Quote from: MrIncredible on May 16, 2010, 05:52:05 PM
Do you guys know why a chicken coupe has two doors?






































































Because if it had four doors it'd be a chicken sedan!

a chicken sedan  classic

Polpetta, your chicks are looking great!!   They grow so fast   Mine wound up living in a kiddie pool for a couple of weeks before it was warm enough for them to move outside.  Thanks for sharing the photos

Quote from: Dan on June 08, 2010, 12:32:33 PM
Chickeners    

Buncha fricken fahmahs

You sound just like my neighbor, Mitch, who grew up on a Maine chicken & crop farm a whole bunch of decades ago. "Theah goes fahmah Brad" seems to be how he says hello lately. 

One of ours woke us up night before last, clucking and squawking at about 1:00 a.m. -- right outside our bedroom window, which is a good 50' from the chicken run.  We scrambled for shoes & flashlights and went out to find the gate to the run open (we'd forgotten to close it behind them after letting them run free in the yard that evening) and three of the four hens accounted for. A search of the yard found one dazed and confused Wyandotte hunkered down in the side yard. She didn't have any visible injuries, but she seemed pretty shell-shocked by whatever she'd just experienced. By the next morning, she was just fine.

We've got coyotes, raccoons, skunks & weasels that could conceivably have snagged her off the top of the chicken coop where ours always roost for the night, but I'd have expected her to be at least bloodied by any of those. We've also got great horned owls around, but there's not a whole lot of flying room inside the 6' x 12' x 6' chicken run (with a the coop taking up a chunk of that) for a bird of prey with that kind of a wingspan. The other possibility is a human chicken rustler who dropped her and scrammed when the hen started squalling and the outside lights came on.

It'll remain a mystery, but it does remind us to be more diligent about remembering to close the gate behind the girls at night...

Congrats to everyone who's got chicks coming into their awkward adolescence -- your first egg is right around the corner!!

good thing you got all your birds back!  I have been worried about raccoons. 

started raining this morning so I haven't been able to get anymore work done on the coop

Great thread..  when I'm finally out of the city I want to raise chickens..  I eat 6eggs every morning,and a few with dinner sometimes as well..  chicken is also my main source of meat..  anyone raising them find it hard to eat chicken affterwards?  I doubt I will..  

Quote from: triangleforge on June 09, 2010, 07:56:41 AMyour first egg is right around the corner!!

I do love me some homegrown eggs. We can barely eat the store ones any longer.

What with the materials to build the coop, feeders and waterers, feed, and so on, I think our cost per egg is down to not much more than a dollar each...

Quote from: cokey on June 09, 2010, 09:09:25 AMI eat 6eggs every morning,and a few with dinner sometimes as well..  

Hey, if a life insurance company calls you about a policy some guy took out on you, just go along with it, OK?

Quote from: cokey on June 09, 2010, 09:09:25 AManyone raising them find it hard to eat chicken affterwards?  I doubt I will..  

Meat chickens are different breeds from layers. There are very few, if any, true "all-purpose" breeds. Layers tend to be the "pet" chickens, so people I know who want to raise chickens to eat have one batch for that (to which they never become attached) even if they have a different batch of layers that they view as pets.

Our total cost is pretty reasonable; I haven't calculated it out, but we're definitely below the cost of free-range eggs from the store. A big part of that is that we had the most expensive piece of equipment -- eight 6'x6' dog kennel panels & associated hardware -- already on hand & built the coop out of scrap materials.

Good advice on the differences between layers & fryers -- I've never raised them, but I understand that some of the meat breeds put on weight so fast that they can't really walk by the time they're ready to slaughter, about six months in, IIRC. I found a good resource describing the differences at http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_best_breed.html -- and learned there that our Wyandottes are actually considered a dual-purpose breed, which explains why our plump black & white hens lay smaller and fewer eggs than the scrawny little brown Rhode Island crosses, which lay these massive, almost duck-sized brown eggs.

I have heard that free-range laying hens that have lived out a full life make the best stewing & soup chickens. It's kind of a moot point for us, as the teenager declared them off limits to the stockpot... unless they live long enough for her to head off to college in three years or so, then all bets are off. (Shhhh -- don't tell!) I like 'em and really enjoy their odd, quirky personalities, but they're not pets.

 5 are egg whites only lol..   

There was tht one time, first time my wife ever cook me bfast.. 6 whole eggs in one shot..  I felt my chol shoot sky high lol..

I used to work at a Perkins (breakfast type restaurant) and one time I made myself a 10 egg cheese omlette for dinner.. .

and lived.

So I wasn't able to buy a coop.  The coops were either on back order or the people I was purchasing it from would receive it damaged.

I built a coop.  Sorry for the IZ_ cell phone pics. 



We were given 5 chickens.  More than I wanted but I had no choice.  Two adults, one is a year old and the other we don't know.  The adults are rode island reds.  Three two month old.  I don't remember the breed names.  One is a blue something or another and I don't remember the other two. 



This one is Rosie (the kids named them.)  Whenever you're outside she's right there next to you.  It's the cutest thing. 



We've had them for two weeks and no eggs yet from the adults.  I hope they start laying soon or my wife is going to warm up that pot. 

That' looks like a great coop -- much nicer than the one I built, and the kind of thing you'd pay a whole lot of money for if, you know, someone out there had been willing and able to take your money for a prebuilt one! 

Good luck with the egg production; wonder what's holding them up? Once they do start laying, you'll find the eggs make great barter fodder -- we've got a home brewing friend who happily swaps a 1/2 gallon growler of whatever he's bottling at the time for a dozen eggs. Just polished off what was left of his Hefeweizen, so our girls better get going so we've got a surplus again soon!

DP -- I'm really looking forward to seeing how your turkeys fill out! I really prefer wild turkey (both kinds, but the liquid kind's for another thread) or anything with a little more flavor than the frozen birds from the supermarket, so would like to talk a ranching friend of ours into raising a few...

I forgot to mention, we couldn't decide on where to put the coop.  So I made it as light as I could and added removable wheels.  I can easily cart it around the yard if we need.  I We like where it is now. 

I have a few theories on why they're not laying.  1. the car ride, about an hour, was too traumatic for them.  2. The introduction to the kids and the dog was too traumatic for them.  3. The feed I bought is really intended for the little birds.  It's not laying feed. 

The one excellent side effect of owning the birds has been that they eat bugs.  Lots of bugs!  Ticks, spiders, misquotes, black flies, ants, etc!  They are efficient little exterminators.   

Our hens went WAY beyond what any of the books said they should before they started laying. They started in February, which is also not supposed to happen. Once they started, it was as if they were trying to bury us alive in eggs.

Quote from: The Architect on June 10, 2010, 08:44:40 AM
3. The feed I bought is really intended for the little birds.  It's not laying feed. 

If it's a medicated feed (antibiotics added; some chick starters have it, some don't) I've been told you don't really want to eat the eggs anyway -- they'll give you a super-low dosage of antibiotics, which turns your body into a great environment to breed resistant strains of bacteria.