I started converting my shed into a coop - Page 6

Still no sign of him, so he's either *gone*, or happy wherever he ended up. His litter mate, my only rooster now, seems somewhat lost without him. They were always close, like actually touching when they'd do dust baths and stuff like that, but the hens don't allow such things and sometimes he's feeding by himself fifty yards or so away from them. He also goes to roost first, sometimes a half hour before the hens. Today he was on the roost while the hens were still out of sight somewhere behind the house.

I don't know if I should be looking for an older, more experienced rooster, or give up having a rooster. I like having one, but really expected him to play the role. I'm also still in the learning process, so I'll keep cruising the threads here and see what else I can learn.

The last rooster ended up dead too. I don't know what killed him, but my son found clumps of feathers in a line from behind the house, over to the hillside where it drops down into the bottoms (where I hear coyotes all the time).

Since all the roosters are gone now, that left me with just the four hens. I've been getting two eggs per day, but the last few days the little Pencil Rock hen has been laying too. Here's some egg pics;

Someone on the FB Ckn Swap is selling hens, so I bought four of them today. That doubles my flock, and I'm anxious to see how many eggs I start getting.

Here's all my girls;

One of my originals, and two of the new ones, didn't come home yesterday. That brings me back down to five, and I'm thinking that I can't let them free range anymore. A big part of why I got chickens was to watch them free ranging, but I can't keep having them wander off or get eaten.

I'm watching locally for some old linoleum big enough to cover the floor in there. That could be mopped like a kitchen floor.

Lately they've started laying all their eggs on the floor of the coop, but today they did something new; one of them laid an egg on the poop board.

I zinged that egg out in the driveway (where one of the chickens ran over and ate it), then I removed the poop board and the roost board. I left one of the boards that used to hold the poop board, so it's the roost now. I took the nest boxes down, and put them on the floor. Always a challenge.

Gotta go lock them up right now...