Canadians check in here....

[The Farmers' Daughter]

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I am 30 minutes west of TO. In TO a few applicants were allowed to have hens, it is also legal in Brampton
I have a couple of silver laced Wyandottes, what about you?

I've got 4 bantams, 12 buckeye males, 15ish buckeye females, 1 chantecler cockerel, 5 chantecler girls, 3 buckeye x silkie boys and one female. All but 2 of the buckeye boys will be gone soon (I hope). Got a few dozen eggs going in the bator right now too.

 

[LilMissChick]

Hi Everyone! I’m in Victoria , BC

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Hi @LilMissChick ! Welcome

What brought you to the wonderful world of BYC?

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Hey @Kris5902
How's the construction coming along?

 

[Kris5902]

Hey @Kris5902
How's the construction coming along?

Slowly on the house... oh so slowly. Never work with family is becoming my new motto. I’ve been doing chicken/life updates on another thread I started to sort of condense all the chaos I’ve got going on. Here’s the link

Kristen’s Chickens and Farming Ventures

(hope I did that right!). If you’d like to see some photos of our chickens and what I’ve got going on. I did some back dating to when I started here and some of my other threads that have been a big part of my life with chickens.

 

[Kris5902]

Haven’t been seeing updates on this thread! Frustrating...

It sounds like everyone is gearing up for spring! We’ve got decent weather again here in the gulf islands of BC, so I’m hoping to get some progress on the house build and start my meat bird project soon. I’m still building out tractors and waiting for the house to be finished so I can start on the woodshed and “real” coops.

Hi to everyone new I missed here, and @LilMissChick you’re pretty close to me! What have you got going for chickens? Excited to see someone local to me on here!

 

[LilMissChick]

@The Farmers' Daughter & @Kris5902
Hi! I’m just starting my chicken journey. My coop is at this stage:

I can only get 5 chickens where I am at, so I’ve been trying to decide what to get myself (I seriously never imagined how hard it would be to decide on chickens when you want 20 and can have 5 ). I’ve been looking at splash/blue Australorps, speckled Sussex, Orpingtons, Ameraucanas and Salmon Faverolles.

I had tried to get a Svart Hona but it looks like the breeder had a problem and her eggs didn’t hatch, which meant that I had to push back getting chicks. So that shortened my list a little.

A friend of mine is ordering a large bunch of different breed chicks from Performance Poultry for April, including faverolles, a nice lady from up island has put a batch of Austrlorp eggs in the incubator, and there is a couple who are getting chickens for April in Metchosin that I am seriously looking at. The hardest part for me is that I think I should only get three chickens this year then maybe two more in 2 years?

So I think this time around I’m going to get an australorp, ameraucana and a faverolles. That’s my plan anyways!

But I read some bad reviews on performance poultry, so I was wondering if the faverolles I was thinking of getting would be healthy, and I put out the call on the real farmers of Vancouver island (fb group) to see if anyone was breeding them here.

@Kris5902 we have been having great weather! I hope you get to take advantage of it! I’m going to do some painting on the coop today to keep the forward momentum going on it. Our steel roof should be here any day so I want to get all the wood structure well weather sealed before putting it up.

What have you two got for chickens? Anything you can tell me, as I’m a chicken newb, about tips for having chickens in the pacific north west type weather?

Cheers!!

 

[Kris5902]

I’ve got a mix... I won’t go into all my boys! I’ve got two blue Copper Marans (I thought I was getting black) three Isbars (two splash and one blue), two Barnvelders, and three “Sapphires”. I got them from West Coast Farms in Duncan... and I’m super happy with them. I got most of them as hatching eggs last October because good heritage breeds are so pricy, and most her chicks are straight run anyway. They have some really nice breeding stock.

@LilMissChick Your coop looks so good... are you planning on burying the hardware cloth as a no dig apron? All my things right now are sort of cobbled together tarps and excess siding! I’m jealous...

 

[LilMissChick]

@Kris5902 i read your link you put on your page above. If I could, I would do exactly what you are doing right now.being able to take care of that size a chunk of land is my absolute dream. When I was a child that is literally the size of land we had in the interior. The only thing that wasnt fun was unclogging the river fed irrigation sprinklers. I don’t know if you have to do that on your property, but just saying that was a kids job, and now that I’m an adult I totally get why the adults decided to foist that gross little job off on us! (Jk, poor kids, lol). Especially having a real acreage here on our lovely coast.

For our coop yes, we are going to bring in soil, burry the hardware cloth and plant grass on top.there will be two places where we are going to be stapling hardware cloth to the bottom of the pen instead of it coming down from the sides of the coop. The door to the run, and there is a panel we are making that will lock into place under the coop part of the run that I can unlock and pop off entirely so that I can clean easily under the coop where they will be able to runaround.

This little coop was more expensive to build than I’d thought it was going to be, to be honest. But we could afford to do it right now so we did. What I was suprised to find out though, was that the metal roof was so cheap! Out of all the lumber, paint, fixtures, a few tools we bought, (which are investments in future projects) the roof was like $200. I was kind of shocked. And metal rooves last forever. If we ever have to move I’ll remove the roof, and take it with me.

But all that really matters is that your guys and gals are dry and well ventilated right?

So what predators do you have out on the gulf islands? Do you have foxes or raccoons out there?

 

[EmpressOfEden]

Quebec here

Norma

We are also in Quebec!