifically.

The chooks were contained in a roving makeshift run for awhile. 4ft did the trick so long as one wing was clipped. They did a great job of clearing and fertilising a potato/corn/pea/beet/bean patch. If the feed got low and wings grown back they would get out and roost in the conifers where it was a kid job to pluck them out in the dark and reclip them.

 

[Johnny Crab]

Got a few out here, we're down to 5.
Normal week is 6 eggs from these guys but we're been up to a dozen+ per week. We've found the Full-O-Pep laying hen feed works about the best. Please do try a store-bought white egg vs. a real egg from your own chickens. You'll never want to go back.

We have 1 pen 6 x 12 from back in 2000(oldest daughter did chickens for 4H), that got relocated and mated to a second, better built but same sized one in 2009. Both are on cinder blocks. Here is a pic of when the 2nd one when being built(mp3 player into a Behringer KX1200 for music out there). Tarps are on the north & west sides year-round(roll down when storm is coming) and fully around in winter with heat lamps.

August 2009(before we cut the wire between the 2 to make one larger one):

And the great eggs look like this one but we do have one that lays a greenish-white shelled egg and a very small white one that lays white mini-eggs.

 

[bolophonic]

Got a few out here, we're down to 5.
Normal week is 6 eggs from these guys but we're been up to a dozen+ per week. We've found the Full-O-Pep laying hen feed works about the best. Please do try a store-bought white egg vs. a real egg from your own chickens. You'll never want to go back.

We have 1 pen 6 x 12 from back in 2000(oldest daughter did chickens for 4H), that got relocated and mated to a second, better built but same sized one in 2009. Both are on cinder blocks. Here is a pic of when the 2nd one when being built(mp3 player into a Behringer KX1200 for music out there). Tarps are on the north & west sides year-round(roll down when storm is coming) and fully around in winter with heat lamps.
View attachment 716837

August 2009(before we cut the wire between the 2 to make one larger one):
View attachment 716846

And the great eggs look like this one but we do have one that lays a greenish-white shelled egg and a very small white one that lays white mini-eggs.
View attachment 716860

That looks like a serious operation. We were getting six or seven eggs a day all summer, but everyone is molting right now and we are down to two or three.

 

[bolophonic]

Next spring we'll be adding some city chickens to our address. We just moved in this past September. I've done some chicken sitting these past 2 years, and they're kind of a hoot. Seattle is pretty liberal with them inside the city limits. For egg purposes only, btw

Sweet! So much better than a cat or a dog.

 

[Fishheadjoe]

My Dad raised chickens. I remember one day while visiting him, he had decided to completely till his front yard, too many weeds and not enough grass. So he got out the rototiller, opened the gate for the 30 odd chickens he had and as usual, they followed my Dad.
it didn't take long for the chickens to realize that the rototiller was exposing grubs in the lawn. it was pretty funny to watch a line of chickens, following my Dad and the rototiller across the front lawn.
Those chickens ate so much, they couldn't walk! M Dad and I had to physically carry them back to their pen... all the while the chicken hawk circling above!
My Dad's chickens were all free range as he lived in the country and allowed the chickens to eat whatever they found. Bright orange yolks, shells so hard you were afraid the egg would break in your hand when cracking.
Fishheadjoe

 

[fhm555]

I'm not so sure it's all it's cracked up to be. My dad grew up on a farm where his dad worked in the city every day and the 6 kids were charged with framing and raising animals. They bougth a few staples from the store but the bulk of their diet was grown or raised by them on their place. He was in charge of the chicken coop and milking the cow. He still likes milk, but he does not like chicken to this day. he'll eat it to be polite if he goes someplace where it is being served, but he would never ask for it. I also know another guy about my dad's age and he's the same way, took care of a chicken coop as a child and still dislikes chicken. And yes, that includes eggs.

