Consolidated Kansas

[HEChicken]

Oh I found a couple sites on DIY things and I remember someone saying they have a HE washer and wasnt sure about the laundry soap,, well the site said you add the powder directly to the drum. Hope this helps..
I am being stalked by an owl, a coyote and hawks. Yesterday morning I was late getting the birds out and happened to look out and see a coyote sniffing the coops. The coop is maybe75 feet from the house

This was taken from my front porch. The coyote was on the back side and the far side and came up along the tree line to the back and escaped into the woods. The day before that , just before roost time my daughter ran in and told me that there was an owl. Sure enough he was sitting in a tree to the left of the coop watching. We sat out there and waited for them to all get in and of course the hawks are always there... UGH!!! what does everyone do to control this problem???

I'm sorry I don't have any answers for you but I did have to comment to envy your lovely green grass. Ours is still brown from winter and I keep thinking any day now I'll start to see signs of it greening up but those two back to back winter storms are keeping it winter here for awhile yet.

Originally Posted by Deerfield Acres

What we need is an automated scarecrow that comes to life from any airborne approaches. It can yell, shake it's fist and let go with a thunderous fart. Wouldn't be our fault if the hawk/owl mistook it for a gunshot, would it.

Oh Karen, you are hilarious, you made my day!

Let us know when you want to make another trip to the poultry farm, I will try to have some money next time, I would love to see that operation! Even if I didn't bring back birds I would still like to go.

I went & picked up pallets from Arkansas City today while my DH was at the gym, I got 7 free ones. 3 of them are really heavy duty, the other 4 are just regular ones. I have one here already, so I think I should have enough now to put together a small goat shelter. I'm thinking of putting OSB over the pallets, that would be cheap enough, but it would for sure have to be painted then. I have some roofing material left over that I probably will use. I also have tin that I could use if I wanted to, I got it free also. It's just kind of a pain to work with, but that's really why I got it. I'll get it figured out, but it won't be for a few days. The weather doesn't sound like it's going to cooperate too well the next few days. I'm so ready for it to stay warmer, brrr. The wind here today is cold!

Oh, I see another field trip in our future. Poor Frank. He was already shaking his head enough at the 3 crazy chicken ladies who pulled in on Wednesday - can you imagine his face if a busload of us pulled in

I've been outside working all day today and got my hoop coop completed! I'm so glad its done. I even got all the chicken wire put around the bottom of it so it is truly done. I want to put a latch on the gate and I need to go and buy that or I would have just installed it today as well but that will only take a minute. It is useable as it is now though, since the gate wants to stay closed by default. Oh happy day - one project to cross off my list. Well, at least until I start on the second hoop coop that will sit next to this one.

 

[Trish44]

HEChicken, won't he be surprised when a whole group of us pile out, that would be fun! Congrats on getting your hoop coop done, yay! Pics please, we want to see. My door also stays shut by itself on my hoop coop, but the birds could push it open if they got to flying around like they do sometimes. I have two latches on that door. I will have to get my DH to thinking on building the next one soon. Our broilers are coming the middle of next month, it will be here before we know it. Now that I got my goat pen built for now we can move on to the next project. It seems like when you have birds & animals it's always something that needs to be built or done. My friend who has my little doe until next week has baby pot bellied pigs & she is building a pig shelter right now for them. They're pretty cute, but no I'm not getting pigs right now, the goats are about as much as my DH can handle right now. I wouldn't mind in the future though to get some more pigs for growing out for meat. They're not bad because they grow so fast you don't have them that long.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

I'm sorry I don't have any answers for you but I did have to comment to envy your lovely green grass. Ours is still brown from winter and I keep thinking any day now I'll start to see signs of it greening up but those two back to back winter storms are keeping it winter here for awhile yet.

