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

[wsmith]

I was thinking for around 50 or so Dom chicks. If I built it 6 x 3, with the box sides 18 inches and a screened top, that would give me nearly 2600 square inches, of 18 square feet of floor space. That translates to 51 square inches or about 7" x 7" per chick, if all survived and weren't culled. My worry is that it would be too crowded by the time they were fully feathered. I could always build an additional brooder. That being said, I know that if the weather is OK, they could perhaps go out to the pens earlier.....

 

[Tallulah Chicklet]

Hey darkmatter, what are those towery things in your photos? Are they made of tires? What do you plant in them?

 

[Tallulah Chicklet]

To the Old Timers: anybody have experience with growing Siberian Pea Shrubs for chickens?

Now is the time when all the luscious catalogues come out, and I happened upon them as a good protein source for chickens. Can chickens digest the peas OK or do they have that legume-y substance that prevents digestion?

 

[PaleMelanesian]

Southern variation of that question: What about black eye peas? Are they useful as feed? Do they need any processing?

 

[jvls1942]

Quote:
Instead of building a couple of pens.. build one large one that will hold the feathered out chicks ? You do not have to heat the whole thing when they are day olds, just heat one corner of it.

do you have a regular chicken coop? hang a heater bulb in the corner of that..

I got fancy and built two raised brooder pens in each of my chicken coops.. I can handle 500 chicks .. by being hung off the wall, they do not use up floor space that the full grown chickens need.

 

[wsmith]

yeh, after thinking about it, I have four 8x16 pens that each have a 4 x 3 coop that I can rotate them into, and place a heat lamp in if needed. The brood box for a couple of weeks, then split them up into the other pens as needed.

 

[daklander]

Quote:
Heat? No, but I do have light. One flourscent lamp on a photocell with a timer. Comes on at dusk and turns off after three hours. Truth be known, it's more for me so I can go in and close things up without tripping on anything and the three hour time is so I don't feel a need to live on chicken time.

 

[daklander]

Quote:
Wanna rent her out for a month or so? I have a load of gophers I'd like culled.

 

[Gerry2011]

Quote:
Wanna rent her out for a month or so? I have a load of gophers I'd like culled.

Me too!! Next!! I'm NEXT!

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I like to brood where ever the chicks are going to be living. I've brooded in a coop and a tractor that I've used as a grow-out pen. As long as they have something for a draft shield when they're really young, I can adjust the height of the lamp to get whatever temperature I need. Later, they just have the heat lamp until they feathered out. They can come and go underneath it when they want and have the run of the place. If I'm raising them in warmer weather, they don't even need that for long.

I don't have a rodent problem in the coop. I don't feed outside, only in the coop. I think the thing that really helps is that I have an elevated pop hole door. It's quite high up and the ramp is a long one. It's also an open grate design, not solid. Rodents would have to go to the middle of the run to get on the end of the ramp. That's a lot of exposure. Running along the outside of the coop wall and just popping in an open door is a very inviting way in. We do have trouble with rodents on the other side of the property going into our pole shed and there's not even any food over there. They just walk right in. The cat's hunt in there, which helps.

What I really need is somebody that eats ground squirrels/chipmunks. They mess with the garden seeds and make annoying noise right outside the door. I don't care if they live around here, I just want them to live up farther in the woods.