Brand new, seeking advice

[Ridgerunner]

I read the link at the bottom of your post Ridgerunner. Informative. So how big should I go? How many chickens should I start with? The number 20 comes to my mind, but for no particular reason. If slaughter some and am down to 15, can I just introduce more chicks to a group of mature birds? As far a roaming goes, I work half the month or less and between my wife and I, someone is usually always more during the day. So they'll be able to leave the coop/run most days. In the winter as well, which makes me think... will they forage well in the winter? After all, there's still a lot of evergreens and other brush around. Just a thought.

You earlier said you were looking at eating 25 to 30 chickens a year. That's not many. Roosters do make noise and in some communities there are rules about keeping chickens. They may be banned or you may not be allowed a rooster. Numbers may be limited. If you are worried about noise from a rooster and your neighbors it may be worth checking out what, if any, restrictions you legally have. It sounds like you have pretty close neighbors.

So let's assume you are not going to hatch any chicks, you are going to buy baby chicks. I don't know how things work in Canada, what restrictions you may have on that. What times of the year are chicks available? Are their minimum limits? You may need to mail order them (they are shipped in the mail) or maybe you can get them from that feed store at certain times of the year. How often each year do you want to raise chicks which translates to how many each time? From what I can tell, you are still uncertain if you are going to go dual purpose or specialty layer/meat birds.

They will not get much forage in the snow, especially how deep I think yours will be. When they first see snow chickens are afraid of it, but normally after time they will get used to it and may go walking in it. If you have grass and weeds sticking up out of it they are more likely to go roaming, but you will wind up buying almost all of the food they eat for several months.

I assume Canadian building materials are the same dimensions as here in the States, standard 4' and 8' dimensions. Since you don't know which direction you are going and they will be coop-bound a lot of the time, I'd suggest you go with something like an 8' x 12' to take advantage of standard building material sizes. An 8' x 8' would probably work but the extra 4' length gives you a lot more flexibility in how you manage them. It gives them a lot of room in winter and you can partition off sections as you need them. You can build in storage. Since you are planning on electricity out there you can build in a brooder and raise the chicks out there. If you ultimately decide you don't want to fool with chickens, you have a great storage building.

If you run electricity out there I suggest a breaker box in the building. There are advantages in having lights, heaters, and just general plug-ins for electrical tools on different circuits out there. As dark as you are going to be for half the year I'd want lights so I can see what I'm doing.

A lot of us integrate chicks with the flock a lot. That's another very long post though so I'll skip it for now. But integration is another reason to have lots of room, that's another reason I suggest going big.

Since you are not going to be hatching I'd suggest starting with the specialty meat/laying chickens. Get some and see how it goes. I think that will suite you best, but you can always try dual purpose later if you wish.

 

[otter_flogger]

I added my location. Thunder Bay, Ontario on the North shore of Lake Superior. I'm not on the lake though, I'm about 25 miles North in the country. I'm on about 20 acres and have no worry of neighbours either side... they're 1/4 mile and 1/2 mile away either side. I do have neighbours across the road though, but they're still pretty far away... far enough that the noise of a rooster would be heard but likely not an issue, depending of course where I put the coop on the property. It's an unorganized township... no rules out there. I'll double check, but there are other folks with chickens and other livestock in the area. I have a spot in mind which is closer to the front/road. That being said, I'll make the decision that I'll build a coop to house layer hens and meat birds, but as I am starting from scratch, I can integrate two sections, even two runs I guess.

As the meat birds would need to be raised in summer I'm guessing... or during a warm season for 8 weeks or so, it's not realistic I'll be able to do it this year. But I could do the layer hens hopefully and have them for the winter. I said 25-30 chickens a year that I could or would eat. That's probably actually a low estimate but I figured if I started with that first time around and move north or south thereafter.

8' x 12' is big? Great. That's a pretty easy building to put up then and not too expensive. I saw a lot of pictures with coops about that size and fenced runs attached the one side with the man door on the other. I like that as I could nestle the coop in a sheltered area and have the run come out on the lawn. I'm not sure how I could incorporate two sections at this point though. One for meat and one more laying birds. Divide the coop internally for each type and have two runs? Seems like a lot of extra work and material. Do the meat birds not need as much room as the laying hens? I ask because the laying hens will essentially turn into pets that will be around for a long time whereas the meat birds will be fattened up and butchered over a short period of time.

I could definitely run a small breaker box to the building and I will. I'd like to do this right the first time around so it doesn't cost me more further down the road. My vision is having 8-10 laying hens. We eat a lot of eggs but the excess can be sold to neighbours or given to the shelter. I'd also like the unit to incorporate the ability to raise meat birds. I'd start with a couple dozen first time around but would like the ability to raise more if I felt inclined to. I suppose I could always do two batches but that's extending the work period... better to do it all at once. I have no intention of having a cock bird or hatching eggs at this point, but who knows? I may decide to in the future.

You are all fantastic. Thank again. I'm off to work here for the next few days so I may not respond too quickly.

 

[otter_flogger]

Also, the feed store I'm thinking of has a website: http://www.kakabekadepot.com/

Like I said, I'll be up there sometime in the next couple weeks so I'll ask all the right questions when I get there. See what they have to say. They're not the only ones in the area that do this stuff, but they're certainly the most popular. And there's always the mail or Winnipeg, which I frequent often to see the family.