Oh, I see another field trip in our future. Poor Frank. He was already shaking his head enough at the 3 crazy chicken ladies who pulled in on Wednesday - can you imagine his face if a busload of us pulled in

I've been outside working all day today and got my hoop coop completed! I'm so glad its done. I even got all the chicken wire put around the bottom of it so it is truly done. I want to put a latch on the gate and I need to go and buy that or I would have just installed it today as well but that will only take a minute. It is useable as it is now though, since the gate wants to stay closed by default. Oh happy day - one project to cross off my list. Well, at least until I start on the second hoop coop that will sit next to this one.

LOL! At least he was shaking his head with a smile on his face! Think he'll recognize us? Snicker -- Okay, so we can wear those glasses with a nose attached and talk in a very high voice and just announce: "Our foolish sisters were here last month but that wasn't us and we brought some more friends". Oh dear. I hope he's not prone to passing out.

 

[Chickies-duckies-etc]

I have lots of area for them to roam but since my numbers have recently been rising,,,, that grass I have maintained for awhile will go fast... That is just one of the downsides to livestock huh?

If you set up rotational grasing for the birds, you can have the grass and they can have grass to eat forever. Once they kill it out then they don't have it to eat and your family gets to walk around in mud. Ick Cheap deer netting should work for that and you can get rebar step in posts that are cheap also. I sure wish I had done that here. Bare ground is not fun.

 

[HEChicken]

LOL! At least he was shaking his head with a smile on his face! Think he'll recognize us? Snicker -- Okay, so we can wear those glasses with a nose attached and talk in a very high voice and just announce: "Our foolish sisters were here last month but that wasn't us and we brought some more friends". Oh dear. I hope he's not prone to passing out.

If you set up rotational grasing for the birds, you can have the grass and they can have grass to eat forever. Once they kill it out then they don't have it to eat and your family gets to walk around in mud. Ick Cheap deer netting should work for that and you can get rebar step in posts that are cheap also. I sure wish I had done that here. Bare ground is not fun.

That is really good advice. I've been fortunate never to have so many birds that they ate all the vegetation, but I now have a bigger flock than at any time in the past and with this drought I worry that the chicken yard will get eaten down to nothing, even though it by itself is a good sized area. I now let them out to free range the whole property in the afternoons but only when I am here so I'm hoping that limiting their time on the "greater area" will mean they won't be able to eat it down to nothing.

Trish, I will try to get pics of the hoop house tomorrow. I was so beat by the time I got done this afternoon that I didn't feel like going back down there with the camera. I don't have the tarp on yet either. I bought a nice big one yesterday but didn't get the tie down straps while I was at it. I decided to use the straps rather than zip ties to make it easy to take on an off when I need to.

 

[JosieChick]

Thanks! I do miss that darn rooster, he was a nice fella. They can be kind of hard to come by in that breed too it seems. A lot of the Ameraucana roos I have seen are really fresh with their hens and people.

Josie, your chicken pens are looking good! I'll bet you will be glad to get all of your birds & animals moved to the new place. I'm loving that Roo I got from you too, Rodney is a sweetheart, he is so respectful of the girls, unlike my SFH rooster who is starting to upset me with how he's treating the hens. He has been jumping on them & dragging them all around the pen since I moved them to the new coop. I wanted to keep 2 roos, but if he keeps it up he may have to be replaced.

I spent all afternoon covering the livestock panels on my goat pen with chicken wire & welded wire fence to keep the doelings from getting out of the pen. I took me forever to put all of those cable ties on & I used every single one I had. Hopefully I have it goat proof now, I don't want any escapees. I got the hay & grain feeder put out there & their shelter in place along with some stumps to play on.. All I need to put out there now is something for water. So after we get back from KC next week the new little doelings will be coming here. Then we'll see what my DH thinks of them. I guess he can either like it or lump it at that point because after they're already here there's not much he can do. I can't wait to get them here & get some pics to show you all, they're both cute. Their names are Penny & Patches.

Turkeys are expensive to raise and poults are very fragile.

