Colorado

[maggiemo]

Oh yeah I saw this pic on their website. Very nice indeed! Do you have a picture with the new paint?

no, I painted it white and now I have decided I want it red. I''ll post a picture after I paint it red

...in other news....I went out to check on my broody and she has two chicks under her that I can see. She wasn't 'due' until tomorrow at the earliest! I wonder if that is a good or bad thing?

 

[coop410silkies]

I put clear corrugated plastic on the open run area in the winter to keep the cold and wind out. It only cost about $15 a panel and I needed two panels. I take the panels off when it warms up.
I have reused the panels four years now and they are still fine.  

That is a good idea. I can see mounting them on to hanger bolts screwed into the posts, and using wing nuts to secure them and take them off. So easy to do, especially if you've places to store the panels. I am rethinking my run (needs to have its roof raised). What do you think about using panels like these for roofing?

 

[samsr]

I have MICE. All over. Brooders and chicken feed in the house draw them like flies to a cadaver. I wish I had snakes. I use the water traps and try to set my feeders up so the mice can't get in them, but it's an on-going struggle.

Recipe for mouse killer yhat won't kill your chickens if they get into it.
One cup oat meal or ground up chicken feed pellets
40 to 50 rasins or some other dried fruits( that shriveled up apple that has been on the counter will work). Probably a quarter of it. Slice it up small and let it dry for a few.
1/2 to 1 cup of plaster of paris.
Put this mixture in a short container out of the way of the chickens but where the mice can get to it. The mice will eat it and the plaster will harden in their stomachs and will die.
If a chicken eats one of the mice at this point it will not harm them. It just makes their poop white.
It takes a bit to work but it does work.
I need to mix some more up and place it in the correct spots again. The mice are bad this year like just like last year.
This is a general recipe but you can add or take away as needed. My mice like the apple pieces and it attracks them nicely.
The water traps work nicely also. They are quite a bit faster than the plaster of paris

I received my meat birds today. 56 of them. Most will be sold after being raised on nongmo feed. I still have some in the freezer from last years 40. I also received 5 blue laced red wyandotes for my DW. Now she wants a pretty coop for her pretty birds. That will be a whole new story.
Stay warm guys. Sure is nice to see all the activity on this thread.

 

[lomine]

I don't know if we are talking about the same panels, but I used corrugated plastic for the roof over my run. Worked great. I think I need to make some modifications before next winter though. I want to add a roof to the open part because it was a real pain shoveling snow out of that part this past winter. Here's a pic of my coop/run from right after it was finished.



One week to go till my quail are considered full grown. I think I'm going to sort them this week to see how many females I actually have and decide which male to keep. If I have enough females I think I might keep two males.

Chicken chicks are doing well but they are still very scared of me. I have a brooder that opens from the side and part of it is screen so I never reach at them from the top and they can always see me first. I think I'll just try to make more time to just sit with them. One of them is very small compared to the others and is behind them in feathering out. My understanding is that the slow feathering is an indication it is a male but I still wonder about the size difference. This chick is about half the size of the others of the same age.

Right now I'm only getting one duck egg a day, was getting three. Puddles went broody and then Nami followed suit a couple days after. Had to kick Puddles off her nest and out of the coop three days in a row., Nami once. Normally they are all out when I go out in the morning. Puddles was in there again this morning but she came out when she heard me ask if they wanted breakfast. The desire to sit seems it have left both of them but now I'm wondering when they will start laying again. Plus they are so grouchy and noisy.

 

[coop410silkies]

Recipe for mouse killer yhat won't kill your chickens if they get into it.
One cup oat meal or ground up chicken feed pellets
40 to 50 rasins or some other dried fruits( that shriveled up apple that has been on the counter will work). Probably a quarter of it. Slice it up small and let it dry for a few.
1/2 to 1 cup of plaster of paris.
Put this mixture in a short container out of the way of the chickens but where the mice can get to it. The mice will eat it and the plaster will harden in their stomachs and will die.
If a chicken eats one of the mice at this point it will not harm them. It just makes their poop white.
It takes a bit to work but it does work.
I need to mix some more up and place it in the correct spots again. The mice are bad this year like just like last year.
This is a general recipe but you can add or take away as needed. My mice like the apple pieces and it attracks them nicely.
The water traps work nicely also. They are quite a bit faster than the plaster of paris

I received my meat birds today. 56 of them. Most will be sold after being raised on nongmo feed. I still have some in the freezer from last years 40. I also received 5 blue laced red wyandotes for my DW. Now she wants a pretty coop for her pretty birds. That will be a whole new story.
Stay warm guys. Sure is nice to see all the activity on this thread.

Thank you, samsr. I will try this, with different attractants, as it seems sensible and addresses my major concerns. I think a good poison will attract mice to it even when other food sources are available. It will kill the mice AND it won't kill your pets when they eat the dead mice. Some mouse poisons are quite good at attracting mice, but they crumble when feasted upon, and it's possible that the mice can carry it off and make it available to one's pets. If this works for me, it could be a lifesaver. Cant imagine raising 56 meat birds! And the processing!!LOL. Good luck with your new coop.

