new chicken lover

hello y'all. My name is Gregg. I am recently medically retired from the Army. I started my own business but still looking for ways to control my aggression and be able to take care of others and such, so after a lot of discussion, my very apprehensive wife finally agreed to let me have a few chickens and ducks. So we did the basic google search and figured we would jump in with both feet, but keep this as cost effective as possible.

Luckily for us, someone in my neighbor, saw on Facebook that i was looking to get into chickens, and offered me his chicken coop, some fencing, water and food things and some other odds and ends for $50. Score. Next thing is we needed to get some birds. Off to tractor supply we went. we grabbed 5 Red Rangers, 2 California whites and 1 random black one that they didn't know the breed of and was about a week old.

We took them home and of course everyone in the family started calling dibs on "their" birds. 2 days later we went back to tractor supply and got 2 ducks. I figured **** they are gonna need to be outside here shortly better start getting the chicken pen done (now i find out its called a chicken run). So knowing my budget was about 18 cents , 2 buttons and a handful of lint. So I knew i could still do this. I had a bunch of wood slats from when they built the fence for my backyard, I had a bunch of screws and nails, and a staple gun. Guess what. It worked. I built a chicken run that is built entirely without a measuring tape. Everything was eyeballed, because hey, what if i failed, i didn't want a lot of time and effort into it.

So here we are about 3 weeks in and the ducks are huge, and the chickens are growing like weeds as well. No mortalities. So hopefully next month I will re-engineer the chicken run into something a bit sturdier and eye appealing.

Anyways, nice to meet y'all and thats how i came upon this page!

Hi there, and welcome to BYC, Gregg! I think you will find your new feathered friends will be just what the doctor ordered in regards to why you decided to get into them in the first place - there is something very theraputic in having them around.

Well welcome to BYC, and thanks for your service. The learning center is great for learning all sorts of new things about birds and if you can't find it there then search the forums you will probably find you answer one way or another. I would say the best thing about chickens is their personalities like my ameraucana named ash you don't dare bend over or she will hop on your back and move her way up to your shoulder to be petted. One more thing I don't know where you are located but lots of farm stores will have either the rangers or cornish cross as meat birds, I read your whole post and you said you got red rangers they are a meat bird and the breed is ready to butcher at about 16 weeks normally meat birds don't lay well even if they live past the butchering age you have to be very constricting on their feed otherwise they will eat themselves to death. However if you got production reds or redsexlinks whatever name they go by they are a red colored hybrid that will lay lots of eggs, those are great, but if you really did get red rangers they will have to eventually be butchered.

Hi Gregg,

It's nice to have you here! I think a lot of us have a budget that sounds like yours ("18 cents , 2 buttons and a handful of lint"). Resourcefulness can take you a long way when it comes to building things. I call my husband MacGyver because he can build something out of nothing.

Enjoy those new fuzz butts, there's no better show around than chicken (or duck) tv.

Sorry, I am in South Georgia. Seems when we bought out two Peking ducks, that we got one Peking duck and one runner

oh well you still have two ducks to enjoy, it happens once in a while, around here a lot of people will advertise americana rather than ameraucana and so a lot of kids in 4h and ffa have been kicked out of shows as a result, one of my friends was tricked by getting an EE instead, I felt bad because she was so embarrassed she didn't know what she had at the time.

well it definitely is a learning experience. I have been haunting here for about a week and finally decided to join in and talk with yall. I have been looking chicken runs plans, and once i figure out how to attach photos I will show you what i already have.

I think I figured it out









and meet "Hawkeye", my little buddy. He follows me around loves to lay on my chest with his head snugly in my beard...

Nice to meet you Gregg, welcome to Backyard chickens. Thank you sincerely for your time in service.

thank you!