 

[bolophonic]

I'm not so sure it's all it's cracked up to be. My dad grew up on a farm where his dad worked in the city every day and the 6 kids were charged with framing and raising animals. They bougth a few staples from the store but the bulk of their diet was grown or raised by them on their place. He was in charge of the chicken coop and milking the cow. He still likes milk, but he does not like chicken to this day. he'll eat it to be polite if he goes someplace where it is being served, but he would never ask for it. I also know another guy about my dad's age and he's the same way, took care of a chicken coop as a child and still dislikes chicken. And yes, that includes eggs.

I'll try to keep an eye out for the signs of burnout!

 

[fhm555]

As much as I love chicken and eggs, I'm so glad I never got burned out on them.

 

[dangnewt]

No chickens yet, but a very talented friend of mine (he builds prototypes for a high tech company in Cambridge) with help from my wife and son have built the Taj Macoop or if you prefer the Coop de Ville. It is finished now with a nice corrugated steel roof. It has wheels, so we can move it around the yard so the poop gets well distributed. The bottom has wire mesh to keep them safe from hawks, coyotes, skunks, etc that abound around here, but I'm planning to upgrade my fencing as well. My wife got the permit from the Board of Health last month but we'll wait until the spring to get chickens.




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[Downunderwonder]

I am getting ready to build a fence to create a sizable chicken yard. I'll be curious to see how many of them agree to stay in there and which ones need clipping.

I also need to figure out how to get a couple of them to stop roosting in the nesting boxes, which has been going on for weeks suddenly and severely threatens the poop-free nature of my delicious eggs.

btw, you know the eggs come out the same hole but I can hear the townies going ooohhh yuk from here.

 

[RED J]

Hey lets face it everything about Chickens is gross from where the eggs decend from to eating skin to all the mung mixed in with the meat around the bones.
But they are a major food source for much of the worlds population, and the products actually taste darn good if you just don't let yourself think about it too much.

Re: the coop keepers who can't stand chicken, I had a buddy years ago whose family had a chicken farm and his first job was running chickens to slaughterhouses in N.Y. He would eat it because it was cheap, but didn't like it much.

 

[bolophonic]

Sounds about right. I can't remember if it's hierarchical when they roost in trees or just the littler ones further out on the smaller limbs didn't droop the branch so that worked for them. Maybe you can supply a hierarchy of roosts?

I finally had a chance to get in and modify the coop a while back and one thing I did was add a third rail and I'm noticing that the roosting is taking a different form. They are all acting a little different.

 

[dangnewt]

I finally had a chance to get in and modify the coop a while back and one thing I did was add a third rail and I'm noticing that the roosting is taking a different form. They are all acting a little different.

I've read that the whole idea of a pecking order is true. Once the girls figure it out and everyone knows their place, things calm down.

 

[pie_man_25]

there was a big hubbub a while back about chickens not being legal to raise in my hometown. You could have 200 carrier pigeons though.

 

[DiabolusInMusic]

 

[bolophonic]

Update: after pulling my hair out for months, all the chickens are roosting and the egg boxes are pretty clean!

 

[boynamedsuse]

The difference in the shells are incredible. We have one tiny Ameraucana that lays huge blue eggs that fracture slightly when she lays them. You should get a llama and put it in your yard.

The shell strength is determined at least in part by the diet. Although not a rule, the Ameraucanas I've seen are often more passive and therefore lower in the pecking order, which means they don't have as good a diet. Giving a chicken calcium (and magnesium) is probably beyond the scope of this thread, but it becomes increasingly important as the hens age.

Our chickens are somewhat spoiled. We use organic lay crumble ([Invalid or Expired Link Removed] in our case). It doesn't cost much more than regular feed and I think they actually eat less (being more satisfied perhaps).

 

[boynamedsuse]

I've read that the whole idea of a pecking order is true. Once the girls figure it out and everyone knows their place, things calm down.

Agreed. If you have less than 80 chickens (an approximate number) each knows where they stand in the overall social strata. As a rule, fights are less frequent if the chickens are brought up together. (Not counting roosters. If you have multiple roosters and they are kept with hens, the roosters will pretty much always fight in my experience.) Introducing new chickens to a population can result in quite a bit of conflict while the pecking order is being reestablished. (We have four separate fenced areas to address this. Some assimilate, and some remain with their "clique.")