Recent content by mrkep

My Buckeye pullets are 4 months old. Today we found 8 eggs. We changed their feed from starter to all flock this month. Should we start them on layer feed? I remember reading that feeding layer feed too early could damage the kidneys.

We have 9 Buckeye chicks that are 6 weeks old. Lots of feathers and about 9 inches tall. There are 9 adult Buckeye girls in the coop/ fenced run. Can we put the young ones in the coop at this age difference? Six years ago we put little ones in with adult birds and one of the young ones got...

Today we received our new chicks, 10 Buckeyes, and got them all watered & into their MHP cave, and I got to wondering, wwhen the mama chicken hatches eggs, how do the chicks get water & food? The new arrivals are in the coop with the big chickens and the water & feeder are at big chicken height...

During the summer, I mix the poop with grass clippings. Then let it cook for 6 months, During the winter, I dig trenches in the middle of the gardens and put the poop in there, then fill the trenches in the spring.

I made a momma's heating pad cave for the chicks we will receive in April. When I turned it on, the temp got to only 80 degrees. The recommendations for heating with a lamp are to maintain 95 for the first week, then reduce it weekly. So do I have a defective pad or will 80 be OK because they...

I have been following the threads about the MHP brooder and thought I had it figured out, then i saw that someone had done it with the heating pad on the top of the cave. When a chicken broods chicks, she sits on them, hence the heat comes from above. So maybe the pad should be above? Blooie has...

I brought 6 Australorps into my flock of 10 Buckeyes. The A's killed one buckeye and pecked 2 others bald. So now the A's are dinner and I have more Buckeyes, they are very docile. And the bald ones have regrown feathers.

When we first started with chickens, one died at 1 year old. No apparent reason, so I asked on this site for opinions. There were lots of suggestions but the one I found to be the most comforting was from a gentleman who claimed to have been raising chickens for 60 years. He said, chickens do...

Hey Blooie, neat idea. Now I know what to do with the seed heating pad that never was real effective. I'm not sure what the temp setting is , but the cave idea solves that. I have 10 Buckeyes coming in April. mrkep

We started with Buckeyes, straight run, ate the roosters, and the hens have always been docile and friendly with each other. Two years ago we bought 6 chicks from the farm supply that were labeled as pullets, black with green tints, I guess they are austrolorps. They immediately became the...

Hey Ridgerunner, great information. I had never heard of this and wanted to learn just what you posted, thanks.

That was also my opinion. It sounded wrong to me so I wanted others' opinions.

I was talking to a man who has raised chickens for 30 years, and when we talked about molting and how bad the chickens look at this time of year, he said that he takes away the water supply for 2 days and that forces the chickens to molt. He does it in September so they are re-feathered by cold...

Two Buckeyes hatched on 5/10/2010-had a straight run of 11 roos & 13 pullets (1 doa)

Our yard has large dead grass areas caused by grubs, which apparently eat the roots. So we started to pull up the dead areas which exposed hundreds of grubs. At first my lovely wife was putting the grubs in a bucket and taking them to the chickens. When the areas got bigger, we got 2 chickens...