Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[Ridgerunner]

In my opinion, if you have chicken feed, you are going to have rodents. Store it in a secure metal container to keep the feed from getting contaminated or giving them an easy meal, but mine spill enough feed to attract rodents whether I take it up at night or not. Again, if you take it up at night, you are not giving them an easy meal, but that will not eliminate them.

If you can, a barnyard cat is a great way to reduce the rodent population. Not everyone can do that, but a barnyard cat is a tried and true method.

Some people use poison. I don't, but that is just me. Chickens will eat mice if they can catch them. A poisoned mouse can be pretty slow and may be out and about looking for water or something where the chickens can find them. The amount of poison it takes to kill a tiny mouse is probably not enough to kill or maybe even harm a huge (by comparison) chicken, but enough stuff happens around here that I don't need to offer more opportunities.

Traps work. Snap traps, live traps, sticky traps, whatever. Obviously put them where the chickens can't get to them. If you have a separate store room or such, you might have a safe place for traps. If you have to put them out where the chickens are, build a box or such that the chickens can't get in but the mice can. It does not take much of a hole for the mice to go through.

Rodents travel along walls. Put them along a wall.

 

[wsmith]

Those were my thoughts as well. We had a terrible mouse problem as a teenager, but thinking about our methods then versus now, there are some things I would have changed.

We had a lots of cats, but I think they were rodentia challenged.........

 

[al6517]

Quote:
Good point's on ingested poison in mice. I use poison in the common work areas where no birds are kept, but can't help but think they may nibble on some poison and then wander into a pen. Since this happens mostly at night when the birds are roosting the chances are slim, but there is still a chance. I have tried some other way's and the best thing I have come up with is a trap where the mouse goes in and can't get out. You place them along a wall where they like to navigate, I put some scented stuff like peanut butter or something in there and every week or so I have 3 or 4 in there. I just put the trap in a bucket of water for a few minutes then empty the trap and start over again.

AL

 

[fowlman01]

Here is my mouser......it is a Shamo female and that is really a rat. This female is 9 lbs, so it looks like a mouse.

Walt.

 

[al6517]

He sure is handy to have around Walt, who needs a finicky cat when you have him taking care of Bidness.

 

[wsmith]

Here's another question for the OTs....

Brooders.

Though I like the trailer as a brood box concept, and I have a 5 x 8 trailer, I don't want to tie it up for 4-ish weeks. I want to build a good reusable brooder.

So my question for the OTs is:

How much floor space per large fowl chick would you all recommend, from hatch to feathered (using the same brooder for all the chicks)?

We always used an big old cardboard box with the sides cut down. It worked, but it wasn't very durable and got really nasty by the time the chickes were feathered and went out into the growout pens.

Thoughts?

 

[al6517]

Quote:
If I hatch large numbers of chicks I like to put them outside within just a few day's, they go into the breeder bldg and I put them into one of those large galvanized livestock waterers, about 2' high and 5' long and 3'wide, covered with a wooden & wire top. you can also hang a heat lamp from one end. it can hold many many chicks all the way to about 4-5 wks old, then they go into growout pens, they work very well and very easy to manage.

 

[wsmith]

Al,

What's the maximum number chicks you keep in each stock waterrer?

 

[Ridgerunner]

It depends. Seems like I say that a lot on here.

How many chicks are you talking about? Full sized or bantam? What breeds? How well do they take confinement? Pullets, roosters, or mixed. Meaties or future layers? At what age are you willing to call them feathered and actually let them out? I'm not much into specific hard and fast numbers like square feet per bird. There are just too many variables.

I have 3' x 5' brooder I put in my coop. I keep one area warm and let the rest cool off as it will. I've kept as many as 28 hatchery dual purpose chicks, mostly pullets ( only 5 roosters), until they were 4 weeks old in there. I had no problems at all but it was looking full. I've kept 21 hatchery dual propose chicks in there for about 4-1/2 weeks, mostly roosters. I did not have problems but I felt it was time to get them out. Maybe meatings would have been a problem.

 

[al6517]

Quote:
A hundred or so more as day olds maybe 300, then as they grow I move them to another tank. I hatch allot so the rotation method is realy handy. So 300 in one, then move them into the second bigger one at 3wks old till 5 wks old. Keep in mind the numbers get culled down very quickly as they feather and color out, and when I notice defects I don't want. So out of 300 chicks only 50-75 make it to the final grow out pen for further evaluations.