Washingtonians - Page 7212  

today is just not my day... lost all 3 of my turkey chicks... then i am eating dinner with my family with the door open only to see one of the cockerels grabbing my EE pullet by the neck swinging her around... Ran out feathers flying grabbed him, got my knife and ended that right there... Hope the little pullet is ok.. ugh 

That's funny. My kids are so sad that we're taking our rooster back to the farm on Saturday. We didn't want a rooster and luckily the seller takes them back AND credits you with your purchase price! They are sad that Scarlett is now Stew At least they'll be happy that we're instead bringing home 2 more pullets!

Today was a very long day for this old guy. I did (with #1 son's help) get the run finished late this afternoon. Missed the Mariner's game too dang it. Anyway my girls had their 1st day out in the world. Very hesitent to come down the ramp but they finally did. After about 2 - 21/2 hrs they began to explore their run. They like grass. (the green kind).

I have photos but will them tomorrow, too dang tired tonight.

Did they go back in the coop after night fell. Oh no, these are not very bright chickens, they huddled in the corner.  Gave them about 45 min of dark and went out and put them in the coop and closed their door.

Wow, another day done.

Just trim to do and primer and finish paint, a set of steps for me and a few odds and ends and the coop will be complete. Tomorrow's another day, but it may be a day off for me!

DH and I would love to start a compost bin but have no idea how big of a bin to start out with. We live on half and acre, mostly grass in the backyard (therefore a lot of clippings from that much grass) and have 11 chickens. I imagine that cleaning out the coop every other month or so will produce a LOT of litter to compost but I can't figure out how much. It's a 5x7 coop. I just need some sort of starting reference or link to a product that would work for us.

We live on 1/4 acre.  We have one standard size compost bin.  That seems to work just fine for a family of 5.  We compost grass, food scraps, etc.  For the sake of our neighbors (smell-wise), we have decided that we will burn the litter and compost the ashes.

That is a fantastic idea! We have a fire pit not 20' from the chicken area! Does burning the poop in the litter cause a lot of toxicity though, or is it hardly noticeable? Luckily I'll only need to do a burn about once every 2-3 months or less, so that's nice!!

We burned litter today.  Unfortunately, it got wet in the rain, so it was a little smokey.  It doesn't smell too bad - it's burning pine chips.  For the longest time I could smell the fire, but didn't realize what my husband was doing.  We ate dinner in the backyard with the fire going.  Seems fine.  During dinner I asked him what he was burning and he told me.  It didn't bother me at all, and didn't seem to faze my mom one bit even though the fire was about 20 feet from us.