Any Hawaii Folks on BYC?

[Brada Puhi]

Aloha, The mongoose is your main concern. Hope you have a blast.

 

[SuperK]

Just got settled in our new home in HPP, looking to get our first chicks for laying soon. Is it better to wait for the build of the full chicken home to happen or do a temp cage until they are big enough and build while they grow? We plan on 10 to 15 hens for eggs and the breeding stock, then use the babies for our meat stock.
Referring to the mongoose issue above, is 1/2" mesh small enough to keep them out?
how about 1" x 1/2" ?
And how do we deal with the wire overlap / edges? For the smaller cage, no problem- no overlap but our final coop will be a bit larger and be full height so we can walk in to clean, etc.
Do we put in 2x2 nailers at all the edges or are hog wire clips enough to keep them out?
thanks,
Ken

 

[Brada Puhi]

Aloha,

The size of the mesh is not important. The mongoose cannot get through even 2 inch probably. The problem will be holes and digging underneath. Chickens like to dig too to do their dust bath thing. I like to bury my edges 6 inches. But if you do a tractor, then it needs to be heavy enough so they canʻt get under it. You should do tractors though if you have lots of land.
I would do the temporary and build the bigger one when you have more ideas.

https://www.facebook.com/mr.thealbum/posts/1041735692531736?pnref=story

Hopefully the link above works for more ideas.

Use wire to sew the seams shut. Thatʻs where the mongoose can get in.

Make sure you get good stock to begin with if you want to breed.

Aloha, Puhi

 

[springbok7]

We have 1"x2" wire mesh on our coop and I've never seen a mongoose in there. However, rats, mice, and sparrows are in and out like nothing. We did not put our girls out there though, until they were almost fully grown, and we also had a temp coop (where the rooster is now in solitary LOL!) where the girls lived until the main coop was done. The outdoor portion of our coop (the run) is completely enclosed in 1"x2" wire. We laid wire on the ground as well and then covered with a ground cover and then shoveled dirt on top. Also hubby put about 18 inches of flashing or some such around the base of the run and it also has old roofing iron as a roof. We live in Hilo and when it rains, there is no dust anywhere in sight for the girls to dust themselves with. This way, most of the dirt in the coop's run stays dry, and they can come into the yard and pick around in the mud and go somewhere to get dry after. From what I've heard from the folks at Del's, giving them a dry place to hang out is important with how much rain we usually get here. Though you haven't likely seen our normal weather yet since you picked a particularly dry time to move out here ;D

 

[SuperK]

Thanks Bruda, I'll check out the link in a minute- And to Springbok, we have visited in both rainy and dry seasons so we know what we are in for- LOL and since HPP is just a skip from Hilo we wanted lots of rain that the Hilo area promises. We will be starting the coop in the next week or so I'll be taking photos to keep track of the progress and while we have an acre, the tractor set up isn't in the picture for us at this time. We plan on having quite a few animals on the land, so spacing and proper room is most important.
Mahalo!

 

[springbok7]

And to Springbok, we have visited in both rainy and dry seasons so we know what we are in for- LOL

The rainy seasons where it rains for almost three months straight? HAHAHA! Thank goodness for 24/7 laundromats at those times, otherwise all the clothes stink like mildew! Gah!

 

[SuperK]

Well, The rain today and yesterday was pounding for us, Not used to 1-2 inches an hour for three or four hours. That was as much in two days as we'd get in our rainy season back in SO Cal.

 

[springbok7]

Well, that's why I was trying to emphasis the rain. People don't realise that when we say "rainy season" we do actually mean, a season where all it does is rain, sometimes lightly and sometimes 12 inches in 24 hours. And unless you visited for an extended period, you don't get the full effect of the effects of the rain. Airing stuff out and good ventilation in your house becomes way more important than you think of it, otherwise ~everything~ stinks of damp and mildew and bleh. And of course, for our pets and animals, it's so much more important, since they can't tell us that they are getting weird skin issues or whatever because their fur or feathers has been damp or outright wet for several weeks.

As another example, the local kaiser permanente clinic got new flooring installed last year, summer I think. And it looked lovely for a month... then there were big weird boards taped down everywhere... and now the contractors are pulling the peel-n-stick-whatever flooring up and they will have to redo the whole thing, because the humidity caused the boards to lift up right off the underflooring and people were tripping over them. Heh. Poor research on the part of whoever it was who probably ordered the same flooring for every clinic across the country. =P

 

[SuperK]

We are looking forward to the rain, Glad to have it after 15 inches in four years where we came from. There, a rain longer than a day or more than 1/2" brought out the NEWS on every corner spouting the STORM Watch- Cars flip because they don't know how to drive on rain slicked oil soaked freeways, and the idiots at the state level don't have the sense to catch the runoff before it becomes runoff in a state that is mostly desert! That plus the taxes, drove us out of California. Looking forward to a wet year!

 

[KaitlynRae1]

I am on the north shore Oahu. My boyfriends mom and I found a chick that lost its mom and it turned out to be a hen so a couple of weeks ago we decided to start having chickens for eggs. So far we have our one wild chicken and two ISA Browns about a week and a half old. We are completely new to the chicken raising world so any advice for chickens in Hawaii is greatly appreciated. I do have one question. Since my run will be open should I keep the food inside and water outside? We are in the process of making our coop/run.