Hello and Welcome to TNDadx4's Lessons Learned Chicken Page!
![]() | We are new to raising chickens as we were just given 6 Araucana (Easter Egg) chickens. It is a personal goal of mine to try to live as self-sufficient and as simply as possible. I hope by sharing some information that others will be helped by what I've learned. ![]() I am also going to beposting pictures of the chicken tractor that the kids and I built over the course of a few weekends. The picture to the left is the very first eggs that we got from our new hens. We brought them home late (about 10PM) one night and didn't expect any eggs for a few days while they got adjusted, but they surprised us the next day with an egg from each of them. n.Speaking of eggs, that was a lesso |
Lesson One - Egg Schedule: I thought that chickens laid their eggs at night when they went back into the hen house to roost, etc. I've since learned that most eggs are laid before 10:00 AM, although I've found them all throughout the day. I've since learned that it's best to check for eggs at 10:00AM, 1:00PM and then at 5:00PM, just to be on the safe side. Lesson Two - Sick Chicken?: It was really warn the other day and we put a tarp over the top of the chicken run to provide then with some shade. We also made sure that their waterer was kept full of fresh water . While we were watching them, the strangest thing happened, one of them laid down with her mouth open and laid on her side for a bit. A little while later, another did the same. We started to get worried thinking that the chickens were sick, had heat exhaustion or something and then learned through talking with a friend that has chickens that everything that we saw was normal. It turns out, when it's warm outside, our hens will look for a place and scratch down until they reach nice, fine dirt. They then flop onto their backs, close their eyes and just roll around. This is how they keep clean! What a very cool and interesting thing to learn! | ![]() |
More to come, so check back soon!




Our Chicken Tractor
In building our chicken tractor, I looked at a lot of designs, but we didn't use any plans. I took features that I liked some several and came up with a design in my mind as to how I wanted it to be. Below, you'll see some of the construction as well as finished photos.
The Chicken Tractor (Construction Phase) | |