In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Chicken's
Brookwood
Member, Moderator Posts: 13,770 ******
Started out this early spring with 6 Road Island Red chicks. All hens. Snowy winter weather kept them down in the basement in a big galvanized water trough under a heat lamp.
Built them a small coop with a roofed and fenced outside play area and let them go to it around early May.
The coop is contained inside a very large chain linked fenced back yard where my two dogs are free to roam and poop & pee at random. With about a month of letting the two races of critters getting to know each other, I opened up the chicken coop and let the 6 reds enjoy the freedom of the entire yard.
They all seemed to get along fine with my golden retriever giving chase on occasion, but in a playful manor and the chickens have actually grown quite attached to the dogs. They follow them all over the yard and when I come out to tend things they are like little kids at my feet. They really seem to enjoy my attentions as I reach down and scratch their necks or pick them up.
First eggs were small light brown and only one or two back around the second week of July, but within another few weeks were getting 5 to 6 every day. The eggs got bigger as time went on and many double yolkers.
In September we had a visit from my oldest son and his wife along with their dog. It was a pleasant get together but the dog took out one of my Reds who came up to it playfully and got her wing pulled off for her trouble.
It seemed to take quite a while before the remaining 5 birds became comfortable around my dogs again. Eventually all went back to a normal happy bunch.
In early October my brother presented me with a gift of 4 Seebright Bantam chickens. One pair of golden's and one pair of silver's.
I bought an easy chicken coop kit at the local Family Farm & Home store and housed the new birds in it. They have been penned up until just a week ago when I opened their door to the yard. So far they are staying pretty close to their enclosure entrance but do get out a lot when the dogs are indoors.
All seems to be going well as I get ready for the cold winter months ahead and am hoping that I will be able to keep them alive through a Michigan winter. Got an electric heated water tank set up and have moved both coops away from the houses eves where heavy snow will slide and fall.
Up until this last year doing chickens it has been over 30 years since I messed with them. I have really enjoyed them and when it comes to fresh eggs, have all I can use as well as giving a bunch to friends and family.
Roadies are beautiful birds and are quite entertaining as pets. I may do another 6 next spring just to add to all of this excitement!
Love to hear about any and all of your chicken stories! Would like to learn more about em.
Built them a small coop with a roofed and fenced outside play area and let them go to it around early May.
The coop is contained inside a very large chain linked fenced back yard where my two dogs are free to roam and poop & pee at random. With about a month of letting the two races of critters getting to know each other, I opened up the chicken coop and let the 6 reds enjoy the freedom of the entire yard.
They all seemed to get along fine with my golden retriever giving chase on occasion, but in a playful manor and the chickens have actually grown quite attached to the dogs. They follow them all over the yard and when I come out to tend things they are like little kids at my feet. They really seem to enjoy my attentions as I reach down and scratch their necks or pick them up.
First eggs were small light brown and only one or two back around the second week of July, but within another few weeks were getting 5 to 6 every day. The eggs got bigger as time went on and many double yolkers.
In September we had a visit from my oldest son and his wife along with their dog. It was a pleasant get together but the dog took out one of my Reds who came up to it playfully and got her wing pulled off for her trouble.
It seemed to take quite a while before the remaining 5 birds became comfortable around my dogs again. Eventually all went back to a normal happy bunch.
In early October my brother presented me with a gift of 4 Seebright Bantam chickens. One pair of golden's and one pair of silver's.
I bought an easy chicken coop kit at the local Family Farm & Home store and housed the new birds in it. They have been penned up until just a week ago when I opened their door to the yard. So far they are staying pretty close to their enclosure entrance but do get out a lot when the dogs are indoors.
All seems to be going well as I get ready for the cold winter months ahead and am hoping that I will be able to keep them alive through a Michigan winter. Got an electric heated water tank set up and have moved both coops away from the houses eves where heavy snow will slide and fall.
Up until this last year doing chickens it has been over 30 years since I messed with them. I have really enjoyed them and when it comes to fresh eggs, have all I can use as well as giving a bunch to friends and family.
Roadies are beautiful birds and are quite entertaining as pets. I may do another 6 next spring just to add to all of this excitement!
Love to hear about any and all of your chicken stories! Would like to learn more about em.
Comments
I lost interest and so did the cat. A little later I heard something hitting the front metal door, looked out and here is this chicken pecking the front door.
I opened the door and the thing just walked in like it owned the place. It was starting to get dark by then so I took it out to the back yard so it could feel safe for the night, thinking it would probably hope the fence and be gone the next day.
Nope, still there when I looked out back the next morning. this time I left the gate to the back common area open in case it belong to neighbors through the block it would find its way home.
