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

[fowlman01]

97 years old! I am glad he finally joined here!

I am really enjoying his posts!

Yeah, that is older than me. Thanks for the heads up on the second thread. I have read her idiotic posts before......nothing based on fact but posted as the truth.

Walt

 

[flocksalot]

Flocksalot, I

to you in years of experience, but in general, remember to respect your elders.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm

like the hot place
Cause I'm younger than YOU!

Sign me the not so spring chicken

edited as I accidently wrote Sing rather than Sign and I really don't want anyone to have to sign cause I'll never hear it.

 

[bj taylor]

i'm the complete newbie. i read the predators part of the forum. can y'all put it in perspective for me? by reading it i feel as though my chickens will be under attack 24/7. is that how it will be (my first ever babies are coming next wk)?
thanks;

 

[fargosmom]

Hi BJ!

although you're not exactly a NEW newby. I still consider myself a newby too. Your risk of predators really depends on where you are, environment-wise. I'm in the Los Angeles area, for example. Even here, there are some neighborhoods that have really minimal populations of predators, and other neighborhoods that are pretty hazardous to chicken health. So it's up to you to figure out what your particular local threats are, and then take steps accordingly. I know that I have raccoons, possums and skunks to worry about, so I made sure that my coop is tight in terms of no openings that little paws can get through, and buried metal to prevent digging-under. But it wouldn't stand up to a bear . . . cuz it doesn't need to. As for 24/7, well, if you have varmints, there's usually at least one in the bunch that's hungry, and chickens are pretty tasty.
Hope this helps - I'm sure others have more to share . . .

editing to add: the perspective part is that, once you take the steps you feel are necessary, to the best of your ability, you have to take a deep breath and realize that it is still somewhat beyond your control. If you lose a bird to predation, you take that as a lesson of what to do to prevent it happening again. Lather, rinse and repeat.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is hard to do a perspective. Growing up way out in the middle of not much many decades ago, my parents never locked up their chickens. They totally free ranged and the coop door was not closed at night. Some chickens slept in trees. even in winter. We hardly ever lost a chicken, but I do remember a fox and a dog getting shot.

Living here, I lock them up every night. I've dispatched skunks, possums, and raccoons here and we have coyotes howling pretty close some nights so I think I would have lost some if they were not locked up. I was losing maybe two chickens every three years during the day with them free ranging, I think to a fox but I've never been able to prove what it was. When I lose one like that, I leave them locked up for a month or so in order for the fox to not learn there is an easy meal here.

Then twice in the past six months, somebody abandoned some dogs in this area for the good life. I'm in the country here, by the way. Both times I was away from the house when they hit. I lost 8 chickens one time and 5 the other. For me, that is a lot.

I've never lost one when they were locked in the coop or run.

What you will experience depends partly on what is in your area your area but it also depends on how you manage your chickens. For me, locking them up at night worked real well for a long time.

Part of how you manage them depends on how hard a loss would hit you. For many people on this forum, their chickens are their pets. Even the loss of one is a real big deal, similar to losing a pet dog or cat. I don't like to lose any, but I'm willing to suffer an occasional loss if I can let them free range.

 

[fargosmom]

That's a great point. Mine are locked up in Fort Chix because I can't bear to lose one, and because my neighborhood is crowded and full of hungry dogs etc. I would love to be able to free-range them, and if I had the space I would do it, keeping in mind that I might lose one once in a while.

 

[Beekissed]

Agreed!

I live in a high predator area but I also have a good dog(s), places for the birds to duck and run, plenty of trees, a vigilant roo, and I encourage flighty behavior...it can save a chicken's life. I've only lost a couple of chicks to a black snake and a young pullet when she roosted up in the barn instead of the coop for a couple of nights in a row and got her head eaten by an owl.

For the years I've been free ranging and not ever closing my coop, my total losses are few.

It really takes a combination of factors to determine your predator risk, as Fargosmom mentioned.

It is always good to be cautious but try not to get paranoid. If you live in the country, keep a good flashlight, a good .22 rifle or even a shotgun by the back door and keep your dogs outside. If you live in the burbs, keep a strong fence, a tight coop and a good dog in the back yard.

Although it can happen to anyone's chickens, IME, most~but not all~ of the horror stories you hear on this forum are likely those who did not prepare for the worst.

 

[they'reHISchickens]

Way back in the day...around here a deer in the field was a very unusual sight. The local high school farm boys trapped fox and coons and muskrats and kept the populations down to a minimum. They kept counts of groundhogs taken every year and compared notes frequently. You could count the houses along the road on one hand; the rest were dairy farms where what hedgerows there were held pheasants and rabbits.
Now we have housing developments popping up everywhere as the dairy farmers died out. The ones left have fewer kids who are busy doing school activities and no one does much hunting. Groundhogs are taking over the farm fields. Trapping is being PETA'd out of the whole state.
There are large herds of deer wandering from woodlot to brushlot and through the front yards. Foxes are a very common sight and coyote reports are numerous. Pheasants are gone except for those that the state distributes although we do see wild turkeys now and then. Hawks are everywhere here and wherever we travel and we even have bald eagle sightings/nestings in the area.
Yes we used to free range chickens on the farm without locking the coop doors. ( We didn't lock our house doors either!) Now, we've had dog attacks, fox attacks, hawk attacks, raccoon attacks and we are careful about free ranging and value our rooster guardians. We've got plenty of cover but sometimes that hurts as much as helps.
Life has changed a lot in southeastern PA in 50 years. I suspect it's going to change a lot more in the next 50.

Oh.. chicken years? Does that include when my mom beat me for *forgetting* to feed them after school because I didn't want to carry 6 buckets of feed from all over the farm? Or when I took Cluckie and her chicks to my kids' school for show'n'tell and ended up in every classroom? I know I can count from when my city-raised man told me he wanted chickens in his retirement and I told him he was crazy. They are HIS chickens

 

[fowlman01]

Electric fence has kept me free of predators (2 legged and 4 legged).

Walt

 

[keenecowboy]

Live in the county small farm, always have a potential problem. Have the pasture fenced, but always on the lookout. Lock them up at night. Always finding fixing areas that i think those critters might get in.