Chicken Math has Struck!! Or: New Coop NOW!!! Or: I'm Moving My Chickens to the Barn!!!

[BabasCoop]

We had some chicken math of our own!!!

our plan was to get 6 hens (no Roos). We had never had chickens before so we figured we would start small

on Monday, he brought home 8!!! 2 Silver laced Wyandottes 2 blue Wyandottes, 2 production reds and 2 ISA Browns. I asked him what happened to 6 and he said he liked these ones so he got 8 cause he couldn’t decide which 2 not to get.
On Wed. We went back to get supplies and saw they had RIR and Golden Comets, and we left with 4 more chicks!!! (2 of each).
Now I had wanted some Easter eggers, I thought they would be fun for the kids to collect different colored eggs. But now we were up to 12 chicks! This long time city girl was feeling a bit overwhelmed.
On Thurs. my 22 yo daughter went to coastal farm supply with her BF while I was working and called me all excited because they had a new batch of EEs that had just arrived. I took a deep sigh and said, well pick me out 2. She came home with 4!!!! Said they were so cute and so many different colors she couldn’t get just 2.

So now!!!! My small little first time starter coop of 6 hens is now a full blown coop/run with 16!!!!!

This was about 4-5 weeks ago!

An now to top it all off, we discovered one of the blue Wyandottes is a cockerel!!!!

So I now have 15 hens and a Roo!!!

Oye Vye!!! Gotta love chicken math!!!!!

 

[CrisAnderson27]

LOL

 

[Three Little Bunnies]

Good luck with your chicken math!!!!

 

[CrisAnderson27]

Ok, I love your dog!! Any doggo that will bring home a kitten without hurting it just melts my heart! And he's pretty too. Love the cat, too. We are allowed 6 chickens at our place (town ordinance) and I really wanted Swedish Flower Hens,, which aren't around here anyplace, so I ordered some on EBay. I paid for 6 and the lovely lady sent 8, just in case some broke...which they did not. As a first time chicken keeper and incubator, I figured that what I read here would apply to me/us...that maybe 4 would hatch because "With shipped eggs a 50% hatch rate is considered good". Well, all 8 hatched. So now with the 7 chicks my partner already had, we had 15 chicks in all! We lost 2 along the way, but we still have 13. I figure though, that half will turn out to be roosters, which we can not keep. It will be sad if we have to eat chickens we've basically hand-hatched though...I assisted in helping most of them hatch so...yeah. Little new lives tumbling out into my hand!
I will watch your chronicle with great interest. We are (ahem) older ladies...so while we had planned to build the coop and run ourselves, we ended up getting a construction group in town who are a bunch of really cool guys - probably about your age - to build it for us. I built my own rabbit cages but those are a lot smaller - very similar to what I see you did. Right now I have cinnamon rabbits, one buck and 2 does and 3 growing out babies. Good luck to you!

Thank you! I love him too, lol. He caught a fledgling bird yesterday...it could only fly a few feet off the ground...and only for 15' or so. It looked like a young dove. Again...a forceful 'SPIT IT OUT!!!' and he dropped it, unharmed. The only reason I knew it was in there was the slightly parted mouth and flapping wings out the sides lol. He was CARRYING it. If I hadn't seen it may not have survived...but it wouldn't have been on purpose by any means.

As for your six chicks...just explain chicken math to anyone complaining. 13 birds really IS 6!! I was honestly concerned when all of my Ameraucana eggs were viable and cooking right along lol. I expected 50%!!! That 8x8 coop really is barely large enough for my twenty barred rock girls as it is...and with Johnny, it's about 2x too small (he's kind of a jerk to them!). There's still plenty of roost space (they only take up about 5' on two of the three roosts), but it still seems small. Plus they're likely going to double or more in size. Even the run they're in is a bit too small at this point.

But...even if every egg I have right now hatches a chick, that'll be a total of 50 birds. The barn space I'm converting, less the duck enclosure...will give me between 6' and 7' per bird. Add in the run I'm hoping to finish out in a few weeks, and that'll be over double that.

So I'm in a good spot now, lol!!

I had 7 rabbits....2 males and 5 does. I traded one of them for Johnny though (which is good because I only built 6 hutches lol). I bought three of them from the same guy (Hoochie, Hooker/Fuzzy Face, and Cali-Girl...long standing joke with my dad about the promiscuity of rabbits lol, all the females are named like that). TWO of them were supposedly already pregnant. The third was Hoochie...the smallest at 5mos old. Turns out, the only one that WAS pregnant was Hoochie. She randomly built a nest a week ago out of her bedding, so I built her a nest box, and two days later she pulled fur and threw 6 kits. Cali also was rebred to Gunner...and should be kindling on the 21st. I only keep two pregnant girls at a time, and whichever they are stay in the larger grow out cages.

Anyhow!! Thank you for your response! I'll keep on posting here for sure. Probably loooooong after you guys lose interest, lol. I like documenting what I've done in video and text. It makes a really nice reference for myself to go back on...and hopefully for others looking for solutions to any similar problems they might face.

 

[CrisAnderson27]

Thanks.
Johnny looked overwhelmed by all those 'fat' little girls...
....found some solace up high and way from them all.
Will be interesting to see how this progresses.
Range will be fine with you guiding him.

I think he was lol. He's turned into a proper jerk now though. He doesn't mount them...but he runs them a bunch, and pulls feathers when he can. He also tries to guard the food. I'm not quite 100% sure how they should be interacting right now (I'll actually bring it up in the other thread about the age gap etc)...so I'm just keeping an eye on him. They do seem to be settling a bit, so I have hope.

He is absolutely positively GORGEOUS!

