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

[alaina]

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I guess what I mean was it is truely a tough project and it has to be approached with a definite goal and a well thought out plan. here is a link that is quite long but we discuss this and 3 or 4 of us me included had the same ongoing project and compared results as time went by and some are still trying. It does have a ton of pic's.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=316007

I started my sustainable meat bird project with the goal to have nice big meaty birds that grew fast but not too fast for the stew pot but that could also live for years and lay and naturaly reproduce and hatch consistant heavy birds. As I stated most started out with inferior hatchery stock and after much tribulation just ended up with different colored hatchery birds, I started with my own stock of show quality birds using Rare Pure LF white Cornish and SQ white rocks and commercial Cornish X. Yes thats right commercial Cornish X's raised special under a very strict diet to laying age, mine lived 3 years. I wanted the birds to be white so I started out with white and stayed that way, eliminating the whole color issue from the start. I bred them together in various matings, evaluated them culled heavy and rebred again and again and again. Until I achieved a finished bird that was white, grew to 6lbs dressed weight in 20 weeks, had no heart or leg issues, and could lay 20 weeks and hatch out the same type bird consistantly over time, with a slight infusion of new blood every 2 years, they also could free range well and had very good temerments.

Anyway that is what I did, some folks had some results but not near what they invisioned by crossing hatchery Cornish with things like Hatchery americanas, Jersey Giants, Welsumers, BO's stuff that you might think would work well because of their size. The obstacles as you can imagine was growing out, selecting, hatching, culling, raising and then starting all over again and again for years, and this was the sad demise of many who tried such a project because they just thought hey why don't just cross this and that and then like magic WaLa a sustainable meat bird. It doesn't work that way, the commercial Cornish X took many many years to develop and their parent stock is locked up and maintained tighter than fort know. The rare LF White Cornish was the cornerstone to their program so they systamaticly bought every single bird in the country they could find to reduce the chance of any home flock doing the same thing, that is why there are only less than 10 flocks of LF white cornish in the country today.

AL

I always wondered why I could never find any to buy....wow, makes sense.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

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I'd keep them locked up for a week, to try to retrain them to lay in the nests again. It might take longer or more than one session. Try keeping some fake eggs in the nests all the time, too. Or at least a couple of the nests. They should be coming back to the coop to lay, even when free ranging.

 

[Ridgerunner]

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I'll kick in my thoughts. Ventilation is air exchange. It allows bad air to be exchanged for good air. A draft is a breeze hitting them directly.

I don't see anyone on here arguing that ventilation is not required. It is possible for their poop to create ammonia. Whether or not the poop is wet has a lot to do with it, but ammonia is lighter than air. A build-up of ammonia is bad for my respiration system and a chicken's respiration system. You need an opening higher than the chickens so that lighter-than-air ammonia can escape instead of build up.

Ventilation will not keep a coop warmer or drier than the outside air. It will keep moisture from building up inside the coop. High humidity can lead to condensation and can make frostbite damage worse.

Warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air. I think this part is often overblown in a lot of coops, but there are conditions where this can play a part. Heat is usually more of a problem than cold for most of us. Hot air rises. We need to have plenty of ventilation up high and some low for the summers, but humidity is usually not a big problem for us then.

Why do I think it is bad for a cold breeze to be blowing in the chickens. I could go into wind chill and all that, but basically my chickens tell me so. Mine don't seem to mind cold weather at all. They are out foraging in 0* F weather. After they get used to it, some of mine will even forage in a few inches of snow. But if a cold wind is blowing, they are not going out. A breeze in the summer is not a problem at all, but a cold breeze. Oh, no, it ain't happening.

I've seen chickens sleeping in trees in weather around 0* F. They were not on a ridgeline silhouetted against the sky, defiantly squawking in the face of a blizzard. The ones I saw were in a protected valley inside trees with a pretty thick blanket of limbs, and they had the ability to move so the tree trunk was between them and the wind direction. It was not all of our chickens, just a few of the barnyard mutts. I'm not sure what breeds they had in them. Some probably came from chickens that never were a breed.

Is the advice to put the winter ventilation up high and not down low over-the-top for a lot of us. Absolutely. Either because of climate or how the coop is situated it probably does not matter for a whole lot of people. Chicken breed enters into it too.

One big reason I generally recommend having the ventilation up high is that I don't know everyone's circumstances or situation. I can easily see one of those small elevated coops out in the open where a stiff wind can whistle through the whole thing with the chickens not having a way to move out of the breeze causing problems, especially in really cold climates. Since I don't know enough about the poster asking the question, and I certainly don't know who else is going to be reading it and acting on it, I recommend a simple safe solution. Have lots of ventilation up high.

The way I look at it, a whole lot of the recommendations I give on different topics is over-the-top for a lot of people, not just on ventilation. That's because there are so many different possible conditions I can't cover everything so I try to give very safe advice.

 

[MedChicken]

Thanks so much for the comprehensive post! I really appreciate it!!

 

[miss_soph]

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I live in VA as well and we have not had any problems in the winter other than keeping the water thawed. During snowmageddon, we shoveled an area for the chickens around the coop and they were fine. We've had more problems in the summer heat than in the winter months. I'm not an old timer with tons of experience, but I have been doing this for 3 years and wanted to let you know my experience with the VA climate.

 

[galanie]

Someone mentioned the fake egg in the nest. I have one in the nests I want them to lay in and leave it there. I mean, why not? What am I going to do with it if I take it out, put it on the mantle? I did take it out once just to see what happened after they'd been laying a number of months, and to my surprise one of them had a FIT looking for it. I put it back and she happily got in that nest and laid her egg.

So my opinion given freely and worth every dime, use a fake egg and leave it in there. Don't worry about when to take it out. It doesn't have any other use anyway.

 

[cubalaya]

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we use golf balls and leave them in there.

 

[Ridgerunner]

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we use golf balls and leave them in there.

Same here. I've seen where a hen scratched the fake egg out of the nest and a hen laid an egg next to it in the middle of the coop floor. When I moved it back into the nest (and raised the lip to make it harder to scratch out) they were once again all laying in the nests.

 

[keenecowboy]

My hens pretty much lay in the nests. I have fake eggs in all of them, when i take them out i find eggs in corners of the coop or just about anywhere.
I still find one on the floor when the nest is taken by another hen. It seems they still have their special one, while the other nests go unused.

 

[Cass]

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THAT's the reason. DUH!! I never even thought about my hen, who occationally lays on the floor, just can't have the nest box she wants, so she lays on the floor. Some things are soooo simple.

I keep golf balls in all my nest boxes...a minimum of 2....and they never lay anywhere but the boxes. (except the one green egg on the floor occationally....) And my hens are very young. Some haven't started laying yet, the flock is that young.