- Apr 5, 2010
- 101
- 6
- 109
Greetings from Vancouver.... Canada's newest chicken friendly municipality! The new bylaw goes to city council tomorrow so it's an exciting time for wannabe backyard chicken farmers around here.
We (me, dh, 2 teenage boys) have a large property that backs onto a park in a nice neighborhood with lots of big trees a block away from a strange little pocket of 'country in the city' where all the millionaires with horses live so even though we live in a big city, our little patch of dirt feels decidedly un-urban. We have lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. Last year we started growing our own veggies. So
in anticipation of this new municipal development, we decided to convert a little unused greenhouse into a chicken coop.
I've been reading up on the subject and can't wait to get started. The bylaw states that we cannot have chickens less than 4 months old and no roosters which seems like a really good idea in theory but I'm quickly discovering that older hens are not nearly as easy to come by as chicks. Hopefully some good breeders will take note of this as there will likely be quite a demand for pullets from Vancouverites this spring!
So when I came across and ad for a 6 month old Silkie the other day, I couldn't resist. The coop isn't ready yet but I managed to put some comfy temporary accommodations together. I went to pick her up but when I got there, she didn't look healthy. Her eyes were all goopy... one was completely closed and the other one wasn't much better. Maybe it was no big deal but I don't know what I'm doing so it didn't seem like a good place to start. I was tempted to take her and try to fix her up but we want to get some more hens this weekend and I didn't want to end up with 4 chickens with eye infections by Monday.
They had a lot of other birds so I went around to see if I could find any more evidence of the goopy eye problem. The rest of the flock looked very healthy so I decided to choose another bird since I'd spent an hour in rush hour traffic to get there and was all excited about bringing home my first chicken. The Silkie was just going to be for fun (not expecting serious egg production) so I decided to grab a cute little bantum to take its place. She wasn't at all pleased about this arrangement we finally managed to catch her and wrestle her into the crate. She calmed down quickly and we had a good talk on the way home. She's a good listener. For all the hours I've spent researching chicken breeds, my first chicken ended up being one that I picked for absolutely no good reason at all and I don't even know what she is. I'll include a pic. I just liked her personality and her colouring. Maybe someone here can tell me more about her.
I spent most of the night feeling guilty about traumatizing this poor bird and hoping she was settling in ok. Much to my surprise, our other animals (2 dogs and a cat) have been surprisingly nonchalant about he fact that there's a chicken in the kitchen. They're interested but aren't bothering her and she doesn't seem to care about them either. DH took the day off work to work on the coop (although it looks like he spent most of the day on this site instead!) and I went off to school still feeling guilty about taking the chicken away from all her friends and keeping her all by herself in the kitchen (she does have a pretty kick ass setup but I still felt bad). I know hens don't lay when they're stressed so I figured that we wouldn't see any eggs until she was at least settled into the coop. But this afternoon, my boyfriend sent a picture of our first egg to my phone! I was in the middle of a physics lab but was so excited I just had to show everyone. I guess she's less stressed out than I am! The egg is also a pretty reasonable size which I wasn't expecting. I'll post a pic of it with some large organic free range eggs (hopefully the last I will be buying for a long time!). So my 'just for fun' chicken may end up being a good egg producer after all.
I'm going to post some pictures in the coop section of the old green house which we have de-greenhoused and are ready to coopasize in case anyone has any great ideas we haven't thought of or suggestions that would be helpful. We're hoping to have it done this weekend.
We're going to pick up the rest of our flock from a nice local family that have a hobby farm. They have some older Hamburgs and Marans that look like they would be a good fit for us. Might just get 2 to leave room for one more in case something interesting comes along but someone on here mentioned that its better to get them all at once so we'll see....
We (me, dh, 2 teenage boys) have a large property that backs onto a park in a nice neighborhood with lots of big trees a block away from a strange little pocket of 'country in the city' where all the millionaires with horses live so even though we live in a big city, our little patch of dirt feels decidedly un-urban. We have lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. Last year we started growing our own veggies. So
in anticipation of this new municipal development, we decided to convert a little unused greenhouse into a chicken coop.
I've been reading up on the subject and can't wait to get started. The bylaw states that we cannot have chickens less than 4 months old and no roosters which seems like a really good idea in theory but I'm quickly discovering that older hens are not nearly as easy to come by as chicks. Hopefully some good breeders will take note of this as there will likely be quite a demand for pullets from Vancouverites this spring!
So when I came across and ad for a 6 month old Silkie the other day, I couldn't resist. The coop isn't ready yet but I managed to put some comfy temporary accommodations together. I went to pick her up but when I got there, she didn't look healthy. Her eyes were all goopy... one was completely closed and the other one wasn't much better. Maybe it was no big deal but I don't know what I'm doing so it didn't seem like a good place to start. I was tempted to take her and try to fix her up but we want to get some more hens this weekend and I didn't want to end up with 4 chickens with eye infections by Monday.
They had a lot of other birds so I went around to see if I could find any more evidence of the goopy eye problem. The rest of the flock looked very healthy so I decided to choose another bird since I'd spent an hour in rush hour traffic to get there and was all excited about bringing home my first chicken. The Silkie was just going to be for fun (not expecting serious egg production) so I decided to grab a cute little bantum to take its place. She wasn't at all pleased about this arrangement we finally managed to catch her and wrestle her into the crate. She calmed down quickly and we had a good talk on the way home. She's a good listener. For all the hours I've spent researching chicken breeds, my first chicken ended up being one that I picked for absolutely no good reason at all and I don't even know what she is. I'll include a pic. I just liked her personality and her colouring. Maybe someone here can tell me more about her.
I spent most of the night feeling guilty about traumatizing this poor bird and hoping she was settling in ok. Much to my surprise, our other animals (2 dogs and a cat) have been surprisingly nonchalant about he fact that there's a chicken in the kitchen. They're interested but aren't bothering her and she doesn't seem to care about them either. DH took the day off work to work on the coop (although it looks like he spent most of the day on this site instead!) and I went off to school still feeling guilty about taking the chicken away from all her friends and keeping her all by herself in the kitchen (she does have a pretty kick ass setup but I still felt bad). I know hens don't lay when they're stressed so I figured that we wouldn't see any eggs until she was at least settled into the coop. But this afternoon, my boyfriend sent a picture of our first egg to my phone! I was in the middle of a physics lab but was so excited I just had to show everyone. I guess she's less stressed out than I am! The egg is also a pretty reasonable size which I wasn't expecting. I'll post a pic of it with some large organic free range eggs (hopefully the last I will be buying for a long time!). So my 'just for fun' chicken may end up being a good egg producer after all.
I'm going to post some pictures in the coop section of the old green house which we have de-greenhoused and are ready to coopasize in case anyone has any great ideas we haven't thought of or suggestions that would be helpful. We're hoping to have it done this weekend.
We're going to pick up the rest of our flock from a nice local family that have a hobby farm. They have some older Hamburgs and Marans that look like they would be a good fit for us. Might just get 2 to leave room for one more in case something interesting comes along but someone on here mentioned that its better to get them all at once so we'll see....
