2018 Newbie Chat!

[llombardo]

Great pics of your gorgeous girls, they all are so beautiful and your Polish is sooo cute!
Great to hear they've settled down so well, especially them having cried for an hour yesterday - can see they are very happy too.

I completely can see how a heat lamp can start a fire in the coop. Tonite they were flying and banging into everything. I do not use a heat lamp but if I did, it eould have been knocked over.

 

[llombardo]

I also have to move a 100 ft hose and do the riding lawn mower. I got smart and gave each of my german shepherd boys jobs. The older Shepherd follows me while I cut the grass and if there is a toy(and there are many) I tell him to get it smd he moves it so I don't have to keep getting on and off the mower.

My younger male shepherd loves water. Do he moves the hose for me--no joke. I tell him to go move it and he does. Win/win..Problem solved..lol

 

[Anna Ranieri]

I also have to move a 100 ft hose and do the riding lawn mower. I got smart and gave each of my german shepherd boys jobs. The older Shepherd follows me while I cut the grass and if there is a toy(and there are many) I tell him to get it smd he moves it so I don't have to keep getting on and off the mower.

My younger male shepherd loves water. Do he moves the hose for me--no joke. I tell him to go move it and he does. Win/win..Problem solved..lol


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Wow, this is amazing! How clever of both your dogs and how clever of you to think to teach them! Love these pics.

 

[Cbarr00]

This has given me some ideas. So I'm building a new coop and if I frame both sides of the coops I should be good. It will be tricky because the coop is going to be inside te run technically and I am going to have teo runs(one on each side of the coop)

I can't find anything that looks like what I want to do.

Are you building the one big coop thay you plan to build into 3 separate coops still? I'm not sure what your set up and layout are like. But maybe you could build the coop and have the runs at each side so they're attached to the coop and have some stability.

 

[Cbarr00]

I love your run, not only is it safe and secure for your birds it also looks fantastic too - very pretty! Did it take a lot of work to build? - just curious

Yes. I was in my last trimester of pregnancy and we had already hit around 90F or 32C. We converted my work shed into our coop. The first weekend we had to clean it out and remove shelving. Then we built the frame on a second weekend. Another weekend we got the roof on. Then over about a weeks time we got all the hardware cloth and chicken wire situated. It was a long and hot process.

 

[Cbarr00]

It would be fun if we could all meet one day.
Thank you for the compliments on the grass lol.
We’ve had a lot of rain this spring so that definitely helps.
We don’t have a sprinkler system on our property so all summer we have to drag 100 foot hoses around with the sprinklers to water it.
It’s an all day job!
And it’s a good thing DH is retired because otherwise it would’ve died the first year we were here.
It’s a lot to mow also. We had to buy a ride on mower for it.
I’ve thought about putting in more flowers because although we’d have to water them we wouldn’t have to mow them.
I hope your grass grows well soon!

All the chicks in the photos, except for the “broody babies”, are juveniles now so they will go through a molt in about a month or two and grow in their adult feathers.
Buffy will look much the same as will the Barred Rocks.
The EEs are the ones that could change a lot. It’s hard to say for them but the surprise is part of the fun of EEs.
The two Black Sex Links (BSL) will still be mostly black as adults but they will have some red leakage on the feathers of their head, neck and/or chest.
Some BSLs have a lot of red and some have very little.
I hope they’re different so I can tell them apart.

All 3 of my BSL are so different. Rosy has a ton of red all over chest and wings. Shimmer has a slightly red chest and Glimmer has the most beautiful purple/blue/green sheen and hardly any red. They're now my husbands favorite since their adult feathers came in.

 

[Cbarr00]

Such beauties! Love that you have yourself on the pics too - wish I could meet you and your flocks in person -
Showed my daughter the pics of your babes first day out, me saying how cute they are, my daughter replies "Look at that grass!" I said I know it's lovely but look at the little chickens on their first day out - my daughter said "I am but I can't take my eyes off that grass, it's so green - I want their grass" I said I'd settle for any grass at this point lol - a lot of our grass got burned in last summer's drought, then when we had the continuous rain during autumn a lot got ruined and turned to mush then the ducks and chickens ( ducks mostly) destroyed the rest. We've started our first patch of re-seeding, I keep looking everyday for signs of life and when we spot a shoot we run around cheering lol.
Amazing how fast your chickens are growing, and all such beautiful colours and markings - are these the colours they will stay now or will their colours change more?
Your photo bomb pic is priceless! With the right caption that would make a great meme lol

I was so mesmerized by @ChooksNQuilts grass as well. Lol. Dh and I have been working so hard to get our yard back and it's so hard! Here in Texas it's hard to find a grass that is drought hardy and also survives in the shade.

 

[CannedMonster]

Yesterday Cleo laid her first egg!!

She is 20 weeks (5 months) this week.
It weighed in at a small 1.3 ounces but there’s plenty of time for them to get bigger.
She is a pullet chick and will probably always be a small hen.
She was an extremely small chick for a standard breed.
Here’s her egg next to her mother Emily’s egg.
The color looks off in that lighting.
It’s about the same color as Emily’s, a cream with a very slight blush of pink.

 

[llombardo]

Are you building the one big coop thay you plan to build into 3 separate coops still? I'm not sure what your set up and layout are like. But maybe you could build the coop and have the runs at each side so they're attached to the coop and have some stability.

Yep that is exactly what I plan to do. I now know and understand how it goes.i just have work on dimensions. I know iwant the coop under the net, so everything is fully enclosed. The plan is so clear in my brain.

 

[llombardo]

Yesterday Cleo laid her first egg!!

She is 20 weeks (5 months) this week.
It weighed in at a small 1.3 ounces but there’s plenty of time for them to get bigger.
She is a pullet chick and will probably always be a small hen.
She was an extremely small chick for a standard breed.
Here’s her egg next to her mother Emily’s egg.
The color looks off in that lighting.
It’s about the same color as Emily’s, a cream with a very slight blush of pink.
View attachment 1748035

View attachment 1748038

I can't believe she is already 5 months old.