Let's Talk Chickens!

[Mosey_2003]

I’m trying to plan out some new infrastructure for this spring. I’ve been working on the barn off and on for a year or so, and just need to finish digging out an old dirt stall and then I can build some more pen panels and have three 8’ square pens in there, with the option to split each in half. That will be good for my breeders and really young growouts, but I’d like to have more outside pens and access too. Thinking some sort of A-frames with removable roosts and just tarps over the back third, could be moved around with the garden tractor. Although, I’m not sure how often they will be moved since the space I want to have them doesn’t have a ton of flat area, will have to think about that. Kind of want to cozy them up near the dog pen to cut down on predator pressure. Also want to do one of those short, simple tractors for meat birds…

Plus I need to put together some more nestboxes that can be moved around between pens. And I’d really like to build a new brooder that will work better than the one I have, but I haven’t decided exactly how I want it to be constructed yet.

I got a Humidikit a couple weeks ago, so I’m excited to give that a try in my hatcher. I have a hard time keeping the humidity “just so” in there so I feel like this is going to be really great for me.

[TheJenners]

I hope to get some Welsummers with other colored egg layers next year, potentially. I need to cull some of the non-layers if I want to add to my flock.

[NancyM]

We just lost ours last week. All of them, in one night, not a sound that we heard. All dead, torn apart. Which was a bit of a blow, because they were kinda halfways pets. Some were fully “retired”, just hanging around eating until one day they keel over. Some still laying, though not so much now in winter. But they follow us around, come when called, and when they are turned out on the lawn to graze in summer on all the good things they find, grasshoppers are their favourate. Were their favourate. All dead now. Red ones, the high output layers, and some aracanas, and some grey speckled ones. We figured it was a weasel or mink, found a TINY hole high up in the fence under the roof. But we put the camera out there, since whatever it was kept coming back and removing a dead body each night. It was a bobcat, we have it on film now. DH didn’t think a bobcat could fit through that tiny space above the wire, but apparently, it could. And did, both on the night that he killed them all without a sound, and every night after that, as he came back each night to remove another dead body from his larder.
In spring, we may get some more chickens. And will mend the tiny hole above the wire and under the rafters where this bobcat made his entrance. We’ve had chickens in this pen for 10 years, and have seen bobcats around sometimes, but it has taken this long for one of them to locate this entrance into the chicken pen.
So- check your pen. Even if everything has been fine for you and your flock for years… check it for any small hole, even holes that appear too small for anything much to get through. Because they still can get through, if there is a hole, and a bloody tragedy is the result.

[Mosey_2003]

Jeepers!!! That’s awful, I’m sorry

[TheJenners]

That’s horrible but I’d love to see the bobcat on video! Give me an idea on how small it can squeeze…

We have bald eagles here that just eat anything they think they can get away with, coyotes, mink, shorttailed weasels, raccoons obviously (is any place free of them?), and foxes. I actually got in an argument with my vet over the existence of Whidbey foxes, as I had captured some crazy audio on my security cameras that neither of us could ID, and then COTH IDed it as a fox. She said there was no way there were foxes here and I said I had seen one once 12ish years ago - then about a month later someone posted a gorgeous picture of a red fox in their back yard.

[Mosey_2003]

I had what I feel like was a lot of predation my second year with chickens. My first year Dad brought the live trap up and put it by the coop and we took out 14 raccoons I believe, nothing ever actually made it into the run/coop. The next year was fine until winter and it was like it was on - had an opossum in the barn multiple times, and then a pair of them in the coop. After fortifying things to where I thought it must be safe, the next spring I had what must have been a mink or weasel coming into the barn picking off my growouts. It was a smart little ****er, it would wait for me to do chores and then leave for work at 6:15, then would go in and cause havoc. Eventually I had to move everyone back to the brooder inside the shop part of the barn while I covered up every little hole I could find. To be honest, I don’t think I managed to mustelid-proof my place, I figure he or she must have moved on after a few days of finding no easy chickens to eat. Luckily (knock wood) one hasn’t been back in a couple years. I’m really hoping the dog being present and peeing all around will continue to warn them off, because otherwise I’d have to redo everything in hardware cloth.

