Recent content by Lpsouth1978

We ordered 35 sexed females that we received in the spring. I was fully expecting to get at least a couple cockerels, but we received ALL pullets. Most hatcheries are quite good at sexing and will provide a guarantee if sexed females were ordered.

We have the opposite laying schedule here. Our girls do not lay many during the summer (when temps are often 110+, and lay a ton in the winter (when temps drop to <80. Luckily we have not yet experienced any molts. We have 9 hens that are now 13 months and 29 pullets that are 6 months and just...

It is that time of year when many start to see their numbers drop. Here in AZ, I at least, have the opposite experience. The summers are so hot that our girls laid very few eggs. Now the temps are getting much more comfortable, and we have lights in the coops and run, so we got 34 eggs yesterday...

The 2 we lost were a Production Red and a Silver Laced Wyandot. Another Production Red seemed to struggle, and lost most of the feathers on her neck, but made it through and is now growing those feathers back in.

New pics of my flock. Most made it through their first Arizona summer without issue, Though I did lose 2 of the older pullets to the heat. In the end, we still have 38 girls.

A few pics of the girls last night. Not great pics, but it was already dark and they were getting ready for bed.

30 from 38 girls. This is about the average for us so far, though we don't know if ALL the girls are laying yet, but suspect they are.

When I introduced our new chicks to the existing flock, we basically had a coop inside a coop. We had a smaller, enclosed in hardware cloth, coop that we placed the chicks in. This had its own run as part of the design. We placed the coop inside the run of the existing flock. This allowed all of...

Thank you all for the suggestions and ideas. I am looking into some bait boxes right now. I have been reading other threads on controlling rats in the run and coop, so a plan is forming. hopefully in the coming weeks we will see a significant reduction in the rat population!

It has been quite a while since I last did an update. Things are going well overall! We ended up with a total of 38 chickens by the end of the Phoenix summer. We lost 2 of the older girls to the heat, but all of the new pullets made it through the summer with apparent ease. We did lose one chick...

Here is a pic of the brooder setup before the chicks were all added.

Sorry, I wasn't real clear on placement. I had the huge brooder set up in my family room for a month. At that point we moved the chicks out to the coop and run.

I ended up purchasing 2 of these: I attached them together to make 1 LARGE brooder. I had 4 trough feeders and a couple of waterers in there with them along with the large Rent-A-Coop brooder plate. It worked quite well for about 1 month before moving them outside. We only lost 1 chick...

The Chicks are doing great outside and seem to be handling the heat well so far. We have only lost one chick, and that was after being caught by one of the dogs. The chick found a hole in or run and escaped. The dog found her and wanted to play. He ended up braking her hip, so we put her down...

Update - After posting in the Arizona thread, we went ahead and moved the chicks outside Sunday afternoon. Of course, this meant that Monday would then be the hottest day of the year so far @ 107 degrees. All of the chicks did well and none have been lost or seem to be struggling, too much, in...