He really is!! I'm hoping he'll settle down and be a good little roo for them. I've been catching him daily (MAN HE'S FREAKING FAST!!) and carrying him around the property with me to hopefully acclimate him to me, and everything else going on around here. Kind of sucks to have to terrify him for 15 minutes to catch him...only to calm him down for 20, and carry him around for 20 more.

We had some chicken math of our own!!!

our plan was to get 6 hens (no Roos). We had never had chickens before so we figured we would start small

on Monday, he brought home 8!!! 2 Silver laced Wyandottes 2 blue Wyandottes, 2 production reds and 2 ISA Browns. I asked him what happened to 6 and he said he liked these ones so he got 8 cause he couldn’t decide which 2 not to get.
On Wed. We went back to get supplies and saw they had RIR and Golden Comets, and we left with 4 more chicks!!! (2 of each).
Now I had wanted some Easter eggers, I thought they would be fun for the kids to collect different colored eggs. But now we were up to 12 chicks! This long time city girl was feeling a bit overwhelmed.
On Thurs. my 22 yo daughter went to coastal farm supply with her BF while I was working and called me all excited because they had a new batch of EEs that had just arrived. I took a deep sigh and said, well pick me out 2. She came home with 4!!!! Said they were so cute and so many different colors she couldn’t get just 2.

So now!!!! My small little first time starter coop of 6 hens is now a full blown coop/run with 16!!!!!

This was about 4-5 weeks ago!

An now to top it all off, we discovered one of the blue Wyandottes is a cockerel!!!!

So I now have 15 hens and a Roo!!!

Oye Vye!!! Gotta love chicken math!!!!!

RIGHT!?!? I think I'm good right now...with what I have. I've got the 14 Ameraucana eggs hatching in a week, along with 2-4 seemingly viable Ayam Cemani. I've also got 11 more Ayam Cemani eggs going into an incubator tonight. It's a lot of birds...but thankfully my brain finally realized that 1/3 of my barn would make a perfect poultry habitat, lol. If not...I'd have been in trouble!!

Good luck with your chicken math!!!!

Thank you!! Lord knows I need it, lol!!

 

[aart]

He also tries to guard the food.

That's not great, multiple feeders might be a good idea....may be part of his dominance game.

 

[CrisAnderson27]

That's not great, multiple feeders might be a good idea....may be part of his dominance game.

Yes sir. I'm currently trying to feed fermented food. It was working very well until I added Johnny Boy lol. I've just been putting a little extra so I know there will be some in there for them when he's busy outside. I switched from the bucket setup to two 36" goat feeder/troughs. I'm switching them to opposite ends of the coop tonight. Hopefully that makes it a bit better.

 

[drumstick diva]

I think Bunny is trying to keep his food warm

 

[CrisAnderson27]

I think Bunny is trying to keep his food warm

Or hatch it!

 

[Eggscaping]

Thank you! I love him too, lol. He caught a fledgling bird yesterday...it could only fly a few feet off the ground...and only for 15' or so. It looked like a young dove. Again...a forceful 'SPIT IT OUT!!!' and he dropped it, unharmed. The only reason I knew it was in there was the slightly parted mouth and flapping wings out the sides lol. He was CARRYING it. If I hadn't seen it may not have survived...but it wouldn't have been on purpose by any means.

As for your six chicks...just explain chicken math to anyone complaining. 13 birds really IS 6!! I was honestly concerned when all of my Ameraucana eggs were viable and cooking right along lol. I expected 50%!!! That 8x8 coop really is barely large enough for my twenty barred rock girls as it is...and with Johnny, it's about 2x too small (he's kind of a jerk to them!). There's still plenty of roost space (they only take up about 5' on two of the three roosts), but it still seems small. Plus they're likely going to double or more in size. Even the run they're in is a bit too small at this point.

But...even if every egg I have right now hatches a chick, that'll be a total of 50 birds. The barn space I'm converting, less the duck enclosure...will give me between 6' and 7' per bird. Add in the run I'm hoping to finish out in a few weeks, and that'll be over double that.

So I'm in a good spot now, lol!!

I had 7 rabbits....2 males and 5 does. I traded one of them for Johnny though (which is good because I only built 6 hutches lol). I bought three of them from the same guy (Hoochie, Hooker/Fuzzy Face, and Cali-Girl...long standing joke with my dad about the promiscuity of rabbits lol, all the females are named like that). TWO of them were supposedly already pregnant. The third was Hoochie...the smallest at 5mos old. Turns out, the only one that WAS pregnant was Hoochie. She randomly built a nest a week ago out of her bedding, so I built her a nest box, and two days later she pulled fur and threw 6 kits. Cali also was rebred to Gunner...and should be kindling on the 21st. I only keep two pregnant girls at a time, and whichever they are stay in the larger grow out cages.

Anyhow!! Thank you for your response! I'll keep on posting here for sure. Probably loooooong after you guys lose interest, lol. I like documenting what I've done in video and text. It makes a really nice reference for myself to go back on...and hopefully for others looking for solutions to any similar problems they might face.

Thank you for your lengthy reply! No, since we are both retired, we probably will NOT get tired of your videos.
One question: Why do you hang your pellet feeders on the inside of the cage? I've found that my rabbits waste lots more feed that way, because when they jump on top, they knock out pellets. I finally got around to cutting slots in the cage wire, which lets the hopper hang outside with the little 'trough' inside. Much quicker and easier to fill and much less wasted food. (Your rabbits are lovely, BTW) I did one quick video to show our chicks...when it was too cold to put them outside. Still, it was the first time I figured out how to put something on YouTube, so I was unjustifiably proud of myself. It's here, if you'd like to see it: