I'm planning on building a garden box in the chicken pin. I'm going to cover it with chicken wire so they can pick at the greens without digging them up I'm lookingfor stuff that might last threw the fall as this is a late in th
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I found this plan for a compost bin. We are going to build it in the run as soon as the coop is finished!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Chicken-Powered-Three-Stage-Compost-Bin-Photos/
How do you compost the chicken manure with the compost the chickens dig through?I like the wooden bins like the ones shown at that link. A lot of people fashion them out of wire fencing, but the nice thing about the wooden ones is that the chickens can perch and rest on the top rims. In our yard, the shady area with the wooden compost bins is the favorite hang out area. They spend a lot of time picking through the compost and then resting/roosting on the rims.
Their favorite time happens around 6 pm when I open the run area door and they all come out to free range until dusk when they go back inside and head for the roosts for the night.
Don't you just hate that!!! )*&^ foxes. They're so beautiful but so dangerous for our birds. They only trick I have is to change around their "out" time, sometimes in AM, then PM, or mid day. You'll have to lure them back in of course, but find that grocery plastic bag with treats works every time. You have to confuse the critters, once they are used to the birds' time out, they'll be back. So sorry you lost your favorite, know how it feels. Had a RI Red rooster with 70 hens, and he gave his life protecting his flock from a fox. He was a gem, would jump into my arms. Gosh, I miss him too. Maybe set some live traps and get her out of there, or have a local trapper come in, we did that and he got 3 of the varmints. Sympathies...
When I lived in California, I SAW a coyote jump out of the tall grass and grab one of my young hens. I just happened to be looking in that direction or I would have missed it. He was there and gone in a flash!Yea, I mean we even had a juvenile red fox come up a few months ago & it was the first one I'd seen in a long time b/c they are pretty rare to see around here, b/c the grey foxes run around mostly, unless the coyotes are there...but truthfully I'd almost rather have coyotes b/c they don't seem to be as stupid & sneaky as foxes, like they'll definately wait till after dark if they are gonna do anything...& my chickens are up at night, but foxes will do all their dirty work during anytime of the day...AWWWW I've heard of roosters protecting the flock like that, thats crazy..I wonder what a fox would do if it came upon a Jersey Giant Rooster..LOL, prolly crap his pants!!!!....
But yea we live on 5 acres (we used to be right outside the city limits of Little Rock, but now we're in them), but yea, my dad has shot some of the grey foxes, one of them at 10am, it was charging towards our chickens in the backyard, my mother was even outside watering the plants & she started yelling at it & yelling for my dad, & he got the .22 & got him SECONDS before he grabbed a chicken...that one was a juvenile one, b/c I would hope a full grown fox wouldn't be that stupid to hang around w/my crazy mom yelling at it like 50 feet away.