B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

Now we are getting somewhere. The chicken coop is completely covered and finished outside of the gutters that will be installed on Monday. We sill have to get water out there but they will have to drink from drinkers until then. There will be automatic drinkers once that happens.

We need to let the concrete floor cure a little longer before we seal it off so we will start fencing off the runs before setting up the walls inside.

The whites are starting to get some size to them, I think the new hens will be laying soon. Will try and get some pictures of the birds later today. For now here is an update of the coop:

 
I've been looking for Silver Gray Dorking eggs and would love to hear from anyone who might be able to send me some. 6 or 12, whatever you've got would be much appreciated.
Lisa, FYI the ingredient in the medicated feed is amprolium, which is corid. Actually Sulmet is superior to Corid and kills more strains of coccidia than Corid. If I remember correctly Sulmet kills 9 different strains and Corid like 4. I'll have to dig through my links and find the info if I need to.
All medicated feed does is give your chicks a small amount of the medication, not enough to kill coccidia but just enough so that they develop their own immunity to it when exposed to ground/dirt when they're little. If they never are exposed to any ground that's ever had coccidia shed on it then they're not getting any exposure so they won't build up any immunity at all. So if they're exposed later on in life they'll then come down with the disease itself. I hope that makes sense.
Anyway, if anyone knows of ANYone at all with Dorking hatching eggs I'd sure love some.
There is a source reference for eggs on post #2345 on page 235 of this thread. The pictures of the birds that hatched out are on post #2339 on page 234.
 
...I would use the corid and just wait the 30 day withdrawl. I don't know what the chemical is exactly and because their is no study of it's effects on us I am overly cautious, I say this in realization that much of what I eat is some how contaminated with something but that is why I wanted my own chickens so I could at least have good healthy eggs with my fres garden veggies to off set the GMO in everything else
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Just to let you know my sweet girl did die the next day, I had seperated her and gave her the corid but that didn't help, she was in bad shape that first moring to begin with
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Blessings
Lisa
Lisa, I'm so sorry about your loss.
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Thanks for this info - it's really useful. I hope I never have to use it, but it's better to know, just in case.
I have never fed my flocks medicated feed - they've haven't ever been sick with anything to medicate. I just found out for a fact that they don't have worms. (OK, I'm sure they'll get something nasty now that I said that.) I feel blessed and very lucky.
Kibi
 
Now we are getting somewhere. The chicken coop is completely covered and finished outside of the gutters that will be installed on Monday. We sill have to get water out there but they will have to drink from drinkers until then. There will be automatic drinkers once that happens.

...

Beautiful coop!
If you are putting gutters up anyway, have you considered collecting and storing the water off of the roof? If you store it properly, and use first flush drainage, etc., you can give it to the chickens. Just a thought.
Down here in Texas, we are very big on rainwater collection. My coop is probably 1/4 to 1/5 the size of yours, but we estimate that I can get 2000-4000 gallons a year off of its roof. (Our average rainfall is 36" per year.) I've got a 2500 gallon tank attached to it.
Best wishes!
 
Beautiful coop!
If you are putting gutters up anyway, have you considered collecting and storing the water off of the roof? If you store it properly, and use first flush drainage, etc., you can give it to the chickens. Just a thought.
Down here in Texas, we are very big on rainwater collection. My coop is probably 1/4 to 1/5 the size of yours, but we estimate that I can get 2000-4000 gallons a year off of its roof. (Our average rainfall is 36" per year.) I've got a 2500 gallon tank attached to it.
Best wishes!

Hi Kibi78704,

Thanks so much, we're quite proud of our new coop. Can't wait to get our birds in there.The idea of rain water collection has entered my mind. Not sure what first flush drainage is but I'm guessing it's some sort of filtration? Would definitely want to filter the pollution out of the rain water. I'm sure we could collect a good bit of water for 8 or so months of the year. We would have to bury our tank so the top of it is at least 4 feet deep or just drain it before the freezing weather comes each year. Not sure how that would work with our automatic drinkers but might make for a good source to fill the field drinkers. I actually plan on hand driving a shallow well just to drink livestock on that side of the property. We could run a water line out there but it's a good distance to dig a 4 foot deep trench and our shallow well is almost pumping at full capacity now.

I have to wonder how much water we would collect through the summer, gets pretty dry sometimes. We get lots of water during the cold months but that won't work out very well through the winter. I do admire you for your conservative water collection method. It is a very self reliant way to drink your chickens and that definitely impresses me. Thank you for sharing that, you definitely have me thinking.
 
Quote: fwiw, I also collect rainwater off the house... it goes into several stock water tanks, about 110 gallons each. I don't prefilter or anything, I simply have goldfish living in them to keep the bugs down, and all the animals drink from them. and I simply keep a stock tank de-icer in them in the winter. now the pens it's harder to keep free flowing water in the winter, but i've made some homemade de-icers for those, simply a metal pan with a light fixture inside. a 40 watt light bulb with a temperature sensor on the plug. so if it dips below 35 the bulb comes on heating the metal pan above it, with the water on top of that. so far so good. then again, we rarely get days that don't go above freezing (watch this year be a record breaker)...
 

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