Recent content by 612Chickens

My son keeps talking about the free eggs. We are enjoying our first year with chickens a lot, but between the coop materials and spending my entire summer building the coop, there is nothing free about the eggs!

Thanks for the comments. I don't think that it is yolk. Several hours later, you really can't see much of anything on the egg. There is light shading, far less obvious. I would think that yolk would leave a more shiny residue after it dried. Only two are laying, and we check the nest box several...

It seems to be a thin fluid that dries and mostly disappears after that. They are on an organic grower feed with grit and oyster shells available. They get some scratch grains, fruits, and vegetables too.

One of our Easter Eggers has had these splotches on her last few eggs. She is about 7 months old and has been laying for about a month. Can anyone suggest what it might be? How should I investigate? Thanks!

I bought wheat seed in bulk from the local food coop last summer and grew it continually for our pullets. I bought both hard and soft wheat, and can never remember which grew better... I made some basic planter boxes out of 2x4s and plywood scraps from my coop construction. Most days, I would...

I am curious to see how this all works out for us. We have 4 pullets that are about 6.5 months old. Two started laying 3 weeks ago, and two have not yet started. I have a supplemental light that goes on at 5:30am, but at 45 deg N, today which is the earliest sunset at 4:31pm, they are only...

Do you have your code posted anywhere, like Github? (For context, I have been meaning to put my Pi coop monitor code out there, but I haven't cleaned it up to the point where I want to publish it...)

I put together my own sensor using a Raspberry Pi and a Sense Hat board. The Pi is logged into my wifi network and has no problems connecting from the backyard. I wrote some pretty simple Python code to get the sensor readings and then push the data to an API. It currently only measures temp...

I don't remember who posted this idea on a different thread, but turning it upside down and walking on it really helped. Genius!

At two weeks, our chicks are starting to jockey for position. When I hold out my hand and have one of them climb up on it, our Buff Orpington jumps on top to try to claim the high ground. They all sleep nicely together on the pine shavings, but I am wondering if it makes sense to put a low...

We have fed our chicks only chick crumble, but the store that we bought the chickens from said that we can start introducing some vegetables at two weeks. When is it appropriate to start supplementing with vegetables, and what are some good foods to start with?

I have a similar basic waterer, but with a glass mason jar instead of the plastic one. They haven't tipped it over, but I must have cross-threaded it one day because I came home and all of the water had drained out and soaked the paper towels. I put it in an aluminum pie plate, and haven't had...

Thank you for the reply. In the city, we have some foxes and coyote, and quite a few big racoons. This is one of those enclosed runs that includes and goes under the coop. The relevant part of the design is really a rectangle, one row of concrete blocks, that provide the base for the walls of...

I am about to start building a coop, and I am trying to think through the best way to install a hardware cloth apron around the coop and run. The coop is essentially a reverse Wichita on a capped cement block foundation. I am thinking that the top of the paver cap will be a few inches above...