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I followed this thread off and on for a bit and had a couple of questions about getting into backyard chickens. My wife and I finally have our own home and chickens were one thing we were excited about potentially having. We live on 1 acre but about 2/3 of it are forested and need to stay that way due to proximity to a river / wetland conservation area. So the backyard (where they would ideally reside) is going to be running into a half acre of woods that extends to a river. Farmland is on the other side of the river. We live in a pretty rural neighborhood in Rhode Island. Neighboring houses are close enough that I don't want to let the chickens free range out front and into neighboring yards / gardens. I was thinking of putting together a chicken tractor and am reading up on that. Right now we just want to have enough to supply eggs for ourselves. We're big on pets so we are probably the sort that would keep them around even after they stopped laying and not just eat them. From reading the thread I am guessing about 3 hens for us? I am looking for some general stuff to read on getting started with chickens and a good recommendation for plans for a chicken tractor that would nicely accommodate 3/4 hens. Given the proximity to the woods and turkeys, owls, hawks, coyotes around here I'd like it to be strong enough to resist that and something that will be suitable for cold weather next year. I've got a woodshop and am happy to build up one from lumber and parts. Also wouldn't mind breed recs. I am leaning towards Rhode Island Reds because well... its the state bird and all, but not totally committed to that either.
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Mar 17, 2019 18:17
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Mozi posted:I did the chicken tractor thing and you need to know that your lawn needs to be very, very flat and level and it can be a huge hassle to move it around. So mine hasn't moved in a long long time. You might want to consider just building a larger coop with a big run. Yeah I'd rather a large coop. We live in a pretty sparsely populated neighborhood, big lawns, good tree / shrub blocks between properties but I don't know how bad our neighbors are yet about rules lawyering etc. We won't have roosters so sound isn't gonna be a big deal, but our local laws state that we have to have coops 100' away from our well head (rules out most of the backyard) and 25' minimum distance from a "living area" which rules out most of the side and front yards. I figure with a tractor at least I can keep it away from the wellhead and if it goes into the 25' minimum distance it's only staying there for a day or two at a time as I park it around. If after a year of owning them and none of the neighbors have issues I'll probably build a more permanent coop and run up near the back of the house that's within the minimum distance from the well. I am not overly concerned about well issues as ours is over 90' deep and we're looking at like 3-4 hens max.
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Mar 21, 2019 15:42
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Kenshiro
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May 16, 2019 12:40
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:Pour her favorite nests full of ice and watch her go "oh gently caress this". ICE supporter spotted
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Jun 26, 2019 14:18
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Source4Leko posted:What a loving rear end in a top hat. Fight them tooth and nail. Beak and talon you mean
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Jul 16, 2019 15:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Kinda looks like Buff Orpingtons
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Jul 29, 2019 11:14
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nankeen posted:actually i was wrong, poultry domestication began in china! we have ancient china to thank for our chooks and probably also the quail. i have chinese ancestry so this is pleasing to me, i can pretend it was my great-great-grandmother x 10000 who first tamed the mighty cock Yup, about 5000 years old. It's kinda cool the original wild-type bird they are domesticated from are still around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl
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Jul 29, 2019 16:33
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CROWS EVERYWHERE posted:Ah, my favourite Dark Soul's's boss.
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Aug 9, 2019 15:08
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Lawson posted:Chicken people. After eating his brother AND his sister earlier this year, we need a name for this here gentleman: Cronus
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Aug 26, 2019 00:53
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5er posted:That works. 
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Aug 26, 2019 16:58
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Ghostnuke posted:Crownus Ahahaha even better
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Aug 26, 2019 17:37
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Lawson posted:
You could use the romanized version, Saturn.
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Aug 27, 2019 13:52
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psychotic posted:hi thread it's been a while! That's so cute! So apart from just being pets what's the purpose of having geese? Is there any? I just never really thought about why.
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Oct 17, 2019 12:16
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fauna posted:this one time a lady came by to pick up a sussex rooster from my farm. she had her little autistic son with her, they'd just come back from his grandmother's funeral and he was being rambunctious, and she was so anxious to show me that the rooster was going to a loving home that she pulled out her phone and we shared a two-minute video of the boy wandering his farmyard gently cradling and singing his favourite hens to sleep one by one No it's just something in my eye, lotta dust in here etc.
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Nov 3, 2019 17:21
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What do you mean you lost MY anus? I'm sorry I'm sorry I had to. in all seriousness condolences, that always sucks about pets.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:51
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Thank you for sharing so much info on quail. I might be interested as it fits our home situation from what I can tell. One major question though, how are they with cold weather? I live in New England and while I'm coastal it's not as bad as like, middle of nowhere Maine, we still have pretty rough winters.
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Nov 21, 2019 13:34
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Already have nailed that judging sceptical look
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Nov 23, 2019 12:07
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Is clipping their wings an option?
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Jan 15, 2020 13:38
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StrixNebulosa posted:Good job!!!! 
