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Sherrirod
My husband and I are new to chicken keeping. My Dad who had lived with us for many years passed in Oct 23. By Feb 24 I realized I needed something new to challenge me in order to shake off the remnants of grief and fill the void left by Dad. I came up with the idea of raising chickens. It was kind of a hard sell but after much negotiation, my husband Rod and I agreed to 6. We went to TSC and came home with 12. lol.
In researching everything I could find on raising chickens I ran across a video on raising meat chickens that had a line stating, "I make sure they have a really great life, then one bad day." That is so much better than the story of the chicken I buy at the store to eat! So, we agreed to 6-8 meat chickens just to see if we could really do it. We had a friend with fertilized eggs and an incubator. He gave us 2 dozen eggs. 15 hatched.
While the eggs were incubating in early June, Dad's birthday, my birthday and Father's Day all fell within 2 weeks. Again, I was overwhelmed with sadness. Then I realized that we could throw a couple of pretty chicks in with whatever hatched so long as they were close in age. Ended up with 7 therapy chicks. lol.
So here I am with 33 chickens (culled one rooster from original bunch to give the hens a break) Chicken math is real!
We turned my she shed into a coop and added a 12x24 roofed run. Since we have a one-acre yard and not a farm, I am aiming to make it not just fun for the chickens, but interesting to look at. Plans include a jungle gym, many individual, randomly spaced perches with small treat cups plus chip clips to hold garden leaves and a couple of tunnels since they seem to enjoy exploring small places. Jungle gym is a project for next year, but the individual treat cups are a big hit. They run ahead to the next perch for me to put a bit of treat in the cup. Then throughout the day they randomly go from perch to perch to see if any treat is left.
I have already learned so much from reading posts on this forum!! I still have a couple of questions to post and am sure to have more as time goes by. Thanks for all the help you've already provided.
In researching everything I could find on raising chickens I ran across a video on raising meat chickens that had a line stating, "I make sure they have a really great life, then one bad day." That is so much better than the story of the chicken I buy at the store to eat! So, we agreed to 6-8 meat chickens just to see if we could really do it. We had a friend with fertilized eggs and an incubator. He gave us 2 dozen eggs. 15 hatched.
While the eggs were incubating in early June, Dad's birthday, my birthday and Father's Day all fell within 2 weeks. Again, I was overwhelmed with sadness. Then I realized that we could throw a couple of pretty chicks in with whatever hatched so long as they were close in age. Ended up with 7 therapy chicks. lol.
So here I am with 33 chickens (culled one rooster from original bunch to give the hens a break) Chicken math is real!
We turned my she shed into a coop and added a 12x24 roofed run. Since we have a one-acre yard and not a farm, I am aiming to make it not just fun for the chickens, but interesting to look at. Plans include a jungle gym, many individual, randomly spaced perches with small treat cups plus chip clips to hold garden leaves and a couple of tunnels since they seem to enjoy exploring small places. Jungle gym is a project for next year, but the individual treat cups are a big hit. They run ahead to the next perch for me to put a bit of treat in the cup. Then throughout the day they randomly go from perch to perch to see if any treat is left.
I have already learned so much from reading posts on this forum!! I still have a couple of questions to post and am sure to have more as time goes by. Thanks for all the help you've already provided.
- Location
- NW Ohio
- Real Name
- Cheryl
- Why do you want to join our community?
- internet explorer
I've gained a lot of knowledge already and hope to glean more.
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