Chicken Math has Struck!! Or: New Coop NOW!!! Or: I'm Moving My Chickens to the Barn!!!

[CrisAnderson27]

 

[jnicholes]

I'm a mathematician. Just curious, do you need help with this "Chicken Math?"

I love doing mathematical stuff. Especially geometry.

 

[aart]

Johnny is rather small, but, yeah, gorgeous.
Remind me, what is his age and the pullets age?
He's not trying to mount the girls, that's good.

 

[CrisAnderson27]

I'm a mathematician. Just curious, do you need help with this "Chicken Math?"

I love doing mathematical stuff. Especially geometry.

I probably need a lock on my bank account so I'll stop buying birds lol. I think this is it though. I needed one rooster of age for my current girls who are closeish to laying (Ayam Cemani/Barred Rocks can be GORGEOUS apparently)...now it's just the materials to finish the barn (about 150' of garden fencing)....and to hatch out these eggs lol. I have 16 cooking and 9-11 or so starting this week.

Also, I got some work done on the barn conversion this morning!

I've got that whole area hemmed up and protected now. I'll probably use it for a specific breeding area if I need purebred chicks/eggs. Ameraucana/Ameraucana, Ayam Cemani/Ayam Cemani...etc. But that's a ways off yet. For now it houses my meat birds (11lbs each...at this point).

We're getting there!

 

[jnicholes]

Well, that's good. Looks like you're making a lot of progress.

 

[CrisAnderson27]

Johnny is rather small, but, yeah, gorgeous.
Remind me, what is his age and the pullets age?
He's not trying to mount the girls, that's good.

They're 9wks, he's 10mos.

Definitely not mounting lol...though he does have them pretty shaken. They have no clue what he is...or more likely...what to do about him lol, and it's obvious.

 

[CrisAnderson27]

Well, that's good. Looks like you're making a lot of progress.

For sure, thank you!

 

[Eggscaping]

Sooooo.

As the video says...this post is ALL about chicken math, lol.

Almost 9wks ago, I ended up the proud owner of 26 baby chicks (you can follow that saga here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/new-ish-to-raising-chickens.1351626/). I hadn't owned chicken in YEARS...and even then, they were just barn chicken in northwest Arizona where predators included coyote and maybe a REALLY big snake. Being mostly ground dwelling predators...the birds were plenty safe roosting in the rafters of the hay barn....and were completely free range.

As you can guess...that's a very different scenario from the Appalachians of south west Virginia lol. Pretty much everything out here climbs, flies, or otherwise has ways of getting to, and eating your chicken. The most dangerous to sleeping birds are of course raccoon. The coyote, bobcat, and fox (only heard ONE of those around here) stay away thanks to Ranger (he's in various of my videos...and you can see him below testing out the 'chickenworthiness' of my newly minted/repurposed quarantine coop!), and most everything else falls lower on the totem pole than the raccoon.

They're seriously devious little )*&#@$)#$%....evidenced by the fact that the only ones I've SEEN around here are roadkill.

Anyhow...20 barred rock chicks and 6 Cornish X (now 4 Cornish X...about to become 3 Cornish X tomorrow evening, for Wednesday dinner!). As it says in the link above they were straight run birds...I was hoping for two roosters, which would have been perfect. ALL TWENTY are female. Yes, I'm that lucky. So...I need a couple roosters. I'd been REALLY interested in picking up about five (yes...FIVE) blue Ameraucana...and/or Ayam Cemani. My barred rock girls are literally egg producers...but chicks sell around here every spring, and hatching eggs all the time. So, me being me...instead of straight up buying them...I decided to buy.....

....hatching eggs.

And an incubator (well, actually THREE incubators...but I've returned one of them!).

Oh. Boy.

Anyway!! I ended up with 14 Ameraucana eggs (they're supposed to be 50% hatch rate on shipped eggs, you know?). All 14 are still going strong on day 9. I also got 6 Ayam Cemani eggs, of which 4 are duds. The guy I bought them from seems to be a great guy though...so he sent me NINE MORE for the cost of shipping.

Oh...boy.

So...we're caught up now. Except for the part where my son wanted a rooster for his birthday, and I found various semi local Ayam Cemani for $30-$50 (yes, I know this would have solved part of my problem to begin with. Shush.). That has now turned into two roosters and three hens for $100.

C.H.I.C.K.E.N.

M.A.T.H.

Thus the need for a much, MUCH larger coop. We all know I'm going to have a 150% hatch rate on those eggs. That's how it works.

So this post is mostly a place marker for documenting some of the work I'm going to be doing to get everything chicken ready. If you all have any ideas, feel free to chime in. I'm on a budget and will mostly be using materials laying around the property etc...but I still want it to be the best it can...with the majority of the function being keeping the birds out of drafts, and of course safe from predators.

Room is NOT going to be a problem lol.

Here's that picture of Ranger btw. He's...65lbs of pure entertainment to say the least...and I'm sure you won't regret getting to know him:

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And a couple more for good measure. The little monster he's sitting on is Coffee. He's a Siberian (literally...he might be a mix, but he doesn't look it...he's 10lbs at just shy of 6mos lol) stray Ranger literally brought home. In his mouth.

Seriously not kidding.

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Between Ranger, Coffee, the twenty 9wk old Barred Rock pullets, and the three 2wk old goslings...it's a busy...and entertaining place around here lol.


Thanks for following along...and really, any and all advice will be much appreciated!

Ok, I love your dog!! Any doggo that will bring home a kitten without hurting it just melts my heart! And he's pretty too. Love the cat, too. We are allowed 6 chickens at our place (town ordinance) and I really wanted Swedish Flower Hens,, which aren't around here anyplace, so I ordered some on EBay. I paid for 6 and the lovely lady sent 8, just in case some broke...which they did not. As a first time chicken keeper and incubator, I figured that what I read here would apply to me/us...that maybe 4 would hatch because "With shipped eggs a 50% hatch rate is considered good". Well, all 8 hatched. So now with the 7 chicks my partner already had, we had 15 chicks in all! We lost 2 along the way, but we still have 13. I figure though, that half will turn out to be roosters, which we can not keep. It will be sad if we have to eat chickens we've basically hand-hatched though...I assisted in helping most of them hatch so...yeah. Little new lives tumbling out into my hand!
I will watch your chronicle with great interest. We are (ahem) older ladies...so while we had planned to build the coop and run ourselves, we ended up getting a construction group in town who are a bunch of really cool guys - probably about your age - to build it for us. I built my own rabbit cages but those are a lot smaller - very similar to what I see you did. Right now I have cinnamon rabbits, one buck and 2 does and 3 growing out babies. Good luck to you!

 

[aart]

They're 9wks, he's 10mos.

Definitely not mounting lol...though he does have them pretty shaken. They have no clue what he is...or more likely...what to do about him lol, and it's obvious.

Thanks.
Johnny looked overwhelmed by all those 'fat' little girls...
....found some solace up high and way from them all.
Will be interesting to see how this progresses.
Range will be fine with you guiding him.

 

[Cryss]

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He is absolutely positively GORGEOUS!