[Mosey_2003]

I’m playing with the idea of getting some of this too…
https://www.premier1supplies.com/poultry/fencing.php?fence_id=96

[candyappy]

I have 50 something layers right now. Brown & Black sex links. Very good producers.

I have 4 egg customers, supply my in-laws with free eggs and have all that I need and any extras I hard boil, smash up and feed back to the chickens.

[Mango20]

I’ve had chickens since 2009, but have decided I’m done with them now. I’ve had as many as six at a time and the last batch of 5 was new in 2017. I’m down to one chicken, my Easter Egger. She is a largish bird who lays large green eggs, sometimes double yolkers. She was always the first to start laying in the spring, and also the first to stop laying for the year. She’s now 5 years old and I think I got about a dozen eggs from her this year. I’m just kind of tired of keeping chickens alive and providing liquid water in the winter with no electricity in the coop, all for a bunch of eggs I give away more than use.

Other breeds I’ve had included golden comet/red sexlink, golden laced wyandote, black australorp, California Grey, and cuckoo maran. This picture shows my 2017 batch. The light colored one on the right is the Easter Egger, and is a color I haven’t seen much in that breed. From back to front is the cuckoo maran, red sex link, black australorp, golden laced wyandote and the easter egger. Two died by raccoon, and two by other causes. (that flimsy fence in the picture is just around my garden area, and not anything I expected to protect chickens. They had 1/2" hardware cloth and a roof over their usual coop and run).

[NancyM]

I’ll try to link the video for you. It’s currently on the game camera, and I’m a computer dinosaur about doing practically everything other than typing and pressing send. We have a selection of chicken eating predators here, so chickens are only allowed out when we are around. We have cougars,had a juvenile that tore apart a small cage with four new adolescent chickens getting big enough to go in with the main flock. Two survived that. The cat didn’t, though we regretted his removal. Other than that, we’ve had a mink, who killed a couple. I went looking for him under the chicken house, and there he was, staring back at me, considering taking my nose off… They don’t back down from a human. But we haven’t had him back since. We kinda thought that this most recent attack had to be a mink or weasel type critter, because of the size of the hole being so small. We SHOULD have a yard dog, a guardian dog here, but we don’t. We have three house cats who are also fair game for a lot of these predators, and we have previously lost cats, usually to coyotes. But we watch out for them as much as we can. One current cat is ex feral, so he knows about coyotes. The other two are ignorant and arrogant. We have a lot of Eagles, both bald and golden… No trouble from them yet with chickens or cats. No racoons here, so that’s a bonus lol!

[2DogsFarm]

Weird
My surviving EE, Bunny (had 2, 1 - Peeps - just keeled over one day ) is my friendliest hen.
She knows what container has the BOSS (her crack) & demands her share Here! Now!
Her eggs are pale blue & near commercial Large size.
She surprised me by being 1st to start laying after the moult.

The oldest (3?4?) is a BR - Barb: for Barred Rock B*tch - & wants nothing to do with me.
The younger Wyandotte - Laura, named for a friend fond of her Chardonnay - agrees.
BR’s “brother” < same age, got from the same flock of BRs, also not friendly, but not a badass rooster either. He’s P.T./Petey for Pretty Tail.

ETA: My History with Chickens

Got my first 5 in 2009, 6wk pullets
2 Delaware’s -Noodle & Salad
2 Black sexlinks - Xtra Crispy & I forget the other food-related name
1 Houdan - Misty Cologne (named at the request of a friend for his Drag name) she was my pet hen. Contrary to breed, she’d ride on my arm like a Pirates parrot.

