FoodKiller's chicken journal!

Hello forum. I will try to use this topic as a journal. My introduction in your forum is here

I am a newbie. In the forum and in having chickens.

I will post some pictures of my chickens and my young rooster which i bought 2 days ago.

I bought the raised chickens in a dirty chicken farm from a cage with no space for anymore chickens, the chickens was so packed in there!! Maybe 100 chickens in a so small space, bad memory!

For the history as i said in my introduction i was not organized and when i returned home with the chicks i had a cool adventure running after my chickens in my new, big, empty (no planted) yard. Finally, i made a temporary coop, which i am ashamed of, in the corner of the yard by using some spare fence parts i had and threw the chickens inside. I never had chicks before.

The first pictures follow.



1)This cute cool creature is supposed to be my young rooster, i am not sure if he is a rooster actually, neither i can tell how old he is, he sounds to me like a bird on the trees.
My 10 months old daughter loves him and yells at him! I tell her its food, in our way of communication. What do you think of the rooster?


2)This is the temporary "coop" (not) i made for them. I still have them in there. Please dont hit me for keeping chickens in there, i know its pretty bad for them, one of the chickens was making weird sounds when i visited them in 14:00 while breathing, i am almost sure it was from the extreme heat 95 to 100 Fahrenheit (38-40 celcius, i used Fahrenheit because most of you are from USA if i am not mistaking) i released them untill the evening and they have spent their first full day in the shade of my house, fertilizing. I keep the 2 chickens in there, the rooster escaped while being beaten by the chickens from the holes of the fence thats why i kept him in the dog carrying box untill i make another temporary coop for him. I have planned a chicken tractor on paper and bought some of the materials, but i dont think i will build it very soon. However, i want to make this temporary coop better for them. I must do something for more shade for sure.


3)This is the first egg i got it today! I was extremely happy to get that. Are those spots suspicius? I would not give an egg from those chicken to my daughter yet, i must eat few first to see if i die or not i hope its good. How does it look to you?


This is where they layed the egg! It was totally empty when they layed the egg, i placed that broken trimmed weeds after i got the egg to "improve" this advanced and professional egg laying bucket!




4) Those are my chickens, UGLY heh? The light brown is very social the darker is still abit scared or something. They have an issue! I think, all the chickens in the farm i bought them from, had missing feathers in their necks, mine surely do! I thought that they were fighting each other, but now i think they are actually plucking their own feathers. I am not certain about anything i write, they might plucked each other too. I saw somewhere on the net that it might be just stress from the crowded chicken farm, is that correct? Could it actually be something else, what would be the reasons for a chicken to have missing feathers like that? This adds to the reasons i would not feed my daughter with their eggs, and i didnt find any real answears for that. The people in the chicken farm are too weird to interact with, or i am. I trust your community more than i trust them as people.

The chicken farm people didnt want to give me the young rooster, it was 6 persons and they all were saying to me not to buy the young rooster. He was in a shaded cage with more young birds, propably roosters, not as crowded as their chicken cage was. While the seller was showing me the rooster and was telling me "look he is just a young rooster you should not buy it" i grabbed him and never gave him back then at the cashier they were all sad i wanted to have it. I would not go back there, if i have other options. (its the only chicken farm i know of, after asking alot of people and its 20min by car from my place)

I also have bought thermostats and everything i need to build an incubator, i plan to order eggs from ebay, that way i will have more options for what type of chickens to raise. I think i will do that in the winter which i have ALOT of spare time, from November to March, its all spare time.

Even for a forum journal i think i write too much. If you have read my journal excuse me for any mistypes and my orthography, my language is not English.

The wannabe "FoodKiller"

Eating their own feathers can be from stress and also a lack of proper nutrition.. You reall need to get some sort of shade and or cover for them to go into .. Especailly since they havent been cared for well... I would be giving them lots of veggies , greens are great and they love cabbage..This will help give them nutrition and also something to do.. Really read up on here and anywhere you can on proper chicken care.. even iif they are just for food their basic care needs to be provided(i.e. proper shelter,food,protection) Good luck with them and have fun...

My ex batterys came to me like that...such a sorry state bless them!! well well done you for helping them im sure there not bothered about what there coop looks like just yet there prob relishing there freedom,have fun with them they look like sweet little girls/guys xx

Woa, that's so freaky. A few of our hens are going through the same faze with having no feathers around their necks. I thought it might have been mites or something (we did dust them just in case), but I didn't think nutrition (and stress) might be one of the causes to the lack of feathers. Good to know though!

Thank you all.