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Jan 21, 2020 14:48
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Malachite_Dragon posted:All races hear the call of the void. Quail, just... louder than most.
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Feb 2, 2020 01:37
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barbecue at the folks posted:That last video taught me about the most metal chicken of them all, the completely black Ayam Cemani from Indonesia. Skin, plumage, flesh, all dark as the night itself. Sadly, obviously, don't go into the comments on that link.
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Feb 15, 2020 14:12
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Sharpest Crayon posted:I did not understand why it was obvious I shouldn't read the comments on that. I mean, it's info about cool goth chickens, how could it be bad? Maybe someone posted a chicken recipe, ho ho ho! More that it's obvious never to go into the comments
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Feb 15, 2020 23:59
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hallelujah posted:all aboard the emotional quailocoaster Thread title, eventually
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Feb 21, 2020 21:48
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I know I asked this ages ago but figure I'd try again since it's been a long time. Any good plans out there for a chicken coop / run? I have a good amount of DIY know-how and can do basic carpentry / have a wood shop. I could design my own thing but before I got started would rather go off an already made plan if possible so I can just get going. Wife and I had been debating having chickens or not for the last year and a half and given the current potential crises that was enough to push us into the "better to have them than not" camp. Looking for about 6-8 hens max and we are in coastal new england, so there will need to be some cold weather proofing taken into account in the future.
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Mar 29, 2020 21:44
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Nettle Soup posted:There's a ton of good coop builds on byc, https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/categories/chicken-coops.12/ Thank you. Signal / noise ratio is high looking for this kind of stuff initially.
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Mar 29, 2020 22:37
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So my partner and I had been debating chicken ownership for the past year or two. We both liked the idea of it, but also had several other pets and were kind of OK with not taking on the slightly more responsibility etc. The Covid bullshit has given us A) more free time to build a coop and B) a little more rationale to have some secondary food source available and a faster compost generation method (we do a ton of composting at home already). So...  itshappening.gif I'm building a Wichita cabin coop design and just got all the lumber etc delivered earlier in the week. Looking to get setup with ~6 hens and see how it goes.
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Apr 9, 2020 17:35
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Coop building going good. This is halfway through the day. Didn't get another photo at sundown but there was even more done.  Got a brooder set up a few days before and made sure the temp was stable so my partner went out and got some chicks from a breeder on craigslist that lives just 2 miles down the road.   Got a couple of them drinking and into the feed and the rest rapidly followed. We want to end up with 6 hens total. We got 3 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Cream crested legbars (known female), 2 blue / black Marans crosses, 3 Wyandottes (gold or silver, breeder wasnt sure which was which). We were looking for a mix of good layers, temperment and cold-hardy birds. Given we are in RI I wanted to initially get RI Reds but only one breeder had some and they were charging a pile for them. I think we got a pretty good mix, hopefully they make it to maturity and enough of them are hens!
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Apr 12, 2020 01:13
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Mozi posted:Looking good! They grow up quickly so better to get the coop finished too early than too late. If I have one piece of advice for building a coop it would be to consider adding poop boards that are easy to clean out. omg that's adorable. Coop is going, hopefully I think we will be about 90% done by the end of this weekend (rain delays mostly).  When / what can you give chicks as "treat" food? So far they are getting a medicated chick feed out of a large feeder. 1-2 of the wyandotte chicks are oblivious to humans and will jump up on our hands but the rest of them seem to run in terror whenever we approach the cage. I'd like to give them some positive reinforcement to people etc, just not sure if I need to be starting that ASAP or not.
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Apr 15, 2020 21:18
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Omg dry oats were a hit. I had 8 out of 10 chicks in or on my hands eating. 
