MrsKnoxChickens
Chirping
Good morning!! I am a California city girl transplanted to Texas that after 17 years finally started to embrace the joys of country living... I have always been an animal lover with very little discrimination (Hamsters are the definition of evil mice are cool and rats make great pets but I have never met a hamster that will not bite.) Mr. Knox is still learning to love my love for all things furry or feathered he still draws the line at 8 legs or scales...
To describe me I am an odd combination of a tech savvy nature lover jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. I love a good DIY project and tend to throw myself into what I do. We bought this little piece of 4.5 acres in spring of 2016 Fell in love with its charm with a boxcar train car on the property with power (ooh the possibilities) and a barn and a little over grown chicken coop out near the train car. Mr Knox's thought was to tear it down little did he know I had other ideas....
Spring of 2017 we had our first 6 baby chicks and not the slightest idea what I was doing. Mr Knox just smiles and nods mumbling something about scrambled eggs... or was it brains...? I have a mix of breeds from a local feed store all hens because they said so and thats truth right?, a polish they swore was a hen because of an old wives tale when you hold it upside down and..., a barred rock, a buff orphington, 3 ameraucanas, all lovingly named after pin up models all receiving their own special instagram post while living in a oversized dog kennel in my laundry room with their heat lamp and getting special cameos with my pit bull who is terrified by the way of baby chicks...
Fast forward a month or so they spend their first night in the coop. I now have 5 chickens.... One of my Ameraucanas is gone... *POOF* no feathers no fight no sign of her anywhere and the discovery of what I only assume is a snake sized hole in what I thought was Ft. Knox of chicken coops. Did I mention I am surrounded on almost all sides by forest. Hole patched as well as any thing else bigger than my thumb along the bottom 3 feet of the coop. My girls are only allowed out to free range under strict supervision at this point... A little more time passes and the girls are almost out of the pullet size and look more like real chickens! they free range during the day as long as someone is home. At one point my phantom child whom I only see when she comes to raid my pantry or washing machine is using the computer in the office and my sweet yard pup comes running upstairs with a mouth full of feathers. apparently the baby chicks are not so scary when they fly over the fence into dog territory and sound like a squeaky toy. down to 4 chickens...
Fast forward a little further Paulie my pretty silly looking polish hen, crows.. (We had decided not to have roosters because we did not need them to for eggs and the coop is just outside our bedroom windows so we were concerned about the noise since Mr. Knox's Schedule rotates days and nights... ) Now I'm attached... we can't get rid of him now... lets just see if he ever gets loud enough to wake either of us up from sleep and if he does then we will find him a home... In the meantime 4 chickens and one of them being a roo is not going to cut it if I intend to have eggs enough to feed us. Somehow an average of 3 eggs a day does not compute in my head to be enough eggs to feed 2 humans that do not eat eggs daily or even eat eggs 3 times a week... Let the research begin I join every local FB group I can find for chicken people and start to talk to people this is where I discover there are two types of chicken keepers at least here in East Texas... the casual very friendly to all chicken keepers regardless of your level of experience and often very helpful (these are a rare treat) and the if you do not have show birds in your backyard, incubators in your kitchen, and a vet kidnapped and locked in your garage, then you are not worth talking to and if you want to buy their birds (which are all backyard mutts they are trying to pass off as rare show breeds) they are charging 25.00+ for chicks with no vaccinations or anything...
I managed to find a lady that happened to have a few easter eggers and another type of bird no idea what she called it never heard of it (doesn't much matter she disappeared out of my yard guessing a hawk within a week) So I added 2 birds to my flock of 3 to get back to 5 and almost instantly was down to 4. I then found someone online that had 2 laying hens black copper marans right at 1 year old she only wanted 10.00 each for them... still no idea if that is high or not so shoot I'm terribly impatient and it's still months away before my girls will start laying eggs... so I brought them in and followed the quarantine process just like with everyone else.
