Coop Project: Maken the Plunge & Getting Chickens

[SleepyOwl]

Yay for first eggs! My girls are about the same age, so we should be getting close! (I have different breeds though, so I am expecting it to take a bit longer.)

 

[memphis]

Congrats on those eggs! My little flock is a month or so younger than yours and I'm anxiously waiting for my first eggs! Like you, my chickens have been quite the journey. Thanks for sharing your story!

 

[Rock Home Isle]

My son had a Baseball Tourney on Sunday in Longmont. When we came home, I went out in the backyard to check on the girls...only two came running to greet me. Not a problem, if they are resting in the shade they can be a little bit lazy to come when I call them. So I went and checked under the coop...nobody. So I checked on both sides of the house....empty.

By now I'm a bit concerned...because I don't have a big backyard...there are not lots of places for them to hide.

I start heading into the house so that I can go out the front door and begin talking to my neighbors...maybe something happened during the day while we were at the ball fields. Just as I'm heading up the stairs into the house, I happen to take one more look into the backyard. I see a little head looking at me from behind the power box by the garden. As soon as the head sees me looking, it ducks back behind the power box.

I walk over to the power box and look behind it...there are the remainder of my flock, all nestled together...hiding.

Those little Terd-Balls.

 

[Lynn0284]

My son had a Baseball Tourney on Sunday in Longmont. When we came home, I went out in the backyard to check on the girls...only two came running to greet me. Not a problem, if they are resting in the shade they can be a little bit lazy to come when I call them. So I went and checked under the coop...nobody. So I checked on both sides of the house....empty.

By now I'm a bit concerned...because I don't have a big backyard...there are not lots of places for them to hide.

I start heading into the house so that I can go out the front door and begin talking to my neighbors...maybe something happened during the day while we were at the ball fields. Just as I'm heading up the stairs into the house, I happen to take one more look into the backyard. I see a little head looking at me from behind the power box by the garden. As soon as the head sees me looking, it ducks back behind  the power box.

I walk over to the power box and look behind it...there are the remainder of my flock, all nestled together...hiding.

Those little Terd-Balls. :/

I've had that happen to me. One day I thought all my chickens had run away... Couldn't find any of them in the yard. After thirty minutes of panic I found them hiding under a plastic cement mixing tray on the side of the house they never go to. I think my chickens went there to hide from a cat that has been coming around.

 

[Pozees]

Chickenology: Using the Work Force

Occasionally I'll have an area in my yard where the thatch gets real thick and it will start to choke out the grass. Usually the normal response, one that I have done for years and years, is to go get a de-thatcher and power-rake the lawn. After that work is done I then rake up this big pile of thatch; load it up into PLASTIC TRASH BAGS; haul down to the curb so that it goes out with the garbage; and it eventually winds up in the land fill. What a huge waste.

I got my initial inspiration from watchinh how my chickens enjoy the fresh sprouts from the bird seed that sprouts in their run....So I thought of an experiment to see if I could get the pullets to de-thatch my yard for me.





I have conducted my little experiment and here are my results: When I have an area where the thatch is getting thick, I'll get a small container of bird seed and go call the girls over for a snack. They love bird seed and will readily come running when I offer it as a treat.



I then feed the pullets several times in the area where I have the thatch problem. I spread this feeding activity with the pullets out over a few days in this problem area. As the pullets feed from my hand there is quite a bit of the bird seed that will be scattered into the lawn where I have the thatch problem. Once I've feed them several times and I feel that there is a good coverage of spilt bird seed in the area....I get out the hose and give the area a good soak. Then after a few days of nice hot weather, the bird seed will sprout and the all these young tender seedlings will begin springing up all over the area where the seed was spilt. My girls are already aware of the spilt seed and have been picking seed in the area as they find it, but once the spilt seed starts sprouting...



LOOK OUT....They will now actively work the area over trying to get every tender shoot. As they work the area they scratch and peck. I found that my small flock will pull up almost all the thatch and they will also eat and consume quite a bit of this thatch. The ducks also consume quite a bit of the thatch, even more than the pullets. The material that the flock doesn't consume, I pick up with the lawn mower the next time that I mow the lawn. After a few mowings, any sprouts that didn't get eaten will die out of the lawn. These girls work so hard to get those sprouts....