Nope, It hung around for quite a while during which the wife got attached to it. it would follow us around, we gave her corn kernals frozen in ice cubes during the hot days. I got a hutch for it to roost in at night, but the thing prefereed the trees around the house one of which was the neighbors apricot tree. Every morning it would start squawking then fly down and proceed to rid our back yeard of insects.
Eventually its leg started going lame and it just got so she couldnt walk and during this time I took her to a vet and the vet told me she had a bacterial infection probably caused by not being able to relieve her self properly. She died a few days later.
I figured the injury was because she was akward at jumping from the tree in the mornings and landed wrong. I had noticed a pretty decent sized rock in my backyard while cutting the grass earlier in the year but didnt think to much of it. Then in the fall after she had died I was cleaning out the rain gutter downspout and another rock about the same size came out. Then I realized the only way that rock got up there was from somebody throwing it. It and the rock I found on the grass earlier were in a direct line from the neighbors back yard and the branches the hen would roost in at night.
So I credit my neighbor for the leg injury and death of the hen now.
I have never had chickens before but was surprised at their intelligence and how they will attach themselves just like dogs or cats will, plus providing a little comic relief once in a while
we have been on a 20 year run currently . I would guess we have maybe 20 chickens / rosters assorted varieties . about a dozen guinea and about a dozen ducks all +/- a couple just a apx guess
during the summer thy have a pen / lot they stay in lots of room .
in the fall they have free run of our five acre plot . we live on a ST RT and they all seem to know the boundary they will not go on to the highway .
they will wonder out into the fields a hundred yards or so after the farmers harvest
we give away eggs all the time to friends and family
we have five dogs one recent pound rescue who I am sure would like to have a " feathered buddy to love and squeeze "
our German Shepard just ignores them same with the dozen or so cats we have that call it home
we have two wiener dogs the birds know to say clear . the smaller female wiener dog a couple years ago snagged her a slow moving duck and well the duck did not fare well she is so mild but can flip to the hunting killing mode in a blink .
wife makes pets out of them all we have had some for years we had one I know was well over 10 years old ( passed a couple years ago ) that would sit on my wife's shoulder while she was out in the yard with them
I not much on the birds but help feed and water them .
my wife tells me this is the last flock ( heard that before ) , less animals to worry about and take care of as we get older
oh we have a smaller pen for the sick and injured [:D] until she can get them up and going
Merc
My stepdad built their coop out of a old privacy fence that a storm tore up. We haven't finished the trim yet but they seem to like it.
Hearing about how long a chicken can live is really amazing to me. I once raised a pair of pigmy goats and they lasted 14 & 16 years respectively. My great uncle had a tom cat that lived 24 years. [:)]
Merc
quote:Originally posted by Brookwood
Thanks for the reply's guys! Mercury, I really like your choice in chicken coops! FK, I bet yours will hold an army of birds! I know that my future will see something BIG in the building of a coop to house many more.
Hearing about how long a chicken can live is really amazing to me. I once raised a pair of pigmy goats and they lasted 14 & 16 years respectively. My great uncle had a tom cat that lived 24 years. [:)]
Our chickens have the most Dee-Luxe chicken coop ever. We bought an old kid's playhouse, and that is what we use for their coop. Looks great, and you can't even tell it is a chicken coop.
Merc
A pink, chicken coop?? Have you no shame man??
Trouble is NO ONE had Silkie Chickens in the country. Impossible,, to bring in a few live chicks. Had to purchase eggs, pack in suitcase and hope they would hatch after two buses, two taxis, 3 international flights and 21 days incubation.
First chick hatched in 2010. A white silkie. Named her Milagros (miracle) because she was the only one out of 12 that hatched.
Chicken ranching started with a card board box 7 years ago and expanded into 8 coops with fenced and roofed runs. 3 fenced coops w/o covered runs and 3 smaller "chicken storage pens" and small areas like closets used for chicken emergency care.
The best survival rate was 13 out of 24. Not bad considering.
Milagros month old
[img]Http://websoft2000.com/gb/milagros_onemonth.jpg[/img]
Milagros grown with baby
[img]Http://websoft2000.com/gb/milagros_chick_looking_out01.jpg[/img]
White was good but had to have different colors (black).
Different colors. Manches 4 day old Partridge
Manches 4 months old
Knew nothing about chickens and it has been more difficult than anticipated. Lots of good information at a site called Back Yard Chickens. Guess there must be a million posts. They don't sell anything but have advertisers. Got some good information a few years ago and that info. With a good vet to perform surgery their help saved the life of my favorite Rooster named Tigre.
Photo of Tigre with his harem. If chickens could smile.[:D]