ADKcluckers
Songster
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens? We got our ladies this March after thinking about it for 5 years while visiting our neighbor's flock. As first-timers we made some classic mistakes but it's been a fun journey getting started.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now? Twenty, which is more than we originally planned on, but seems to be working great.
(3) What breeds do you have? Black Copper Marans, Partridge Cochin, Silver Spangled Hamburg "Oreo", White Cochin "Coco Chanel", two Barred Rocks, two Black Australorps, Buff Brahma Standard "Mocha", Dominque "Dee Dee", two Easter Eggers, three Golden Laced Wynadottes, Rhode Island Red "Henrietta R Cluckinstuff", two Speckled Sussex, Welsummer, and a White Rock.
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens? The personalities of some of the ladies, the great addition to my composting efforts, and of course those eggs!
(5) What are some of your other hobbies? Flower and veggie gardening, along with most outdoorsy stuff. I really enjoy trying to apply permaculture ideas to my little acre of the world so I can be a better steward of the land and live more with nature than in it.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share. Between us my wife and I have three kids and six terrific grandkids who seem almost as taken with the chickens as we are, and helped with some of the names we've settled on
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
I think we first heard when looking up tips at MyPetChicken and watching YT videos about first time chicken keeping. The forums were a lot of help when getting started, and continue to be now that we're five months in and getting our first tiny little eggs!
When we went to build a coop things had to get scaled back quite a bit from the plan on paper, thanks to the impacts from Covid-19, so we ended up building as "for now" coop out of an old 8 X 8 shed that we put up on a sturdy frame, with a run built from timbers that I cut after taking down a bunch of pine trees to make space for more gardens. The timbers were sunk below the frost line and ended up being 7 feet at the outside and 9 in the center, and we hope to be able to put on metal roofing before winter since things get a bit nasty here in the hills of the Adirondacks. Everything ended up being on a super tight budget so it looks very "rustic", but the ladies are happy and most importantly safe. After these pictures I added a row of nest boxes to the coop that are accessed from the run and more screened ventilation windows. Still needs some tweaking but it's coming along.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now? Twenty, which is more than we originally planned on, but seems to be working great.
(3) What breeds do you have? Black Copper Marans, Partridge Cochin, Silver Spangled Hamburg "Oreo", White Cochin "Coco Chanel", two Barred Rocks, two Black Australorps, Buff Brahma Standard "Mocha", Dominque "Dee Dee", two Easter Eggers, three Golden Laced Wynadottes, Rhode Island Red "Henrietta R Cluckinstuff", two Speckled Sussex, Welsummer, and a White Rock.
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens? The personalities of some of the ladies, the great addition to my composting efforts, and of course those eggs!
(5) What are some of your other hobbies? Flower and veggie gardening, along with most outdoorsy stuff. I really enjoy trying to apply permaculture ideas to my little acre of the world so I can be a better steward of the land and live more with nature than in it.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share. Between us my wife and I have three kids and six terrific grandkids who seem almost as taken with the chickens as we are, and helped with some of the names we've settled on
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
I think we first heard when looking up tips at MyPetChicken and watching YT videos about first time chicken keeping. The forums were a lot of help when getting started, and continue to be now that we're five months in and getting our first tiny little eggs!When we went to build a coop things had to get scaled back quite a bit from the plan on paper, thanks to the impacts from Covid-19, so we ended up building as "for now" coop out of an old 8 X 8 shed that we put up on a sturdy frame, with a run built from timbers that I cut after taking down a bunch of pine trees to make space for more gardens. The timbers were sunk below the frost line and ended up being 7 feet at the outside and 9 in the center, and we hope to be able to put on metal roofing before winter since things get a bit nasty here in the hills of the Adirondacks. Everything ended up being on a super tight budget so it looks very "rustic", but the ladies are happy and most importantly safe. After these pictures I added a row of nest boxes to the coop that are accessed from the run and more screened ventilation windows. Still needs some tweaking but it's coming along.
Glad you joined.