Maidenwolf, I think this is what you will find with turkeys - that people are going to want fair market value. I know in my case, I bought juvenile birds and paid a pretty penny for them. That was last August and since then I have about 7 months worth of feed in them, and am yet to see an egg. Once she starts laying she will still need to be fed long enough to lay a clutch and then it takes 4 weeks to incubate the eggs, during which time I will still be feeding her. In other words, by the time I finally have a day-old poult, I will have 9-10 months of feed invested in addition to the original purchase price of the hen and tom, and that doesn't even count the cost of building the hoop coop to keep her safe while she is brooding. So I can't just give away those poults. I will either keep them to raise up for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, or I will sell them to people willing to pay me fair market value for them.




OMG - this is looking so awesome. When I was there helping you that day I truly did not have a good picture of what we were doing - this is really fantastic!
Thanks! I am overly critical of it because I see all the little "things" that went wrong in building and planning but overall it should be pretty nice.

This is the front of my coop showing the new pens. They're not perfect, but I did the best I could with what I had & no help. We never got the plexiglass for the windows, so I just ended up for now putting plastic on the inside of the windows. I may do something different with them later on, I don't know. After we messed up on measuring the openings & the other windows didn't work that just kind of threw me.


Here's the back showing my doors into each room. I forgot to move the wheelbarrow with the windows I was taking to the shed.


This is just a shot of the north side showing my windows we put in. They're going to be nice this summer to get a breeze through the whole coop.
I'll have to take some pics of the inside tomorrow when it's lighter out so you can see how I left the top half all open to get circulation through. The birds can see each other when they're on their roosts, but can't get to each other. The outside will be painted when it's warm enough to paint.

Have you cut the string yet? If not I think Danz's idea of the oil is a good one. You might try treating this like an impacted crop. If you look it up on here you can find directions on how to clean out the crop. You have to be really careful they don't aspirate anything but I would try giving her some oil and really massaging her crop well and then holding her upside down and working the contents of the crop out. I bet the string is caught in food/grit in there and bogged down by it and that is why you can't get it to pull out all the way. Maybe have someone hold a small dish cloth over her eyes so she doesn't fight as badly? Just what I might try but kind of risky in the sense that you don't want her to breath in food and stuff when you are emptying her crop.

It feels like there could be a far sized wad in her crop along with some food. I have pulled on it several times with what I think is reasonable force. It will come out a couple of inches and them go back. She does not like to be handled, so fights everything. I am thinking I may not have a choice but to cut it and hope for the best. Once I cut it off, there is no chance at all to pull it out.

When we lived in town our chickens dug all through our dog poo in the yard. Gross! I am glad our LGDs do their business WAY out in the field so I don't have to deal with that anymore. Often times they were after the little bugs that congregate in and under dog bombs but still, icky!

^ all above people: Is it harmful for chickens to eat dog poo? Because my dog leaves bombs around our yard regularly
I hope it all turns out all right I would be super sad if that happened to one of my chickens!!

Really depends on a ton of factors. Where is the silent auction and what is it for? Depends on the quality of the birds, their egg color quality, how much you want to pay, how reputable the breeder is, if they are hatchery birds or non hatchery. Hard to answer or give you a ball park idea without knowing those things first. I have seen BCM eggs sell on ebay for as low as $10 for a dozen and I have seen a dozen eggs from a high quality breeder go for well of $100.

Need some advice please. I found a silent auction for black copper marans eggs. But not sure how much to bid does anyone know? you bid on either 7 or 12 eggs

Well I am back for a day and then tomorrow is moving day for the horses! Yeah!!!! AND I got my first sebastopol egg of the season!!!!!

They aren't broken after all! I was beginning to worry!

 

[michelleml]

Josie looks like one of the Cochin girls is broody she had a fit last night when I went to check on eggs. She had two buff eggs and one of her own. Do you think I should let her sit or try and break her?

It's a dark rainy morning for so far

 

[HEChicken]

Josie looks like one of the Cochin girls is broody she had a fit last night when I went to check on eggs. She had two buff eggs and one of her own. Do you think I should let her sit or try and break her?