Those of us that have poultry have a work for force that will work for chicken feed or rather bird seed if we just use a little chickenology to get them to do it. Lot's of awesomeness.

They are a wonderful work force.

I just spent 30 minutes locating this post - we have an area we need the worker chickens in, and I remembered that you had posted advice on how to encourage them to do it, I just couldn't remember the details Thank you so much for all your advice. Your "Chickenology" posts are extremely helpful to me, and I plan to give this particular bit a whirl this week! FYI, treating a very bossy hen as a rooster might (getting her to squat) has also moderated the behavior of my RIR who had begun trying to fly up in my face when I let her out of the run and sometimes while I work in the run. She is not mean, just bossy, and she seems to have understood her limits. I have no roosters, and felt she needed to understand I was above her in the pecking order; I think she now does.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

I just spent 30 minutes locating this post - we have an area we need the worker chickens in, and I remembered that you had posted advice on how to encourage them to do it, I just couldn't remember the details Thank you so much for all your advice. Your "Chickenology" posts are extremely helpful to me, and I plan to give this particular bit a whirl this week! FYI, treating a very bossy hen as a rooster might (getting her to squat) has also moderated the behavior of my RIR who had begun trying to fly up in my face when I let her out of the run and sometimes while I work in the run. She is not mean, just bossy, and she seems to have understood her limits. I have no roosters, and felt she needed to understand I was above her in the pecking order; I think she now does.

I have a big blond buff hen that squats for me when I go into the yard. I pet her and hold her from time to time. The other day I petted her, then I petted another hen that had squatted for me. That big blondy ran up, pecked the hen and then grabbed my hand...she seemed real upset.

Never seen a jealous hen before....that was a first.

 

[Pozees]

I have a big blond buff hen that squats for me when I go into the yard. I pet her and hold her from time to time. The other day I petted her, then I petted another hen that had squatted for me. That big blondy ran up, pecked the hen and then grabbed my hand...she seemed real upset.

Never seen a jealous hen before....that was a first.

OMG that is hilarious! It's funny how every species will have members who are jealous and others who simply are not, it doesn't even occur to them. I confess I have yet to meet a jealous hen myself, but as I move through the process of integrating 2 ~7-8 month old hens with 5 14 week old pullets I will be curious about whether that dynamic comes into play. The youngsters are all Speckled Sussex (although I suspect at least two have some Araucana in there somewhere as they are rumpless) which came from someone who raises day-olds to feathered and then sells them - which is great, but they were never really handled and have been slow to become accustomed to me, and are not really what I would call friendly yet. I let them all in the large run together for the first time a couple of nights ago and stayed in there with them for an hour, worried what the bossy girl, a RIR, might do. Appeared to me she mainly wanted the little girls to know she was in charge - took a few feathers off a couple but didn't get really violent. Will be trying it again in the next few days. They have to become well acquainted, as all will be moved into a new large coop as winter approaches (I have to insulate and then ventilate, it's a nice coop but too many spaces between boards for the CO winter).

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Well its been a short while since my last update to this project thread. The chickens have been laying eggs fairly regularly since early September. We started out with 1 egg per day...then 1 or 2 eggs per day and by the end of September we were getting about 4 or 5 eggs per day.



For those of you that have poultry you already know this....but I cannot say it enough...There is no better feeling than having a small flock of chickens that begin producing wholesome food for the family.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Fall brought several ant swarms in the yard....the chickens just go nuts when they find one of these swarms. They just gobble up ants by the hundreds...its amazing how quickly they zero in once one memeber of the flock finds a little cache of food like an ant swarm or grasshoppers....miller moths are especially fun to watch as they try to catch them in the air. Simply the finest in Cheap Entertainment.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

We have a new addition to the family...my son now has a puppy, her name is "Missy". She is a very proud little girl and she gets into all sorts of things around the house.