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

[Nomibear]

At the risk of clogging up an already packed thread, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to it. I'm not quite finished reading through it but I plan to read every page. I'm a few hundred pages in now and wow, I'm loving the straight talk!

Welcome Dahlisgrams!

And Welcome to you too Mary!

 

[therapydoglady]

Brie! Welcome back
You have been busy! I'm glad it worked out for you guys to be able to buy your Mother-in-laws place. Since she had chickens before, is there still alot for you do build/alter before you bring yours In?

No, not a lot. The outside fences are excellent! Cement footer all the way around, 2-3/8" line posts, 2-3/8" top rail, 6' tall chain link. She did all that last year when the fires burned all the fences. She used oilfield drill pipe, and I understand, had to pay several fines because of the sparks from the welder even though she used a welding (fireproof) blanket to cover the ground. She was one heck of a welder!

We are re-vamping the horse stalls to accomodate and separate Bryan's milk goats (all due to come fresh in November) and sequester the BIG Alpine buck so that WE decide when the next batch of kids will be born - Bryan doesn't want to have to try to keep winter babies warm, fed, etc. His mother always bred for warm spring babies. She hated having to work the cold!

And, since we decided to do this right, we want to keep each breed separate, to breed true and see how we can do at shows. There are not enough chicken pens/coops to do that...but we're working on it. The nest boxes in her big pens where she had her layers were hard to clean, according to her, so we are re-doing those before we put hens in there. She was such a stickler for cleanliness, and I never heard her speak of a sick chicken, so guess we will continue on with her methods. My kids both spent summers with her, and I am very impressed with how much of her "animal husbandry" and custodianship has stuck with them. Bryan Jr. (BJ) has told us we must bury fences, and why, and that chicken wire is no good and why...on and on. My mother in law taught them a lot, and we are grateful. Now they are teaching US!

Brie

 

[nyanamia]

(chickenless lurker here) I'm a long way from getting my own chickens still, but this thread has been enlightening. I have been following since January and taking notes. Thank you Old-timers!
Bee, I looked at your hoop coop page and I think it looks perfectly breezy for a coop in hot, hot Texas. Do you have any pictures of the finished coop with all the feeders and roosts set up? I just would like to see how you did it.

 

[Beekissed]

No...I don't, unless you want to see feeders and roosts for meat chickens, which aren't a real representation of what they would look like for a layer flock. The cattle panel is so wonderful because you can attach anything to any surface on the whole coop. So many points of attachment. I love it!

 

[normanack]

We've got a small farm near Lansing, Mich, horses and a few steers.  I'm a small animal veterinarian in Novi,  where food grows in styrofoam at the superstore, and occasionals at a farmers market.  Very few people have any connection to rural life, farming, or land management  any more. My one hoop house needs some repairs this fall, so I loved Bea"s pictures Thanks, Mary                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Hi, neighbor! I'm a tad northeast of Lansing. I basically grew up in 12 Oaks Mall and remember how rural Novi was before becoming plastered with stores. Our family's best friends always had a huge plot in a community garden somewhere off 12 Mile Rd. and one of my best memories is shelling peas with them on their back porch.

 

[nyanamia]

No...I don't, unless you want to see feeders and roosts for meat chickens, which aren't a real representation of what they would look like for a layer flock. The cattle panel is so wonderful because you can attach anything to any surface on the whole coop. So many points of attachment. I love it!

Yeah, it looks really sturdy. I was curious about your roosts because I remember you saying somewhere how you don't like the ladder type ones, but that's all I'm seeing in the Coops pages. I can see how a small ladder with hardly any slant might be alright, but bigger ones would be harder to reach birds on the top rung over all the others.

 

[neopolitancrazy]

Bee, don't you just love watching the lambs "scare" the chickens? I nearly fell off my bucket seat laughing the first time I saw them do that, and it's still funny, all these years later.

I have a question for you OT's-does a crow-headed chicken ever turn into a well-proportioned chicken? I ask because on a breed specific thread, I mentioned butchering chickens I did not think would turn out well, and was chastised for it. So, I replied and might be banned from that thread, but just wondered if those crow-headed chickens would have "grown out of it" if I had given them more time/feed.

Thanks,
Angela

 

[Beekissed]

Yeah, it looks really sturdy. I was curious about your roosts because I remember you saying somewhere how you don't like the ladder type ones, but that's all I'm seeing in the Coops pages. I can see how a small ladder with hardly any slant might be alright, but bigger ones would be harder to reach birds on the top rung over all the others.

My roosts are continuous poles I cut from the woods and they span from one side of the coop to the other. Then I have a few that run diagonally in the two back corners to make different levels of roosting pleasure.


Quote:
Oh, yes! At first I thought I should get on to the lamb but he couldn't really hurt them so I let him do this sheeple surprise on the chickens all he wanted...it never got old to watch.

As for the crow headed whatever thingy...must confess I've never even heard the term. Must be a breeder lingo term about something not being SOP? Might ask Walt, Fred or Al on that one because I'm a person who doesn't really care what my chicken's heads look like as long as they look healthy.

How 'bout it, all you OT breeder guys and gals? Crow-headed?

 

[gardendufus]

. I can see how a small ladder with hardly any slant might be alright, but bigger ones would be harder to reach birds on the top rung over all the others.

I'm certainly not an OT, but I also opted OUT of the ladder roost due to space issues. I would think a ladder roost with hardly any slant would end up with lower echelon chickens with very poopy backs/heads.

 

[capayvalleychick]

I ask because on a breed specific thread, I mentioned butchering chickens I did not think would turn out well, and was chastised for it. So, I replied and might be banned from that thread, but just wondered if those crow-headed chickens would have "grown out of it" if I had given them more time/feed.

Angela, she wasn't chastising you. I'm sorry that you took it that way. She was simply telling you that this breed puts on much more weight if you delay butchering them for another month or so. I agreed with what she said, but you made a good point that you did not wish to feed them any longer.
You never mentioned "crow headed" on that thread and no one would expect you to keep birds longer than you wish.