A couple years later I added 2 day-old chicks from a friend of a friend’s son’s huge flock of mutts.
1 became a Leghornish hen, the other a gorgeous rust & cream rooster.
Named for the friends: Connie & Sgt T

All freeranged my 5ac, putting themselves to bed at dusk & keeping me & friends in eggs.
Until the day I came home to find Sgt T & 2 hens dead by ???
One was Misty
Rooster was most torn up, he’d fought for his girls
I confined the survivors to the fenced yard attached to the coop.
That weekend I heard them fussing & saw a big red fox down by my barn.
Mystery solved.

Got 6 replacements from an Amish friend.
5 white mutts with some black & 1 black hen.
Named her Bette, the others the Harlettes.
A couple years later, attrition, a raccoon & a hawk had me down to 2 white hens.
I got 6 free 6wk BRs.
3 became roosters. Kept the meekest (PT), sent 2 to auction.
Then lost 2 in a week to hawks.
At which point I decided freeranging was Out for my hens.

Friend gifted me 4 at point-of-lay:
Buff Orp - Golda (Meier)
Black Australorp - LJ (for Leslie Jones)
Lavender Orp - Bluey (for @Bluey ) - became a rooster
EE - Bunny
Golda developed a tumor that eventually affected her QOL & had me cull her.
Bluey died of something that progressively crippled him, another PTS.
I added Peeps & Laura 2yrs ago.
LJ was killed by ?? that got in the coop one might I was late closing it off from the yard (Mea Culpa)
Peeps was NQR one morning, dead by 4.

This Spring I plan on adding 2 or 3 pullets.
I’d like colored layers, Olive Eggers or Marans or another EE.

[Bebe_Falcon1]

I’m so sorry for those who have lost chickens to predators. It seems to be a case of when, not if. We have five, one each:

Ameraucana (light grey) - blue egg
Black Copper Marans (black) - dark brown egg
Rhode Island Red (orange) - light brown egg
Silverudd Isbar (black/white mix) - green egg
Leghorn (blue/brown mix, also the resident ditz) - white egg

So we know when each of them is laying, which is convenient, and we can tell them all apart. We keep them in a solid-wood coop (which DH insulated) with an automatic door opener and a cozy coop radiant heater mounted up by their favourite roost.

We added a droppings board under the roosts over the summer, and while we usually use flax bedding (it’s so easy to sift through to collect rogue droppings) we’ve just laid down a layer of straw this week to help keep the coop as warm as possible over the winter. The run has a sand footing, again we just added straw over top to try and make winter easier on them.

They come out to free range only when supervised, but are quite happy digging through the straw to find scratch or coax mealworms out of the special chicken toy we bought them

It took so much research and then time to modify the design of the coop for our application and work out, as non-handy persons, how to get the several-hundred-pound structure from the front yard to the backyard without any machines — and then how to build the enclosed run around it once positioned in the yard. The coop itself was painted and stained (which required conditioning the wood, staining, and then sealing). It looks lovely but would I do it again?! Probably not. I may have lost my sanity in the process.

Two of them just started laying this week which has been pretty exciting, we acquired them as chicks this June. This year has definitely been the Year of the Chicken for us

[McGurk]

We’ve had chickens for 14 years. Started with a dozen hens: Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, California Giants, Sicilian Buttercups. Had DD sell eggs as a business/learning experience.

The chicken business expanded over the years, at one time we have over 100, right now, we have ~ 80. There’s a pen of Buff Orpingtons, a pen of Easter Eggers and a pen of Golden Comets. We started phasing out other breeds for laying in favor of the Golden Comets, they are incredibly reliable layers and are much smaller than the Orps or the Barred Rocks.

I have two incubators going most of the spring and sell chicks from a couple of days old to 6 - 8 weeks, and I keep hatching as long as people are buying. I made a mistake this year and didn’t hold enough back for us; I will have to buy young birds in March.

