Consolidated Kansas

[Hawkeye95]

Danz... PUPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!

Awwww, I want to snuggle with them!! I love your puppy pictures!! Marshmallow is beautiful!

Tweety, great idea leaving the stump and I like that shelf you have. That would be a great conversion project to turn into a nest box. Although, I think you should leave the shelves in. It turns out, my birds really like the separate nesting boxes. I was going to do the community box, too. I got talked out of it and I'm glad I did. My hens --even though they are not laying right now-- they are practicing. And they go in there and sit in a box. There may be two birds in one box.. but then the other hens get in the other boxes. I've seen all of the boxes used except for the far left one closest to the door. I don't know why. But whatever. They go in, sit, and then head back out. I check them in case, but no eggs. My two silkies have called one box home. It's not for nesting at all-- they just sleep in it. But fortunately, that's just one box and it's the same one each night. I'll have to keep up on cleaning it.

 

[chicken danz]

Tweety I've found that chickens prefer a smaller place and still will have a couple hens sitting in there together. I'd leave all the shelves and maybe even run a 1X3 or something along the top to make it seem more closed in. They do like their little hidey holes. I just love to see things reused into something practical. Nice work on the tree.
Sharol I've heard nothing but good about Dr. Mendoza. I sure wish he was closer.
I need to get moving this morning and get ready to take my Mom to church. Hopefully I won't sit there and cough non-stop. I am feeling better just not quite well yet.
I need to give my hatcher a good cleaning when I get home cause I need to move eggs in there tomorrow. I had one little Serama hatch this morning on day 17. Those things are so unpredicatable!

 

[Nana2KJS]

We recycled a drawer out of our 100yr old kitchen to use as a nest box. I built a "cover" for it and it slides out for cleaning. It's about the only thing I did recycle, but the girls seem to be okay with it.

 

[Nana2KJS]

We recycled a drawer out of our 100yr old kitchen to use as a nest box. I built a "cover" for it and it slides out for cleaning. It's about the only thing I did recycle, but the girls seem to be okay with it.

Well now I feel like an idiot. Guess I need to brush up on posting pictures to the new forum. Seemed like much less trouble before!

 

[HEChicken]

Hi Nana - haven't seen you around here in awhile. I actually find uploading pics easier on the new system than the old. When you are in a reply window, there are a number of icons above where you are typing. One looks like a framed picture (for me its the far left icon on the second row of icons) and if you click on that, it brings up a browse window that allows you to upload directly from the window in which you are typing. The old system meant you had to first open a new tab of uploads, upload the pic and then copy and paste the url to your typing window so it was actually several additional steps. Hope this helps!

Tweety - I love the shelf idea as nest boxes - it looks perfect to me. As others have said, I would leave in the shelves as dividers. Rather than fill in the space between the slats on the "floor" of the nest box, you could just cut cardboard to fit and place it in the nest box. When you need to clean it out, you can pick up the cardboard, dispose of it and the bedding in your compost and cut fresh cardboard to fit. You may need a little lip on it to keep nest box materials from being flung out, but I'd say you're in really good shape there.

 

[Trish44]

Danz, I love that puppy you picked out to keep for yourself, she's going to have such an interesting face! You will have one of a kind for sure, really unique. Have you picked out a name for her yet?

tweety are you planning to just have those nest boxes hooked onto a wall or are you building them in or what? The only bad thing that I found when I used my drawers hooked together was that they loved roosting on the top of them at night or sitting in them & they pooped in them & I had to clean them out all the time. I had wished that I could have put some kind of cover over at an angle so they couldn't do that. They did like those nests & used them well enough, but it was too much of a mess & I ended up taking them out & putting in bucket nests on the wall. About half of my hens use the buckets & the other half made a nest on top of my straw bales in the run & lay there. I really don't mind that, at least I can find the eggs easily, but when I have to use the straw they're not going to be happy. Maybe I'll have to buy a couple more bales & leave those there, I don't know. The only thing I use the straw for is the dog house & some in the run & my chicken dog run, that sounds funny & their house. I also have a stump in my run for the chickens to jump up on, they do like that. When my DH takes the wood rack out when he gets this wood shed put together I'm going to have to move the stump over for the chickens to jump up on the straw bales with. Their steps won't be there when the wood is gone.

Where has Chooks been, anybody know? I haven't seen her around much lately.

 

[tweetysvoice]

Thanks for the great ideas on the shelves! I will leave the slat in then if they prefer that. I'd just read a thread on community nesting and thought that maybe it was something they'd like. If that's not actually preferable, then I don't want to take the time to do it! hehe

HeChicken - That's actually a wonderful idea about just adding cardboard that can be cleaned out! I can get my hands on plenty of that!

Trish - I am probably going to fix them to the wall, but you bring up a good point about them sleeping ontop of it. I hadn't thought about that. I guess it would be just as easy to add a slanting "roof" instead of adding slats to the top to fill it in. I could then make it just one whole piece - I love doing things the easy way! Does anyone here put "curtains" over their nesting boxes. I've seen pics on here of people with curtains and wondered if that would be better since there will be so much more light in the coop due to have of it still being a greenhouse.

 

[patricia]

I had a problem one time with a regular light socket and now only use ceramic sockets. Mine was on my euromastyx cage for two years and one day while I was home it started to burn. Now I always check a socket for maximum bulb wattage and use only ceramic sockets for heat. I think this is really important for heat bulbs that are 250 watt. Boy, I have been off the site for a few days while out of town and madly trying to catch up. A lot transpires while being gone. HEChicken, sorry about your daughter. Hope she is feeling better. Trish, great photo of the rooster. Hawkeye, did I miss something? Did your husband's job get transferred? I don't envy any of you that are selling your homes. You have my sympathy. That can be so stressful. Loved the sonnet nsjfrizzle...

 

[Nana2KJS]

Hi Nana - haven't seen you around here in awhile. I actually find uploading pics easier on the new system than the old. When you are in a reply window, there are a number of icons above where you are typing. One looks like a framed picture (for me its the far left icon on the second row of icons) and if you click on that, it brings up a browse window that allows you to upload directly from the window in which you are typing. The old system meant you had to first open a new tab of uploads, upload the pic and then copy and paste the url to your typing window so it was actually several additional steps. Hope this helps!

Tweety - I love the shelf idea as nest boxes - it looks perfect to me. As others have said, I would leave in the shelves as dividers. Rather than fill in the space between the slats on the "floor" of the nest box, you could just cut cardboard to fit and place it in the nest box. When you need to clean it out, you can pick up the cardboard, dispose of it and the bedding in your compost and cut fresh cardboard to fit. You may need a little lip on it to keep nest box materials from being flung out, but I'd say you're in really good shape there.

Yep - did that. And I have not had any trouble uploading pics from my computer, but getting previously uploaded pics from my account is another matter. The picture showed up when I tried to quote myself, but not on the original post. Oh well - guess I'll play with it later. Just thought it should be easier to re-use a picture you'd posted somewhere else is all.

Here are two of our younger girls enjoying our kitchen drawer box.

BTW Chooks - how is Brother Lionel?

 

[HEChicken]

Just thought it should be easier to re-use a picture you'd posted somewhere else is all.

Oh that. Yeah - I haven't had any luck putting in previously uploaded photos either, which is a bit of a pain. Like you, I tried just putting in the link but it didn't connect to the photo - just added the link to my post. I wound up having to reupload the photo I was trying to show.