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

[edwinmcgee]

To add to this, I saw a show where they were showing mini rose-colored sunglasses for chickens!

 

[FeelingStupid]

Yay! I'm a newbie and this is exactly the advice I was looking for. Hope to apply it soon!

Sue in Hawii

 

[FeelingStupid]

Still laughing over #5. Just the kind of thing some of us who are so enamored of our chickens would do without keeping in mind that they ARE chickens. LOL!
Sue in Hawaii
chicken enamored for 6 months and counting

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

Ya, I must be missing something, cause what was so funny.

 

[chickletteSarge]

May be reading from the begining? That's what I did when I joined... got to pg 50-60 and then jumped to the end so to be cought up.... didn't post anything till I got the general idea of what was going on...other than ask a redundent ?..... lol

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

ah ha, I get it..I try to read everything, sometimes it takes along time to load, with cloud cover or large birds flying overhead interferes with my signal, so if it's something kinda urgent I just ask and push right in. Ha. Must come from working in the er. Time to go feed and maybe do a head count.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I went for a couple of years without one but, I've been keeping a backyard flock fairly steady since '88.No real issues with predators since I have always kept a tight coop with dogs in the yard. I credit my success to good feed, automatic waterers, a well built coop and have always purchased chicks.

Please comment on your "automatic waterers" that you use?

 

[rcn177]

I have 20 one year old chickens and last year I was getting 18 - 20 eggs a day, winter came and the egg production backed off (as expected) now that summer is here I am still only getting 6 - 10 eggs a day out of the 20 chickens WTH! Are there any ideas out there?

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

are they laying somewhere else? Mine seem to like the poarch, and one had made a nest in the woods that three others laid in it...

 

[Tena03303]

I have to agree with you about the temperature. I raised my recent brood in a dog crate down cellar. Easily contained and pretty convenient, but considerably cooler than most would suggest, as the temperature down stairs is typically in the mid-50's. Even using two heat lamps, I couldn't get the temp up as high as every expert I could find said I should. Funny, the little cheeps seemed just fine. They weren't ever all crowded together under the lamp, as they would if they felt cold. I think the highest I could get it was about 85, which is where I left it for two weeks. Then I started moving the lamps up every 5 or 6 days until they were around 70 degrees. Then, at five weeks, we moved them out into their own hen house, which we also kept at about 70. Next step, after a week, we let them out in their pen, but kept a heat lamp on at night and on rainy days. I took the heat lamp out yesterday. They're 9 weeks old at this point, and appear to be happy & healthy. So much for conventional wisdom!