[OnAMission]

I’ve had chickens for 28 years, in addition to the ones we had when I was growing up or when I was working on a guest ranch in my 20’s. I’ve always run a totally loose band of whatever looked interesting at the feedstore or what was given to me by people getting out of chickens. In about 2005 a friend gave me two little buttercup/banty cross roosters and then things really went into overdrive, my feedstore hens were cranking out chicks right and left, all a glorious mix of breeds and colors. We gave away hens and spare roosters but at some point I had way too many. They were all free range and the roosters would pick their hens and they all ran in their own little groups, all free range. I rarely lost any but we had 7 dogs at the time including a GP. When we moved from there we gave away all but 3 and I took those to my little house in town where they went from being wild as sparrows to tame as dogs. The puppy played with one of them to death which he would be dismayed to know he had killed her (sweetest dog ever) but I still have two. These hens are probably 10 years old and I can see the Butterup, White Rock (I had one and she had so many chicks the white still comes through), buff orp and RIR in them. They still lay really well in the summer and are tame as dogs now, come in the house to clean up under the bird cages and pan handle for treats in the kitchen before I shoo them out. I haven’t bought a chick since probably 2010 but I’ll be getting more this year since we moved to a place where I can expand again. I have a chicken expert in my life now so I’ve been having fun figuring out what to get! My oldest hen I ever had was an Ameraucana that was 16 and she was still laying the summer she died.

[Texarkana]

@Bebe_Falcon1

I’m so sorry for those who have lost chickens to predators. It seems to be a case of when, not if. We have five, one each:

Ameraucana (light grey) - blue egg
Black Copper Marans (black) - dark brown egg
Rhode Island Red (orange) - light brown egg
Silverudd Isbar (black/white mix) - green egg
Leghorn (blue/brown mix, also the resident ditz) - white egg

So we know when each of them is laying, which is convenient, and we can tell them all apart. We keep them in a solid-wood coop (which DH insulated) with an automatic door opener and a cozy coop radiant heater mounted up by their favourite roost.

We added a droppings board under the roosts over the summer, and while we usually use flax bedding (it’s so easy to sift through to collect rogue droppings) we’ve just laid down a layer of straw this week to help keep the coop as warm as possible over the winter. The run has a sand footing, again we just added straw over top to try and make winter easier on them.

They come out to free range only when supervised, but are quite happy digging through the straw to find scratch or coax mealworms out of the special chicken toy we bought them

It took so much research and then time to modify the design of the coop for our application and work out, as non-handy persons, how to get the several-hundred-pound structure from the front yard to the backyard without any machines — and then how to build the enclosed run around it once positioned in the yard. The coop itself was painted and stained (which required conditioning the wood, staining, and then sealing). It looks lovely but would I do it again?! Probably not. I may have lost my sanity in the process.

Two of them just started laying this week which has been pretty exciting, we acquired them as chicks this June. This year has definitely been the Year of the Chicken for us

This is gorgeous!

A chicken coop (and hens) is my next farm project. I’m inspired by yours!

[luvmyhackney]

After reading this thread, I want chickens!

Are they easier than goats?

[Mosey_2003]

@luvmyhackney

Are they easier than goats?

Heck yeah!

[trubandloki]

@Mosey_2003

@luvmyhackney

Are they easier than goats?

Heck yeah!

Except that annoying part where literally everything (ok, almost everything) wants to eat your chickens.

I am sure lots of things want to eat your goats too, but the list of what wants to eat your chickens is much longer.

[aregard]

@Bebe_Falcon1

I’m so sorry for those who have lost chickens to predators. It seems to be a case of when, not if.

Yes. My friend who kept chickens relatively successfully out in the hills for 30 or more years just says, “Don’t get too attached. They come and go.”

We tried an automatic door opener, but it kept jamming, so now I am the automatic door opener.

I have two coops: both of them children’s playhouses. One is a Little Tikes (had to put up a bunch of hardware cloth on the insides of the windows to keep critters out) and a larger one that was home made. It has it’s own solar panel (fake, but funny).

[luvmyhackney]

I have a lot of bobcat and fox around, plus a couple raccoons. I’ve heard coyotes but never seen them. So goats are fairly safe. I worry more about neighbors dogs taking them out but they are safe in their fencing and have a stall at night.