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Apr 17, 2020 01:05
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I give them maybe 2 tbls (split between 10 chicks) maybe 2x a day just so they will come sit on my hands and eat. Also, we have some chick grit and they have gone into it pretty enthusiastically. So far all seem healthy. It's amazing how much they change in appearance every day (except the buff orps, they just get bigger and stay little golden fluffs). The 3 silver / gold wyandotte chicks were a little bigger and now they are flapping wings around a lot and perching up on things and generally run to the door and jump on my hand as soon as I open the cage. Pretty cool little guys. The coop is coming together. No work today since it's 100% chance of rain until midnight here.  So uh, not looking forward to this but our batch of chicks is going to probably have a few roosters. Is there a good resource for best practices on humanely killing / cleaning? I have experience prepping ducks from hunting them as a teenager, but it's been 20 years since I've done that. I don't intend to raise the birds for meat, but we can't have roosters here and unless I can find someone to take them off my hands I'd rather at least make use of them 
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Apr 18, 2020 15:35
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They get big so fast!  We had 3 buff orps which were some of the smallest of the litter we got. One of them is definitely still much smaller than the others. Sleeping a lot and pooping and eating, but overall just seems pretty lethargic and is a lot smaller than the other orp chicks and the rest of the flock in general. Are there usually pretty pronounced runts like that? Coop is coming along nicely. Nestbox done, 2 boxes inside, middle partition is removable for easy cleanup.  Mocked up, need to hang the doors on hinges tomorrow once the new coat of paint dries up fully.  All that's left is to add in some concrete around the base bricks (they're sitting on a buried leveled ring of bricks which work as a wall against burrowers. Then I have to install some perches across the coop and poop boards under them. Last thing is make some frames for the plexiglass I have and install the windows over the hardware cloth openings. Looking at different coop plans / videos etc, I've seen all kinds of different roosting perches inside the coop, people using branches, dowels, sandpaper coated dowels / planks, etc. Is there any consensus on what to use there? I hadn't read up on it yet.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:44
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Lawson posted:Don't know about consensus, but I'm using regular 2x3's and have had no complaints in 8 years. Goal is 5-6 hens. We bought 10 unsexed chicks. Coop and run area is 10x5 ft
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Apr 21, 2020 10:26
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Source4Leko posted:Are you burying the wire around the perimeter of the run? Your foundation looks really nice but a critter would be able to dig under it and get at your hens pretty quickly if you're not adding anything there (or maybe you have and I'm not seeing it.) Underneath the obvious bricks up top there's another 8 inches of brick buried. The bricks up top have now been concreted around and I'm burying them up to the bottom wood beam so it should be about 10-12" of concrete all the way round beneath the coop walls. Mozi posted:I have a 2x4 and a regular branch as roosts in my coop and they seem to have no particular preference. Yep I am adding some bars, perches and other stuff for them to climb / sit on in the run as well as mounting a dust bath in one of the corners slightly above ground. Also once they are living in the coop permanently I'll be building another 4'x8' run area that I can butt directly into a not yet built hatch off to one side. This will just be chicken wire and will be a daytime only run for them to expand into. Was debating just making this a small tractor instead and I could kinda run them around different places in the yard too, haven't decided but I could bang out something like that in 1 weekend without much fuss. We also will let them free range around the backyard if it seems like they are chill enough for it. Thanks for all the suggestions! I put in 2x4s into the coop area and finished up the coop windows. Built a ramp as well out of some crap scrap wood, maybe I'll build a nicer looking one, probably not.  I put about 3 coats of spar down on the bottom to waterproof the wood as much as I can. This is for eventual hosing out of the coop on cleaning. Not easy to see there is a 2" drain hole with grating. I have a rubber plug to fit into it when not cleaning.  There's some solar motion activated lights around it hopefully might dissuade some nocturnal predators, will see.   We brought them all out and had a "Race" for a Zoom talent / variety show some of our friends put on. It was fun, everyone loved the chicks. They are super hard to photograph but have been awesome so far.
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Apr 27, 2020 21:40
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Nettle Soup posted:I'd maybe be wary of those windows being weak points? Might wanna put some proper locks on them... The windows sit outside the hardware cloth which is secured by the outer trim panels. I hope that's enough?  tell me if not, tried pretty hard to read up / build a fairly secure setup. Thanks for the compliments all.
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Apr 28, 2020 00:51
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Errant Gin Monks posted:So it’s been years but I finally decided to get back into chickens. This time around I’m doing meat birds instead of layers, so I will focus less on the chickens themselves and more on their digs. I built a modern inspired coop to house my chooks while they grow out. I have been furloughed or about a week now and worked on this for 5 solid days. I’m happy with how it turned out. That's awesome
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Apr 28, 2020 10:42
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Birbs. Still impossible to photograph. Awkward teenagers all. Their behavior is getting more and more dramatic but they are all still very quiet.   
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May 16, 2020 17:08
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Things are going well in chicken land.  I put in some diagonal perches higher up in the coop and for a dustbath put in a sandbox filled with... sand, DTE and a little bit of ash. The chickens love to pile up and sit in it.   And use the area just in front of it as their dust bath instead   
That Works fucked around with this message at 17:07 on May 24, 2020 |
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May 24, 2020 16:37
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None of my chickens have really begun making adult noises yet. One of the cream crested legbars (which is definitely supposed to be a hen) has been acting way more aggressive with all the rest and lets out a couple loud prolonged squawks each morning when I let them into the run. How loud do hens get? It's getting close to maturity time for a few of them, with the entire flock theoretically being able to start laying in the next 2-5 weeks.
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Jun 12, 2020 14:45
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Does anyone know if maple shavings are bad for chickens? I have generated a ton as I am building some maple furniture and could use it for nest box bedding, litter etc. I didn't think it would be a problem but never hurts to check.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:28
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Coop update  I made a solar powered battery operated system for the coop. It's got a raspberry pi running a temp sensor and also a linear actuator to open and close the door. It's close enough to the house that it's on wifi so I can control it all remotely. That first egg gets ever more expensive.
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Jun 18, 2020 00:35
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