She thinks its spring! If it were me I would be

Breaking broodies is rarely successful - once they get it in mind to incubate, its hard to convince them its not a good idea. I couldn't tell you how many threads I've read where someone has found a sure fire way to break a broody and a short time later there is a chagrined posting about how the bird is broody again already. So....the best way I have heard of breaking a broody is to let her brood. Once the chicks hatch, she will forget being broody and set about raising them. Can I offer congrats? I would look at this as a great opportunity to hatch some eggs you've been wanting to hatch - you can switch out the eggs she has chosen to sit on, for others that you are more interested in hatching.

Josie, congrats on the Sebastapol egg!

We've only had a trace of moisture so far - I hope the rain they've been promising does start in earnest soon.

 

[chicken danz]

Congats Josie. Mine are kicking out eggs pretty well now. Usually at least 1 but sometimes 2 a day. The midgets are picking up in numbers as well.
I've got to get moving here. I made an appointment to get feed this morning at the coop. They have very limited service and just for a few hours on Saturday morning. When DH fed the other day her over fed and so my plans of having enough feed for the weekend weren't looking good.
I got up this morning to find 6 dead chicks in the bin in the house. I am kicking myself and wondering what on earth happened. Of course one of those was my cream legbar pullet that was about 4 weeks old. The only thing I did different was grab a different food pan from another bin so I wouldn't have to clean out theirs. It appeared clean but I'm thinking maybe it might have had some minute mold spores somewhere on it or something. I just feel sick. So everything got a thorough cleaning with activated oxine and new shavings etc. The bin they were in was immaculate though. No mess, no poo, nothing that looked potentially dangerous. I've got more chicks coming out of the hatcher today and it really bothers me. I am afraid I am missing something.
Michelleml I'd certainly want to know something about the breeder before I bid on the eggs. Also are they close or do they have to be shipped? That makes a huge difference in your hatch rates too. I honestly wouldn't give over $3 an egg unless they are from SQ lines. If you figure a 50% hatch that would be $6 a chick. Not to mention additional cost for whatever shipping is. If they are well known SQ lines and from a reputable breeder that is a whole 'nother story.
I got the back wall on my hoop coop yesterday and started cutting for the front coop wall inside. I am still not sure how I want to do it. I made a mistake of asking DH to hold the OSB up so I could mark it to cut. Of course then he wanted to reinvent the wheel. I got crabby with him. It is my project and I didn't want him to take over and start building things his way. He hasn't even looked at designs and ideas so he doesn't know what I am doing. I don't want him second guessing my plans. It was so cold out there. Not at all like the forecast. Of course they are right about it being cold today. I think the cold front moved in early.
We took off last evening for Ottawa and got another 10 X 10 kennel from Orschlens while they were 25% off and picked up a couple more heated dog bowls since they were on sale for $12.99. Cheap!!! And the DIY sale flyer ended today as well, so I bought 5 more cattle panels for my next hoop coop. I didn't buy lumber or anything. I am trying to watch money for now but I figured I would save enough on the panels I could get them now while they were on sale. I've got to finish the current hoop coop before I start another one anyway. And I want to do some more planning before I tackle it since I am building a whole new double coop concept in that one.
Mstng67 if you get a chance I would really like the see the front of your coop you have in your hoop house.
I am thinking of building a double door. Sort of a pop door with a man door on top so I can walk in there to get eggs and such. Kind of like what I did on this last dog house. The top stays shut and locked unless I go in there.
I did look at chicks at Orchslens last night and wasn't at all temped. Yay! I figure I have a lot nicer ones here.
HeChicken can't wait to see your pictures of your finished coop.

 

[michelleml]

Hechicken I think it would be so cute to see chicks running with a hen but my other girls are laying in the same box she is setting in. So should I just take the bo eggs and leave hers?

Egg auction is closed so if anyone has a few fertile welsummer or marans eggs let me know

Michelle