Rocking along 6 birds 2 laying... Polish roosters are jerks... I have the scars to prove it... Paulie found a new home with a sweet family that has a huge enclosed coop and run that does not free range hers. I showed her the scars... she sends me pictures to prove he hasn't been killed. My easter egger Crows... His name is now Joey instead of Josey. I aquired a new quarantine cage its bigger with more room. and got 4 coronation sussex pullet hens... I'm really getting the hang of this... Riiiight.... Something manages to kill and eat one of the pullets through the bars of the quarantine cage (1/2 inch square wire rabbit hutch type cage) it eats everything but half of the feathers and the breast bone because it won't fit through the bars... all I can think is OMG only this type of stuff happens to me..... Move quarantine to garage park car in driveway I've got this...
WHAT IN THE HECK IS THAT! *Calls sister* why is there black spots all over my chicken and why does she have bubbles coming out of her eyeball... My chickens have chicken pox? what in the heck... really? thats a thing? Not everyone gets it but I proceed to spoil my girls and Joey rotten with scrambled eggs, veggies, rooster booster, ACV, electrolytes, and all manner of rotations of vitamins and such to help keep them from getting any secondary infections. Betty my barred rock from the original bunch is the only one to get the wet pox and was the first to show signs all together and took the longest to get better. but everyone survived.
9 birds 1 roo... wait why is that sussex acting funny... spend the next 3 hours watching him... take tons of pictures... discover spurr bumps on legs... What the heck... you look like a hen... you act like a hen mostly... you are way to old to just now be a rooster... welcome to the rooster club Sheldon. 9 birds 2 roosters... did I mention I think somehow my sussex are mixed with jersey giants.... he is the biggest dang chicken i've ever seen in person and still has some growing to do.
If you got this far thank you for reading my ramblings.... I have many issues and questions I will get to on separate posts including one possible weird chicken who likes to be pooped on? is that a thing?
if you didn't read all of it and skimmed or skipped ahead I don't blame you it's a bunch of nonsense about a strangers weird obsession with her egg laying birds...
Looking forward to making new friends among the chicken obsessed.... and hopefully learning a thing or two about keeping my feathered friends alive... now on to the plans for turning the old barn into a chicken palace... Mr Knox finally said ok....
To describe me I am an odd combination of a tech savvy nature lover jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. I love a good DIY project and tend to throw myself into what I do. We bought this little piece of 4.5 acres in spring of 2016 Fell in love with its charm with a boxcar train car on the property with power (ooh the possibilities) and a barn and a little over grown chicken coop out near the train car. Mr Knox's thought was to tear it down little did he know I had other ideas....
Spring of 2017 we had our first 6 baby chicks and not the slightest idea what I was doing. Mr Knox just smiles and nods mumbling something about scrambled eggs... or was it brains...? I have a mix of breeds from a local feed store all hens because they said so and thats truth right?, a polish they swore was a hen because of an old wives tale when you hold it upside down and..., a barred rock, a buff orphington, 3 ameraucanas, all lovingly named after pin up models all receiving their own special instagram post while living in a oversized dog kennel in my laundry room with their heat lamp and getting special cameos with my pit bull who is terrified by the way of baby chicks...
Fast forward a month or so they spend their first night in the coop. I now have 5 chickens.... One of my Ameraucanas is gone... *POOF* no feathers no fight no sign of her anywhere and the discovery of what I only assume is a snake sized hole in what I thought was Ft. Knox of chicken coops. Did I mention I am surrounded on almost all sides by forest. Hole patched as well as any thing else bigger than my thumb along the bottom 3 feet of the coop. My girls are only allowed out to free range under strict supervision at this point... A little more time passes and the girls are almost out of the pullet size and look more like real chickens! they free range during the day as long as someone is home. At one point my phantom child whom I only see when she comes to raid my pantry or washing machine is using the computer in the office and my sweet yard pup comes running upstairs with a mouth full of feathers. apparently the baby chicks are not so scary when they fly over the fence into dog territory and sound like a squeaky toy. down to 4 chickens...
