Recent content by Kirklandchick

We don't name our chickens, so I'll go with Nameless lol.

Ours have been molting off and on for a few months now. Was hoping they'd be done before cold weather set in lol. We run an extension cord to keep a heated dog dish in their run for water, other than that we do not use light at night or use any heat for them. They go in for the night as soon as...

Here in northern Illinois, the coldest we had inside the coop last year was -1°F (no windchill inside coop). Tonight, we're at -5°F inside the coop. Been an awful cold December so far, hope January is warmer!

Our run has sand too. I sprinkle some Sweet PDZ throughout the run once or twice a week, and I only turn the sand over in the run about once a month, and sprinkle some Sweet PDZ over it after turning it. It helps keep the odor/gases down. But I also scoop as much large poops out as I can every...

Our setup sounds similar to yours, we close the pop door after they have gone in for the night and they do not have access to the water. They don't move off of the roost until either it gets light out or I turn the coop light on for them, so they wouldn't be eating or drinking anyway. Ours go...

Ok, here's my rundown as of late from our 6 hens (all about 10 months old): 1/13 - 5 eggs, 25F 1/14 - 4 eggs, 21F 1/15 - 3 eggs, 27F 1/16 - 5 eggs, 33F 1/17 - 4 eggs, 32F 1/18 - 4 eggs, 39F 1/19 - 3 eggs, 45F 1/20 - 5 eggs, 21F 1/21 - 3 eggs, 11F 1/22 - 4 eggs, 11F Many of these nights were...

I bought this heated dog dish on clearance at Walmart. We've had temps down into the single digits and even a -4F night a couple nights ago, no problems with water freezing. We ran the cord through the hardware cloth so that the dish sits up against the side of the run and they can't mess with...

We use a heated water dish that is for dogs. We don't have water inside the coop, as they pretty much only go in there to lay their eggs and to sleep at night, so the water stays outside in the run. We snipped one little piece of the hardware cloth to run the cord through so that it can sit...

Ours isn't a choice on the survey, but we use AgriMaster layer poultry feed crumbles. They really like it, seem to be doing well with it, and they are not messy or wasteful with it at all. We get it at Farm and Fleet, cost is $13.49 for a 50lb bag, but it's on sale frequently. We only have 6...

Here's my summary for the month so far from our 6 hens: Jan 1 - 17F - 2 eggs Jan 2 - 29F - 2 eggs Jan 3 - 26F - 5 eggs Jan 4 - 32F - 4 eggs Jan 5 - 34F - 3 eggs Jan 6 - 33F - 3 eggs Jan 7 - 38F - 5 eggs Not too sure there's much of a pattern here based on temps lol.

5/6 today, much better than the 3 each of the last two days!

Thank you! It is working out quite well, we have 6 hens in there. 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Black Australorps, 1 Speckled Sussex and 1 Barred Rock.

3/6 today.

We originally had 2 plastic dish tubs as our nesting boxes inside the nesting box with no divider between, but it seemed like most of them preferred to use the same side and we kept finding eggs in front of and in between the tubs because they tried squeezing on the same side. The final straw...

3/6 today. And I dropped one of them on the floor. I thought I had broken the fall with my foot, but it still cracked the shell so I cooked it up and the girls got a nice warm treat!