Backyard Chicken Wannabe...

[gritsar]

Quote:
Three to four hens....oh, sure sure!

Not around here ya don't!


About the nesting boxes. Now that I see everything in the world as possibly useful for chickens....We take our household trash to the transfer station. The nice man that runs it sets aside anything anyone is throwing out that he thinks is still useful for something. That's how I came across 12 pieces of 3/4" plywood already cut into 18" squares. I scarfed them babies right up! Just add nails! Go Me! Go Me!

Welcome by the way!

 

[herechickchick]

My advise would be to plan for a lot of chickens. You may start with 3 to 4 and you may never go above 3 or 4 but my guess is that at some point you will get more. Make arrangements now so that you do not have to start over from scratch when you have 15 or 30 or 60.

. I spent over $1000.00 on stuff for my 4 to 6 girls. At the most I was up to 100 peeps and 45 hens, and I live in the city. I am now downsizing with the last bunch to leave Sunday. But I have still decide to keep about 15-20 so I have to build a new house, again. As far as breeds you cannot go wrong with Barred Rocks, good winter layers very hardy, very sweet. Check out Henderson's chart . This will give you a good idea of what to expect from different breeds.

Good Luck

 

[okiechick57]

Welcome to the forum pv.......... I am down south of you, east of OKC......check out craigslist.com and freecycle.org....... for free and cheep

stuff.........I built my coop from all recycled material except for the wire and some of that was free...... check local listings in newspapers too......Put a wanted ad up on craigslist......that site is awesome ! Good luck , especially with staying with only 4 hens

it isnt easy to not get more more more. I am up to 25 now

http://tulsa.craigslist.org/

 

[Henrietta23]

Hi and welcome!
We've had as few as one and as many as 7 hens in the past. Sometimes no eggs (like now) and sometimes more than we could use. Then I joined BYC and I have 14 chicks on order! LOL. I started with two and that was fine for a while but we did build the coop bigger than we though we might need and never regreted that. We're building a new one for the new chickens. We got a door from the dump and we're picking up several windows from Freecyclers. We've gotten the word out to everyone we can think of that we're looking for building materials. We've had a lot of luck with Freecycle, even got two hens that way! I advertised that I wanted young laying hens and someone saw it and decided to give me a few of his "last year's" hens so he'd have room for a few new ones. They gave us quite a few eggs while they were with us.
Good luck. I hope you'll hang around and keep us posted on your progress!

 

[pvhouse]

Thanks for all of the advice and the wonderful greeting to the forum. I appreciate you guys for taking the time to reply to my post.

I am thinking of starting with only three to four hens for two reasons. First, I am not expecting the hens to supply all of our egg needs but could supply some and will be a perfect homeschool experience for my daughters. Secondly, I am not exactly sure what our city regulations are for backyard chickens so I thought I would just start out slow and try not to cause much of an uproar. I do live in the city so these will be true backyard chickens

I don't expect to try to find the feed and bedding used but I do want to try to build the coop out of used materials.

Again, thanks for the advice and keep it coming.

 

[Parson's Wife]

Connet to Buckyguy or the backyard OKies thread...

He helps all okies with lots of things...and has good information.

 

[pvhouse]

Sounds good but I am new to this so how would I do that?

Thanks.

 

[2dream]

You can look up Buckguy20 in the user index or just go to the "Where am I where are you" thread. Look for the topic "Okies in BYC." There are lots of you Okies here.

 

[okiechick57]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23736

 

[Buckguy20]

pvhouse: I will add you to our "Okies in the BYC " list.
I will pm you about the other.