Hello!
I just don't know where to start!! I have questions to search, questions to ask!
I answered an ad on craigslist for a chicken coop for sale. The seller had ordered 15 chicks and realized that her coop would not house that many chicks, and so she was selling the small coop and giving two free chicks with it. I had already asked an employee of mine to pick up two four month old pullets because they were close to his home.....
SO, I picked up the coop, and left the chicks (they were only a couple of weeks old and the seller was so sweet to feed and heatlamp them for me for a while longer)
Ummm...this coop was too small...and not very well done, so I reinforced all the hardware, added a nesting box, added a frame underneath, increased the run by thee feet, added wheels to the back for mobility and after two long 14 hour days, it was ready fo my two pullets that an employee was picking up for me. A blue laced red Wyandottes and a blue,blue wheaton Ameraucanas, both four months old....or so I thought.....
The sweet, sweet Wynadottes is the most beautiful bird I have set my eyes on. Absolutely majestic! My Ameraucanas however.....well, she looked like she was beaten with a stick and totally nuts! My kids hated her from the get-go! She was christened Bazy Critch, thus my username since she was the first chicken I ever named..... I messaged the seller. "I just wanted to be sure that the missing feathers on my W back and neck is nothing to be concerned about?? LOL..well, they THEN informed me that the bird I bought, sight unseen, was a breeder about a year old and will be fine after she finishes 'moulting' ...hmmm...her missing feathers are not consistent of moutling, but hey, I'll go with it. So I let her keep her Beautiful sky-blue eggs for the first two weeks,. Maybe she will go broody and hatch tthem.
Then I picked up my free chicks...and bought one more, then two, what the heck, let me have five! I took them home in the dog crate and put them on the back porch while I rushed around preparing a place for them in the coop, segregated from Bazy and JoJo (Wyndottes) of course; In the meantime, my Daschaund has fun pulling one of my barred rock chicks out of a space half the size of the chick by her head. We had a funeral, and spanked the dog and learned that the cages were to keep the predators OUT, not the chickens IN.
Then came treat time...and the rude suspicion that two of my remaining four chicks may be roosters. They are only four weeks old, but the two buffs have strikingly different combs and my Australorps is huge and bumping chests with the red combed buff. I guess time will tell. My hope is to post some pictures in the next week or so to see if I need to buy more chicks!
Lastly, but most important. The information and tenor of this web site is just fantastic. It's like walking into a fitness center with all the pros and all the machines and not knowing what to do but being taken by the hand and led right through it all.
Thanks!
I just don't know where to start!! I have questions to search, questions to ask!
I answered an ad on craigslist for a chicken coop for sale. The seller had ordered 15 chicks and realized that her coop would not house that many chicks, and so she was selling the small coop and giving two free chicks with it. I had already asked an employee of mine to pick up two four month old pullets because they were close to his home.....
SO, I picked up the coop, and left the chicks (they were only a couple of weeks old and the seller was so sweet to feed and heatlamp them for me for a while longer)
Ummm...this coop was too small...and not very well done, so I reinforced all the hardware, added a nesting box, added a frame underneath, increased the run by thee feet, added wheels to the back for mobility and after two long 14 hour days, it was ready fo my two pullets that an employee was picking up for me. A blue laced red Wyandottes and a blue,blue wheaton Ameraucanas, both four months old....or so I thought.....
The sweet, sweet Wynadottes is the most beautiful bird I have set my eyes on. Absolutely majestic! My Ameraucanas however.....well, she looked like she was beaten with a stick and totally nuts! My kids hated her from the get-go! She was christened Bazy Critch, thus my username since she was the first chicken I ever named..... I messaged the seller. "I just wanted to be sure that the missing feathers on my W back and neck is nothing to be concerned about?? LOL..well, they THEN informed me that the bird I bought, sight unseen, was a breeder about a year old and will be fine after she finishes 'moulting' ...hmmm...her missing feathers are not consistent of moutling, but hey, I'll go with it. So I let her keep her Beautiful sky-blue eggs for the first two weeks,. Maybe she will go broody and hatch tthem.
Then I picked up my free chicks...and bought one more, then two, what the heck, let me have five! I took them home in the dog crate and put them on the back porch while I rushed around preparing a place for them in the coop, segregated from Bazy and JoJo (Wyndottes) of course; In the meantime, my Daschaund has fun pulling one of my barred rock chicks out of a space half the size of the chick by her head. We had a funeral, and spanked the dog and learned that the cages were to keep the predators OUT, not the chickens IN.
Then came treat time...and the rude suspicion that two of my remaining four chicks may be roosters. They are only four weeks old, but the two buffs have strikingly different combs and my Australorps is huge and bumping chests with the red combed buff. I guess time will tell. My hope is to post some pictures in the next week or so to see if I need to buy more chicks!
Lastly, but most important. The information and tenor of this web site is just fantastic. It's like walking into a fitness center with all the pros and all the machines and not knowing what to do but being taken by the hand and led right through it all.
Thanks!
and Welcome To BYC! Sounds like you had a rough introduction to chicken keeping, hope it all goes smoothly from here on!
