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

[JeffOeuf]

I got to looking at the thread and I think this is the slowest it's been for a long while. I think we've either run out of newbies or they've run out of questions.

Nope to both. Did you miss 9722?

 

[Beekissed]

My CX don't taste like store bought either...their meat is darker, more flavorful and more dense. I raised some on FF this year and they had absolutely NO fat under their skins..for roasting this would be a detriment, but I rarely roast a chicken. I usually eat them in soups and stir fry or fried as part of a meal.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Nope to both. Did you miss 9722?

Jeff, thank you for being patient. Chicks "raised" in a coop never know anything else, and that is where they are "homed" in, yes, like the homing pigeon. The instinct is similar. Since you bought mature birds, they are confused. It takes, in my experience, 8-12 days before home imprinting is accomplished. A coop or coop and run where the birds cannot escape. I hope that helps. If I understood you correctly, you kept them cooped for "several days"? It takes longer than 2 or 3 days for imprinting.

 

[Beekissed]

Downside to a few "feral" chickens?

I've got a couple of new pullets (a few weeks from P.O.L.) that just don't like to sleep in the coop. I locked them up for a few days, and the first couple days after I started letting them graze, they came back to the coop with no problems. Then one night they were up in a cedar tree right behind the coop when it was time to lock up. I chased them out and herded them into the coop. No issues for a couple days, they came in on their own. Then, they took roost in the cedar again, and when I tried to shoo them out, they went higher instead of out. Pretty hard to chase chickens out of a tree when they're 20 feet up. This has been the story the last three days. In the morning, they hop down and join the other three girls in foraging with very little drama, though the hen at the top of the pecking order chases them half-heartedly once in a while.

Seems my choices are:

1) Get them in the run today and put them on lockdown for a couple weeks (I hate to do this, I think they should free-range).
2) Let them do what they want and hope they figure out that the place to lay eggs is where the food and water is.
3) Wait until it gets colder and see if they're more inclined to come inside.

Number one seems like the prudent course of action, but it causes problems for the rest of the flock, since I only have one coop. I can sub-divide the run, but the space I can lock them in (while allowing the others access to feed and nest boxes) is a little cramped, and I'm trying to teach them that the coop is a pleasant place. Not sure they'll get that message by being locked in a 3 x 6 area with 3 feet of headroom.

Is number two even feasible? Any OT's have semi-wild flocks that lay inside, but prefer to live outside?

Number three just boils down to procrastination...something I am unfortunately prone to.

I'd confine them to the coop for a week....all of them. I've done this before to retrain to nest boxes...of course it works better if you have adequate space in your coop, but cold weather is a good time to test out if you have a large enough coop.

If not, you stand the risk of losing them to owls..the only adult birds I ever lost was because she was roosting out and an owl picked her off at night.

Laying and roosting inside is a trait I cull for...if you don't, nature will cull it for you. No one likes an Easter egg hunt just so you can have breakfast.



Sorry...Fred and I cross posted...

Next time? Just bump the post if we miss it...sometimes things roll by pretty quickly on this forum and we miss them.

 

[Kansas Prairie]

Honey Boo Boo gets a chicken, makes it her pet.

http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/2012/11/06/meet-honey-boo-boos-new-pet/

 

[bruceh]

Lou Rawls and Barry White??? Come to my house in Tucson and you'll find about 3,000 LP's, 45's, 78's, 8-tracks, cassettes, reel-to-reels, covering the whole gammet from Bach to Motown and Barry White. Please, I'm not spam and a country boy back in the 50's and 60's from western Pennsylvania, and will disclose that later. --BB

Bobby Basham
Tucson, Arizona

whats up bobby,
i worked for motown for years. stage tech. last show smokey robinson world tour 82.

 

[Beekissed]

Is there no balm in Gilead?

 

[Fred's Hens]

Bee is also spot on with the "easter egg hunt" thing. Pullets at POL have no idea you want them to lay in this or that nest box. None. This requires training, but we as keepers simply train by working with their natural instincts. Since the chicken wants a quiet, dark, kind of hidden place to lay, this is what we provide in the nests we make for them. Locked in a coop, they've little choice but to adopt what we've chosen for them, as their own. If you had an older bird in with them, she'd likely do a show and tell for them and they would succumb to flock obedience and basically, do a form of money see, monkey do.

To provide a kind of suggestion, some folks here on BYC suggest putting a wooden egg or even a golf ball in the nests. Honestly, this is sometimes successful. Another instinct to remember is that a chicken is in essence a tree rooster, but a ground layer. So, roosts need some height, but nests work best of mounted lower, even set on the coop floor.

 

[bruceh]

Honey Boo Boo gets a chicken, makes it her pet.

http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/2012/11/06/meet-honey-boo-boos-new-pet/

so now it begins. next paris hilton, nichole ritchie and alike will have them darn chickens in their pocketbooks, probably silkies or show girls and the cost will be 5000.00 and every breeder in the world will have them.

 

[bruceh]

There really is no way to verify that as the taste of chicken is such a subjective thing. The only way you will know what you prefer is to try both ways...raise some DP birds to processing wt.and also raise a handful of CX to processing wts.

I split it down the middle and raise the CX slower and on free range so that they will taste like a DP but have more meat on them.

the most noted chicken for flavor is that darn bresse. you can buy the american version at greenfire for 399.00 a chick straight run.