If you get chickens, all the animals that prey on chicken will come too. Possums, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and hawks.
Hawks are especially difficult, but they are all protected and should not be shot.
Keep this in mind, when designing and placing your coop.
[QUOTE=csaper58;8573299]
If you get chickens, all the animals that prey on chicken will come too. Possums, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and hawks.
Hawks are especially difficult, but they are all protected and should not be shot.
Keep this in mind, when designing and placing your coop.[/QUOTE]
Also rats and mice.
Rats are chick predators, one more reason we raised chicks the first week or two in the bathroom in a cardboard box, because the rats would kill or cripple them when so young.
On Shark Tank last Friday they had a person selling pet accessories, including chicken coops. They were a mere $700 or so dollars each. In case you want to impress the other chicken owners in your neighborhood, you can buy one of those.
If you just want chickens for the eggs you do not need a rooster. Look for places selling sexed chicks or pullets rather than straight run which means unsexed, mixed males and females. We have an incubator and like to buy hatching eggs but then we’re stuck with extra roosters. We have “processed” some excess boys and old, non-laying hens but that’s a tedious, messy way to spend a big chunk of a day. We now have several roosters that are really handsome and have nice personalities so we’re too attached. Hatching chicks is fun but expensive because you need a nice incubator, a brooding set up, feed and feeders for babies plus the cost of the eggs. Right now we’re incubating cream leg bars and campines; due to hatch on Easter Sunday!
I have to add that our horses LOVE their chickens. We ran our first run between two corrals, with a gelding and mare on one side and a stallion on the other. While our mare couldn’t understand the fuss, the two boys spent half of their time gazing at the chickens.
Again, you guys are awesome! SO much information to process, but so appreciated. It sounds like I won’t regret chickens so my husband will start working on a coop in the next week or so. Now I am excited!
We are going to get already sexed chickens and no roosters right now. I don’t think I want to get into chick hatching right off the bat 
Hungarian Hippo Fatso Louise is hilarious!! Love the video! I wish we would could free range, but I definitely worry about our dogs. They catch anything that attempts to go in their yard and I would hate for that to be chicken. We have looked at a few options for chicken runs and we are planning to arrange our coop so that they can go into our garden area and around it.
Once we get it all set up I will post pictures!
Thank you everyone for answering all my questions!!!
:lol: Louise!
I have a vid of my girls chasing me for sunflower seeds, but nobody “canters”.
Funniest when they “fly” < if getting about 2" off the ground counts as flying.
Bluey:
My girls have never eaten one of their own eggs, even when I had 6 & the occasional egg got cracked in the Nestbox of Choice.
Because… they all had to lay in that one with a perfectly good & identical box right next door!
I give my chooks eggshells (often filled with solidified bacon grease YUM!) and they haven’t shown any sign of going after eggs.
As for free range, a word of caution: I used to let my original three girls out to free range for several hours. At first, my neighbors were delighted to have the chooks come over to visit, but then the girls became much less charming when they started digging up the neighbors’ [freshly planted] flower beds. The chooks lost their roaming privileges. So, beware if you have planting beds of your own that you care about, or are unable to keep your chooks confined to your own property.
We got a book from Amazon called “Storie’s Guide to Raising Chickens”. Seems like good resource so far.
Quick question for you all from a newbie. We were looking at purchasing a small coop like this:
https://www.southernstates.com/catalog/p-11409-aspen-pet-chicken-fort-high-capacity-coop.aspx
Silly question, but how do you get them back in the coop at night? I was going to fence in an area for them to be out during the day, but when we are home, Id like to let them roam a bit around the farm and then lock them up at night.
Also, any tips for how to start chicks? Do they need to be inside? What sort of container should we keep them in for the first few weeks?
I let my chickens free range in my fenced backyard for a few hours at a time when I’m home. I have two dogs who at first thought it would be great fun to chase chickens, but both learned their lesson very quickly when an angry hen turned on them. Now they can all coexist peacefully in the yard, and the dogs never even think about going after a chicken. The dogs WILL eat chicken poop, but other than the grossness factor, there hasn’t been an issue with that.
The hens WANT to go back to their coop at night. If we bring them in earlier, we kind of herd them in that general direction and they go. Sometimes one will squat down to be picked up and put in.
My chooks are crazy about mealworms, so when they still had roaming privileges, I’d make a point of scattering a few handfuls of the treat in the coop. The gals came running
I’ll try not to repeat what’s been said too much. I had to stop free-ranging, because they were going over to my neighbor’s across the road. Turds. What helps is letting them out only a few hours before dark and making sure I have a flock block (chicken candy) by the coop.
I don’t feed in the coop unless it is raining. For water, I use a rubber feed tub in the winter (galvanized waterer in the summer) so I am forced to go in there every day to stomp the ice out and give them clean water.
I deep bed with horse shavings. I wear a respirator to scoop out the coop. Bird poop can be very bad for your health.
My coop and chicken run/tunnels are in my blog.
I haven’t had any roosters on purpose, but I’m thinking about it. I think you need a fair amount of hens for a happy hen house with a rooster.
I trained my dogs not to eat the chickens.
Once the chickens get used to ‘where is home’ (a few days at most) they will generally go inside on their own.
The Southern States coop looks adequate from the picture with the caveat that you’d want a run to go with it, not just keeping them in that 24x7. I’m assuming it has a solid or predator proof bottom. The latch on the ramp may not be predator proof for your area… a raccoon can open one of those twist latches if it has a reason to want to.
-they instinctively seek the safety of their coop as daylight turns to dusk. Every now and then you’ll have a bird who lingered outside too long, and once the light gets low, she will take the nearest shelter rather than risk crossing open spaces to make it back to the coop. If I’m missing a chicken at the evening feeding, I can reliably find her in the barn or garage waiting for me to carry her back to her coop.
-raising chicks would be a long post to write, but there are 100s of books and websites out there. It’s easy, but a definite time commitment to keep them warm and safe for the first several weeks.
–brooder types can be as simple as a rubbermaid tub with shavings in the bottom. I built a bit more complex one from stuff I had lying around, so it’s 4ft long wooden crate with wire lids (old shelving) that I can open up to access the water and feed, hang a heat lamp over (but keep cats out if one were to find its way into the mudroom).
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