Still in 1st year of Chicken raising

[Phoenix2015]

So last school year our son's science class was doing a section on chickens and the kids all had an egg to hatch. He brought home what we think is a RIR, ended up being a Roo. After we bought 7 more chickens 6 Welsummers and 1 Black Copper Moran. All are healthy and doing well. I brooded them in our Shed with a plastic bin and a 60 watt bulb. Last October after we discovered that the RIR was a roo and one of our Welsummers was a roo, we moved the boys to a different pen because they were plucking the feathers off the hind ends of the Hens. Well the pen we put them in was one we bought rather than one we made so not as good a quality and we had a neighborhood dog attack and lost the two Roo's. My son was devastated but he got over it. My hens graced us with our very first egg on Christmas morning!

Now we have more babies. I have 8 Barred Rocks, that are 2 weeks old, 6 RIR that are a week old, and 4 Peking Ducks that are a week old (Hubby LOVES the ducks) Needless to say my Shed is FULL! We are almost done with a second coop that is attached to our original coop that will serve as the coop for the boys once we figure out how many we have, but the babies will all go in there when they are old enough to not be brooded anymore.

The ducks are very messy and I have to clean their box multiple times a day to keep them dry. Hoping that they can be moved outside sooner rather than later.

I have to say I LOVE my chickens. I work from Home so I check on them a lot. We have recently had some sort of predator attack that ripped holes in the poultry netting and also tore metal vents off the side of our Chicken house. Luckily my hubby instead of cutting one big hole behind the vents used a tool to just bore holes that were no bigger than 1 inch wide so what ever tried to get in was unsuccessful. But we have to fix the holes in the poultry netting (which luckily was the section under the chicken house that we had originally setup as a chick nursery to get the chicks and the older chickens use to being around each other, it has a door so we closed off that section of the coop to keep the chickens in until we can get the poultry netting fixed.

I recently found the forums and I am learning a lot about Chicken raising. My mom has about 14 chickens too that she is raising on 1 acre of land and she and my dad are loving it. Her chickens will fly up and roost on her arms. She lets them out in the yard while they work and then when it is time to go in she just says "Lets go girls" and they follow her into the run. My girls while they will come to the side of the pen when I talk to them don't really like me to touch them. I have one My Black Copper Maran, that will let me pet her. She squats down when she wants to be petted. Not sure what to do to make the girls trust me better but I am satisfied with what I have for the moment.

 

[RitzHomestead]

When you say poultry netting are you talking about the plastic stuff or the cotton netting? I started with the plastic stuff and it was horrible at keeping things out. We didn't want to spend the type of money that hardware cloth costs but it was worth it in the end. We lost our whole first flock due to some wild dogs and I vowed to not let it happen again. Hardware cloth has kept everything out so far, so it was well worth the $$$.

As for the trusting, it all depends on the chickens. My girls are all divas and will run to me if they think I have food but don't want me to touch them. lol

 

[Phoenix2015]

No, it is chicken wire. I think we bought a cheap version because it was not actually ripped it sort of looks like the twists were pulled apart. We plan on adding hardware cloth/wire as soon as I can find some big enough to cover the coops.

Yeah they will come right up to me when I'm in the coop but if I bend down to pet them or even touch or pick something up off the ground they scatter. I'm okay with it. They like it when anyone comes to talk to them, but they know who feeds them and will follow me around the coup.