Finally got my 1st hens today!

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Thanks for the welcomes! Glad I finally got the train moving, even if only a couple psi in the boiler so far. So many things I'd like to learn to do along with my kiddos. I mean I like to have fun, but in the long haul in my mind it's really about what sort of legacy I can leave for them... whether in helping develop a good work ethic, learning to deal with many diverse types of people, loving the Lord with all their hearts, or becoming more self-reliant and finding others with a similar view. Yes, I'd like to be able to leave them some land where our family has spent some number of years working it, learning it, regenerating it together, but even where we live now, in suburbia, we can share experiences and learn things that should translate to further afield! :)

I've been talking about chickens since last summer, now I'm really hoping this will be like the gateway drug to homesteading for our whole family! Even if we never go 100% off-grid (don't think my better half would ever choose to live WAY out there), I still dream of 5 or 10 acres, some goats and/or sheep, chooks and ducks and guineas, a food forest with lots of fruit and nut trees. and eventually several small houses for the family to be able to live there even if not all choose to as adults All these permie ideas have infiltrated my brain now! LOL

I even think I'd like to find other folks of similar mindset and try to get properties near each other, work on some sort of intentional agrarian community to be able to help each other, have monthly work parties for barn raisings/potlucks/rotate which family gets help on a big project/etc. Dunno, maybe I'm a little off my rocker? LOL, always been a bit of an idealist/dreamer, now just trying to start one step at a time and break the inertia of decades. ;-)
 
JimNKC said:
I've been on here lurking mostly for about a year off and on, but after building a chicken tractor over the last 2 weeks with help from my future farming twins, we finally brought home 6 birds today!

So excited, but also nervous a bit! ;-) Ran across a guy with 20 whose girls were done with chickens for 4H and were now doing goats, and bout 6 of his hens. He said they were all either 1 or 2 years old and laying just fine, but his wife was going back to nurse school, and he worked full time and could always find more birds. So, we brought home 2 Americaunas, 2 Barred Rocks, 1 Buff Orp, and one black one might be a black sex link.

Got them home and in the tractor, put in a couple old butter tubs half full of water, and left for the feed store for 50# bags of feed, grit, and calcium/shell, a hanging style water, a rabbit style metal box to pour their calcium/grit into, and a little bag or mealworms. I also had made a 3' long trough feeder out of some PVC rain gutter that I had on hand with a pair of caps. Anything else I really need for now?

After explaining to the kiddos (and wife!) that mealworms were like ice cream/doughnuts to the girls, and not to give very many at once, just for special treats occasionally... we gave them 1/4 cup of the layer crumbles per bird and they seemed to eat maybe half of it. Was maybe 6pm by then, so 2 1/2 hours roughly until sleep-time. Wifey brought out some chopped up cucumber, a green pepper and some sort of non-iceberg lettuce... and they were even happier.

Still skittish, but after a 35 minute car ride to their new and unfamiliar home, that was understandable. The Buff seemed largest and most relaxed after eating dinner. About 8:30 we went out to pull their feeder and store it in the shed and say good night and they were all up and perched on the two 4' bars I put in for them.

Differences abound in how the last guy cared for them with 2 coops and a packed dirt floor (with 21 bird), vs in a tractor with dry grass maybe half is green. He used 1x2s stood on end for perches vs now they have 1 1/4" dowels... hope those are more comfortable being round and larger diameter. My thoughts for now are on keeping them in the tractor, with some sort of fresh veggies thrown in daily, have started a bucket of pellets fermenting, and keeping them in the tractor for at least some amount of time to make sure they know it's their new home.

Am I on the right track here in my thinking? have never seen any predators here in our neighborhood, near North Kansas City Hospital, except maybe aerial ones. Would like to be able to let them out at times, while we are in the back yard with them, but I am tapped out on cash now and our fenced in backyard is only standard height chain link. 3 1/2' tall maybe, trying to find a low cost way to maybe tie some sort of say 3 foot bamboo stakes every 6-8 feet along the fence, and ziptie some plastic mesh of some sort to them to increase fence height. Also, not much cover to hide from hawks, nor places to tie lengths of fishing line to help some with hawks. Suggestions for something very low cost?

Anyways, a short bit on me: 49 years old, quit my corporate job in early June and drive full time now delivery food for Postmates and ClusterTruck, and moonlight at times as a Lyft/Uber driver. So much less stress and more flexibility...:) My wife is from Bolivia, so we speak Spanish in the home mostly, per my insistence, and both my twins are fluently bi-lingual as a result. My grown son moved back in, and we both speak Spanish pretty good, but not like a native! Kinda like the wife with English. :)

Interests these days are mostly permaculture, animals, and hoping to some day escape the city and buy some land I can build up and leave to my kids. I am all about regenerating the soil through animals, green manures, and learning more ways to become more self sufficient and teach/help others who want it to do the same. Stuck where we are for now, a couple years at least I think, I am trying to learn things that will help further out also, and encouraging my kids' interest in growing at least some of their own food.

When I met my wife online back in 2009, she said my profile stuck out for one because all the other guys had 2 sentence profiles! LOL That, and also I love the Lord. :) Anyways, off to bed!

L
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