Finally joined

Hello everyone,

I have been looking up information on this forum for a few years, but have decided to take the time to join.

Neither my wife nor I grew up around livestock, but we were intrigued by farm life. We added chickens to our farm in 2004, starting off small with 15 birds. We love them, and now my daughter (13) is the primary care-taker of the the flock. We have 21 adults and 9 peeps that hatched naturally on August 20th.

We used to buy our birds from the hatchery, so our base stock was barred rock, americauna, partridge cochin, buff brahma, and silver laced wyandotte. As time goes on, the flock has been getting muddled together, so we have about half pure-breed, and half cross-breed now. Our rooster is a big buff brahma named Barack O'brahma, and he's nice to the kids, but good protection for the hens.

The chickens will be joined in a month by two baby pygmy goats. Our lab, Pepper, protects the flock by keeping away the raccoons, and coyotes while the 3 cats, George, Whiskers, and Grey Stripes keep the smaller vermin at bay.

I built a very nice 9x12 coop (if I do say so myself) with from scraps left over from building our new house. It's connected to a large pasture area that the chickens can freely explore. We like the free-range idea, but we had to put up some field fence to keep the predators at bay, so it's as close to free-range and is feasible. The chickens are most interested in the wild elderberries that have migrated into their pasture. They provide some cover and some food for the flock.

We've had great luck with the health of our birds, but we've encountered a few difficulties too. You never know what's coming next. I've looked up info here on topics like brooding, candling, incubating, lice, rats, and now leg mites. It great to hear what people have tried and what worked and didn't work.

-Mike

 

Since you asked, here's a few pictures of the coop. Almost everything used in the construction was scraps from one project or another. The steel studs were left over from my house. The floor was a deck that a friend removed from his house. The only new materials were the siding.



There is a divider wall inside that is about 6 ft from the right end. The chickens live in the left end. There is set of double doors on the right end. This is where I store straw, fencing materials, a lawn mower and a go-cart. There is a cat door to the storage side and a nice place for them to sleep. This helps keep the vermin at bay. You can see the old white 3x6 coop in the background.



The roof is blue because it's made of scraps from the standing seam roof on my house. When we started selling eggs, we wanted to put labels on the cartons and we needed a name. Blue Roof Farm seemed a natural fit.

Here's my daughter and youngest son at the nesting boxes. There are 12 of them with access both inside and out. To clean the nests, I just park a wheelbarrow under the boxes and push the debris out from the inside.



You can't see it in these pictures, but there a windows in the gable and one on the back side to let in natural light. Two chicken doors on the end let the chickens into one of two paddocks. We have one paddock with a finer mesh fence for raising pullets, and a removable divider that makes a brooder area inside.