Easter Egger club!

[summerb123]

I cant free range because to many predators....there is a hawk nest in a patch of woods beside our house and are neighbors i am pretty sure they don't want some chickens in there yard lol

 

[jenniferlamar70]

I cant free range because to many predators....there is a hawk nest in a patch of woods beside our house and are neighbors i am pretty sure they don't want some chickens in there yard lol

Lol that's funny you say that. We just had to chase ours out of the neighbors yard hahaha

 

[summerb123]

LOL!

 

[FlyWheel]

I wish I could free range my birds, but there is a pack of stray dogs that passes through here regularly and at least two breeding pairs of hawks that fly overhead all the time. We've killed three huge cotton mouth snakes and ran off two red belly water snakes. The cockerels that are out and about stay close to the goats, but I just don't have enough goats for 40 chickens to hang out under. We lost one pullet to a hawk the same day we tried to free range them. We do the best we can to make sure they have toys, swings, cubbies and things for them to stay busy with.

My kids love catching bugs for the chickens and we give them kudzu or brushy weeds daily to compensate for being locked up all the time. I don't like it, but it keeps them safe.

Same here. Two dogs who refuse to abandon their fatal attraction to anything that is small and living, along with everything else that lives in the woods that surround us, means no unprotected foraging

. So I make their pen as large as practical yet still be able to keep them safe and secure.

How do your chickens like kudzu? Have you ever tried growing some in your pen? As fast as it grows do you think that with minimal protection, like screening off part of the plant or periodic sequestering it may be able to keep up with their foraging?

P.S. Have you tried hanging a corn cob from the roof of your pen? Mine love that!

P.P.S. What's "cubbie"?

 

[jerryse]

I shared this on he other EE thread . Looks kind of like the British Araucana .

 

[Chicken5555]

Same here. Two dogs who refuse to abandon their fatal attraction to anything that is small and living, along with everything else that lives in the woods that surround us, means no unprotected foraging

. So I make their pen as large as practical yet still be able to keep them safe and secure.

How do your chickens like kudzu? Have you ever tried growing some in your pen? As fast as it grows do you think that with minimal protection, like screening off part of the plant or periodic sequestering it may be able to keep up with their foraging?

P.S. Have you tried hanging a corn cob from the roof of your pen? Mine love that!

P.P.S. What's "cubbie"?

Thanks Flywheel for the hanging corn cobb idea! I did think about growing cudzu outside of the pen, but I'm a little concerned it might take over lol. That stuff can grow up to three feet in a day. I'll think about your idea for growing it inside the pen. I am planning on building a grass guard so I can grow grass in the coop for them so the idea is about the same.

Every day, twice a day, we pick enough kudzu to loosely fill a five gallon bucket and all the leaves are gone in ten minutes. The chickens devour it! The rabbits love it too. Would you believe the chickens eat the kudzu faster than my goats!

When I use the word cubbie, I mean a small enclosed box with an entrance. For example, an upside down plastic storage container with a hole cut into one side and ventilation holes drilled into the top. There is also a 'cubbie' area under the nest boxes that some of the younger pullets like to hang out around.

Here is one of the cubbies - it's just a piece of plywood leaning on the inner coop wall with a hole cut out for them to hop in at out. The little chicks that share the pen with the rabbits love it too.


Plastic storage 'cubbie'


This one is just an old bucket with some brush leaning over it and a little piece of a log. The greens didn't stay green for very long, but they still like to climb up on it and hang out under the shade. What I really need to do is plant bamboo or some other fast growing plant to give them more shade. The have an area that has a tarp over it for shade too, but I like the natural look better.

 

[FlyWheel]

Thanks Flywheel for the hanging corn cobb idea! I did think about growing kudzu outside of the pen, but I'm a little concerned it might take over lol. That stuff can grow up to three feet in a day. I'll think about your idea for growing it inside the pen. I am planning on building a grass guard so I can grow grass in the coop for them so the idea is about the same.

Every day, twice a day, we pick enough kudzu to loosely fill a five gallon bucket and all the leaves are gone in ten minutes. The chickens devour it! The rabbits love it too. Would you believe the chickens eat the kudzu faster than my goats!