 

[uzisuzuki]

I've been getting the Furious Five outside a bit more now that the rain has let up. They look so tiny in their outside pen! I'm pretty sure I've figured out the sex for the first 4 chicks but I still can't figure out the sex for the youngest one yet. All the names are from comic book characters (except Tetra, which is my Dragon Age: Origins character - I'm such a nerd).


This is Epiphany, Pip for short


This is Lucien


This is Ronan (the Destroyer)


This is Mazikeen


And this one doesn't have a firm name yet since I still can't tell if it's male/female, but the choices are Spider/Tetra

 

[coop410silkies]

I don't know if we are talking about the same panels, but I used corrugated plastic for the roof over my run. Worked great. I think I need to make some modifications before next winter though. I want to add a roof to the open part because it was a real pain shoveling snow out of that part this past winter. Here's a pic of my coop/run from right after it was finished. One week to go till my quail are considered full grown. I think I'm going to sort them this week to see how many females I actually have and decide which male to keep. If I have enough females I think I might keep two males. Chicken chicks are doing well but they are still very scared of me. I have a brooder that opens from the side and part of it is screen so I never reach at them from the top and they can always see me first. I think I'll just try to make more time to just sit with them. One of them is very small compared to the others and is behind them in feathering out. My understanding is that the slow feathering is an indication it is a male but I still wonder about the size difference. This chick is about half the size of the others of the same age. Right now I'm only getting one duck egg a day, was getting three. Puddles went broody and then Nami followed suit a couple days after. Had to kick Puddles off her nest and out of the coop three days in a row., Nami once. Normally they are all out when I go out in the morning. Puddles was in there again this morning but she came out when she heard me ask if they wanted breakfast. The desire to sit seems it have left both of them but now I'm wondering when they will start laying again. Plus they are so grouchy and noisy.

Yeah, those are the panels I was thinking of. May have to try some. My run needs some TLC. Or more! Your chicks will probably get over their fear of you; I won over my skittish chicks with dried mealworms - and waxworms and super worms and hard boiled eggs. I hope your ducks get squared away. I have some new hens that aren't into laying in their new digs yet. Want them into raising chicks before they die of old age, inshallah. Now that I think about it, my friendliest chicks were ones that I incubated, not hatchery chicks, except for the hatchery SS who would smother anybody with food in friendliness. I forget: are you going to breed quail? I think they are disappearing all over.

 

[lomine]

Yeah, those are the panels I was thinking of. May have to try some. My run needs some TLC. Or more! Your chicks will probably get over their fear of you; I won over my skittish chicks with dried mealworms - and waxworms and super worms and hard boiled eggs. I hope your ducks get squared away. I have some new hens that aren't into laying in their new digs yet. Want them into raising chicks before they die of old age, inshallah. Now that I think about it, my friendliest chicks were ones that I incubated, not hatchery chicks, except for the hatchery SS who would smother anybody with food in friendliness. I forget: are you going to breed quail? I think they are disappearing all over.

I have been giving the chicks dried mealworms. Right now I just toss them to the chicks. Once they started really going for them I plan to only feed from my hand. The mealworms are one thing every animal in my house seems to love, even the dogs.

I do plan to hatch some of the quail eggs. I want to raise them for meat. Of course that will depend on if I can make it through the first butchering. They are Corturnix quail so they are not native to Northern America but they are supposed to be one of the easiest quail to raise. I really like them. They are definitely not as nervous as I thought they would be based on all my research. When they were little they would eat their fermented feed right out of my hand. They are totally fine when the dogs and I are around the cage. And some of them let me pet them.

 

[COChix]

That is where I got mine from too! This is a picture off their website of my coop! They took a picture when they delivered it and put it on their website. I This is before I had a fence or even chickens. I have painted it since. It looks very different now. 

Maggie has a great set up! I had coop and yard envy after I saw it.

It will be fun to see if our hatch rate is different. I haven't touched my broody since I gave her eggs. I have left her alone except when we tried to candle those two eggs. 
I'll keep you posted on what happens this weekend. 
I set the eggs under the broody about 5pm April 29th, so I am hoping Saturday I wake up to chicks hatching!   

edited to add; how are your chicks doing from Fowl Stuff? I lost two so far. Not a huge surprise, they were the two weakest of the bunch from the start. One bantam and one large. The rest are great. I wish I had set up something like Trish had outside. I'll try to rig something up this weekend outside for them. 

How exciting! I read through the posts and see that you said your broody had hatched two. e. That is great, chicks can hatch anywhere from day 18 and on. How many eggs as she on again?

@uzisuzuki those are some characters. I am partial to the last, what a cutie!

Got our rat proof feeders today and installed in Boulder. We propped the feed door open today and then will just stand on it a few times a day. Watched tonight for a bit and the rats couldn't get in. Will update as we progress. Tomorrow we install 4 bucket rat traps, can't wait to see the carnage. Those duckers!

 

[COChix]

Got some flock shots of the Boulder crew, Rocco and the girls.....beautiful sunny day for them to free range around the property while we worked. Sorry for the numbers of pictures but it was just to pretty out.

Rocco has become a rather larger mature rooster at two years. He is a pretty boy and a good roo.