I must read up about "dusting" them for mites. I have no clue what it is yet.
Also i would like to notice that i measured the water PPM, which counts the salt in water, or how "bad" a source of water is.
The water that we can drink must be less than 200 PPM, the water i give them is plain water from the tap which today was 700 PPM !!!

I think this water is dangerous, its so dirty or salty that when i water my few new trees and the soil dries, it leaves a whitey color on the soil the water looks crystal clear.. but its not if you count the PPM.
I hope they can handle it, i cannot improve it, and i cannot carry bottled water for the chickens to my house, i only do that for my family.


Journal update:

I fell in love with my chickens. They listen to me, they follow me and eat from my hand already. They get in their "coop" when i show them and tell them and that is the third day.
They stopped eating my spearmint after i chased them and yelled at them the first time they did, which is so good because i dont have to look after them when i let them free range every morning and afternoon.

The little rooster thinks i am his father. He runs at me when the hens attack him when they are all together at free range. He gets on my hand by himself!

This morning, i returned home from work at 6:30, i woke up my daughter to give her the first meal of the day (milk, i give her the first because its very early and i am awake at that time anyway) while feeding her, i look up and what do i see? The rooster was free! I was surpiced, he escaped from the hole on the ceiling of his transport cage where he lives in.

I have no clue how he got through such a small hole on the ceiling, lol. My daughter saw him and was yelling at him and didnt want to sleep again after that

I had no more egg.

I gave them watermelon, melon and cabbage.Besides the white dusty food i bought from that chicken farm. They eat alot of that. TONS! They didnt eat the melon tho.

I also bought black sunflower seeds, but i think they dont like them or they dont know what it is. I was told on another topic to buy "BOSS" but i am not sure if i bought what i was told. Thats what the local petshop had for "black sunflower seeds". I might have to throw it away.

I gave them a little bit more shade by using a carton piece as a roof it worked well, they was looking relaxed even with full sun and extreme temperatures of 95 fahreneit

I think i am getting addicted

You might not wanna buy eggs on eBay, just because someone could rip you off by giving you unfertile eggs or something. But, if that's all you can do, just look for a top-rated seller or something, I guess. Oh yeah, if you do hatch eggs from a store-bought incubator, MAKE SURE YOU READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS!!!!! I read my instructions like 3 times, but I missed one thing, and it cost me like 4 eggs. And it broke my heart. Good luck with you chickensssss!!!! They're a blastttt! I'm also keeping chickens for the first time. I have 3 3 month old chickies that I hatched myself!!! They're doing awesome, and I'm learning a lot!

Quote:
Congratulations for keeping your own hatched chickens, i find it really exciting. The creating life idea. I plan to build my own incubator.

I have bought a digital thermostat with high and low temperature and i want to build a box that will be incubator on one side, then it will have a door for the hatched chickens to another room with lower temperature to grow a little bit in there. Hehe

Journal day 4 of my chickens

Today they ate crashed sunflower seeds from my hand and started eating the treats i give them. They now eat from my hand and they look so calm compared to the beggining. They are getting used to their new area and i dont think they miss the other chickens in the farm i bought them from.

While investigating one of my trees i found a grasshoper eating a mantarine tree. I grabbed it and gave it to Afterpee(chicken) alive. The antisocial unnamed chicken tried to fight for it but no luck. Afterpee then followed me around and wanted more grasshoppers which luckily for my trees were not available.

The young rooster is getting more brave, today he was running after Afterpee to scare her, but she didnt care too much. When he was getting near without results he was running back again trying to figure out how to scare her he even used his wings

Edit: I forgot to note i got my second egg today! The healthier looking egg i have ever seen, totaly clean and HUGE, the biggest chicken egg ever, i have 2 eggs now, i plan to eat them when i have 3

Journal day 5 AT WAR with the rooster

My rooster is evil, stupid and i am starting to hate him.

He always comes in my house through the garage door that i like to keep open in this hot weather and he uses it as a toilet and playground.

This way he escapes from the hens that hunt him down, while on free range.

My wife had to clean and mop the floor 4 times, from 14:00 untill about 19:00 today. That means the rooster is a threat for my family's peaceful life.

I finally got the rooster, and threw him between my 2 hens. He needed a lesson. He was running at me to save him, but i was throwing him back at them.

After 15 minutes of pecking, he decided he should be looking for a shelter somewhere else in my garden to escape from the hens by himself and finally he found, in the pen.

My good relations with that rooster belong to the past. I will let the hens teach him whats up in the chicken life.

I still keep them seperated in the night so they dont kill him or hurt him too bad but soon they will all live together.

I now love the chickens more, and appreciate their lovely eggs that are yummy.