Oh it will definitely take over! LOL! As for the chicken's relative gluttony, no surprises there either.

Yeah, just a sprig planted (perhaps in a large pot?) somewhere near the center of the pen and netted off just enough so it can keep enough of it's leaves to survive is what I meant, the chickens keeping the rest in check. One note though, I hear that the berries are poisonous, so you might want to clip any you see starting. Also to keep it from reseeding someplace you don't want it, which would be anywhere else!

When I use the word cubbie, I mean a small enclosed box with an entrance. For example, an upside down plastic storage container with a hole cut into one side and ventilation holes drilled into the top. There is also a 'cubbie' area under the nest boxes that some of the younger pullets like to hang out around.

Here is one of the cubbies - it's just a piece of plywood leaning on the inner coop wall with a hole cut out for them to hop in at out. The little chicks that share the pen with the rabbits love it too.


Plastic storage 'cubbie'


This one is just an old bucket with some brush leaning over it and a little piece of a log. The greens didn't stay green for very long, but they still like to climb up on it and hang out under the shade. What I really need to do is plant bamboo or some other fast growing plant to give them more shade. The have an area that has a tarp over it for shade too, but I like the natural look better.

OK, a cubby-hole.I get it now. Do any of your hens commandeer this as a nesting box?

 

[Chicken5555]

Oh it will definitely take over! LOL! As for the chicken's relative gluttony, no surprises there either.

Yeah, just a sprig planted (perhaps in a large pot?) somewhere near the center of the pen and netted off just enough so it can keep enough of it's leaves to survive is what I meant, the chickens keeping the rest in check. One note though, I hear that the berries are poisonous, so you might want to clip any you see starting. Also to keep it from reseeding someplace you don't want it, which would be anywhere else!

OK, a cubby-hole.I get it now. Do any of your hens commandeer this as a nesting box?

LOL - yeah, anyone in SC knows that Kudzu is insanely hardy! I'll do a little research about the berries, thanks for that tip!
Yeah, that's what I meant... cubbie-hole.
Well, none in that pen are old enough to lay eggs, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if they do commandeer it for that purpose!

 

[mamatink7]

It's their nature to be ultra-cautious.  It has nothing to do with not liking you -- they take a long time to build trust.  I think it's worth the patient wait and handling because these birds are so incredibly sweet.   I personally don't mix them with common layer breeds like Leghorns, BRs, RIRs, NHRs, Wyans, Marans, etc.  Common layers are usually heavier and more assertive and tend to dominate the gentler nature of the lighter-weight EEs.  My Marans and Leghorns were too nasty toward our purebred Blue Wheaten Ameraucana and I re-homed the bullies.  EEs and Amers are naturally jittery jumpy skittery yet gentle birds who don't need the stress of having to avoid daily conflict with more aggressive layer breeds.  In our smaller backyard environment we didn't have enough space for the Ameraucana to avoid the assertive breeds so we re-homed the bullies and only kept the gentle Silkies and gentle Bredas around the Amer.  It was a heavenly mix of gentle breeds.  There are still pecking orders established with gentle breeds but none of the violent chasing, feather-pulling, or claw attacks like with the bigger heavier breeds. JMHO

thank you for your help. I do have mixed size breeds (BO BA GC EE GLW & a BCM roo) and seem some get along better than others. I feel horrible cause they were the only 3 ever gotten pecked & with truSt issues. I always work with them. When they lay, will they tame down more?

 

[FlyWheel]

Braveheart is laying! The little chick that ran up and jumped into my hand at the feed store and was always the first to try anything new. Well, she wasn't the first to lay, and when she got out of the nest it seems she doesn't even lay green OR blue eggs. Hers are PINK! (a really light brown). Now I have been collecting a small light brown egg the last few days, but judging from the photo I took it was darker than Ol Red's

This one was noticeably lighter than Red's. However pullet eggs can vary a lot in color, especially in the beginning so if the other eggs are her's as well or not I guess I won't know for sure until I see both two different color eggs side by side.