Fast forward a little further Paulie my pretty silly looking polish hen, crows.. (We had decided not to have roosters because we did not need them to for eggs and the coop is just outside our bedroom windows so we were concerned about the noise since Mr. Knox's Schedule rotates days and nights... ) Now I'm attached... we can't get rid of him now... lets just see if he ever gets loud enough to wake either of us up from sleep and if he does then we will find him a home... In the meantime 4 chickens and one of them being a roo is not going to cut it if I intend to have eggs enough to feed us. Somehow an average of 3 eggs a day does not compute in my head to be enough eggs to feed 2 humans that do not eat eggs daily or even eat eggs 3 times a week... Let the research begin I join every local FB group I can find for chicken people and start to talk to people this is where I discover there are two types of chicken keepers at least here in East Texas... the casual very friendly to all chicken keepers regardless of your level of experience and often very helpful (these are a rare treat) and the if you do not have show birds in your backyard, incubators in your kitchen, and a vet kidnapped and locked in your garage, then you are not worth talking to and if you want to buy their birds (which are all backyard mutts they are trying to pass off as rare show breeds) they are charging 25.00+ for chicks with no vaccinations or anything...
I managed to find a lady that happened to have a few easter eggers and another type of bird no idea what she called it never heard of it (doesn't much matter she disappeared out of my yard guessing a hawk within a week) So I added 2 birds to my flock of 3 to get back to 5 and almost instantly was down to 4. I then found someone online that had 2 laying hens black copper marans right at 1 year old she only wanted 10.00 each for them... still no idea if that is high or not so shoot I'm terribly impatient and it's still months away before my girls will start laying eggs... so I brought them in and followed the quarantine process just like with everyone else.
Rocking along 6 birds 2 laying... Polish roosters are jerks... I have the scars to prove it... Paulie found a new home with a sweet family that has a huge enclosed coop and run that does not free range hers. I showed her the scars... she sends me pictures to prove he hasn't been killed. My easter egger Crows... His name is now Joey instead of Josey. I aquired a new quarantine cage its bigger with more room. and got 4 coronation sussex pullet hens... I'm really getting the hang of this... Riiiight.... Something manages to kill and eat one of the pullets through the bars of the quarantine cage (1/2 inch square wire rabbit hutch type cage) it eats everything but half of the feathers and the breast bone because it won't fit through the bars... all I can think is OMG only this type of stuff happens to me..... Move quarantine to garage park car in driveway I've got this...
WHAT IN THE HECK IS THAT! *Calls sister* why is there black spots all over my chicken and why does she have bubbles coming out of her eyeball... My chickens have chicken pox? what in the heck... really? thats a thing? Not everyone gets it but I proceed to spoil my girls and Joey rotten with scrambled eggs, veggies, rooster booster, ACV, electrolytes, and all manner of rotations of vitamins and such to help keep them from getting any secondary infections. Betty my barred rock from the original bunch is the only one to get the wet pox and was the first to show signs all together and took the longest to get better. but everyone survived.
9 birds 1 roo... wait why is that sussex acting funny... spend the next 3 hours watching him... take tons of pictures... discover spurr bumps on legs... What the heck... you look like a hen... you act like a hen mostly... you are way to old to just now be a rooster... welcome to the rooster club Sheldon. 9 birds 2 roosters... did I mention I think somehow my sussex are mixed with jersey giants.... he is the biggest dang chicken i've ever seen in person and still has some growing to do.
If you got this far thank you for reading my ramblings.... I have many issues and questions I will get to on separate posts including one possible weird chicken who likes to be pooped on? is that a thing?
if you didn't read all of it and skimmed or skipped ahead I don't blame you it's a bunch of nonsense about a strangers weird obsession with her egg laying birds...
Looking forward to making new friends among the chicken obsessed.... and hopefully learning a thing or two about keeping my feathered friends alive... now on to the plans for turning the old barn into a chicken palace... Mr Knox finally said ok....
You may also want to consider electric poultry netting from premier 1 to dissuade the four legged creatures. Great intro and I'm glad to see you've become a GOOD student of chicken math.
Chickens and chicken keeping does not come with a manual. 
My flock wishes I came with a manual. 
