- Jul 7, 2010
- 4
- 0
- 7
Hello all from "Waist-Deep and building an Ark" at the moment, Southern Indiana. FYI if you haven't seen the news for us and the surrounding areas we have been getting rain everyday for almost an entire week. Hooray it is suppose to end by this afternoon or tonight.
Anyway I wanted to stop by and say hello after reading a lot of the posts on the forums for almost a year now. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself/ourselves into when I told my cousin he could bring his chickens over here since he was not able to keep them where he lived.
To tell the story as short as possible, this time last year I was called by my cousin who, 5 weeks earlier, had bought 20 chickens at the local Rural King or TSC can't remember, and was unable to keep the kids away from them for one, and the landlord was not liking the idea of chickens on his rental property. So having about 3 acres of property out in the country I decided to take them off of his hands or at least take care of them as best as I/we could.
Neither my wife or I had ever had chickens growing up as we lived in the city, so we knew nothing about them at all. So being the techy person I am I "Googled" chickens and found this site. BYC FTW(for the win).
At the time we acquired these 20 rambunctious birds, who had all been given names btw, chicken sandwich, chicken nugget, BBQ, etc. prior to arriving, I set out to see what in the world we needed to do to take care of them properly, at least until they were big enough to become one of the above names.
We didn't realize that we would become so attached to them as we did. Do not get me wrong we had every intention at first to have a huge BBQ chicken cookout in July when they were much bigger.
As the weeks past my wife, kids and I became pretty attached to them as they did us. When I would get home from work in the afternoons I had 20 chickens hawling butt across the yard to meet me as I stepped out of the truck. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Of course they didn't really want to just see me they wanted food.
So for the next couple of months this same ritual happened every morning and afternoon as they grew.
Unfortunately for 2 days we came out to feed them and found we were missing some of them. 7 in all had vanished and one was hurt pretty bad. We thought it was the neighbors cat at first but after doing some reading for predators I quickly changed my mind. Since where we live is pretty much varmint area I was pretty sure that they had been attacked by one of the "neighborhood" wildlife predators. i.e. fox, coon, opossum, hawk etc.
So being the hunting enthusiast that I am I set up a couple of trail cameras around the barn where they would go into at night to roost, and sure enough I caught a fox on camera 2 nights in a row at the same times. So the next night my neighbor and I set out to rid our area of the chicken thief. About 30 mins before it was coming in we set up in a couple of trees with our bows and waited and waited and waited and waited. Nothing!!!!!! They aren't called "sly" for nothing.
So the next night we sat on the back porch around the same time with my beagle sitting with us. Man those dogs have good smellers. About the same time as we could hear this chickens starting to get scared the dog started growling. I grabbed him by the collar and ran off to behind the barn, sure enough I saw that fox running from the back of the barn back into the woods. Off came the leash and off went the beagle. He had to of chased that fox for over an hour, all we could hear was that beagle howl for a good 45 mins.
We haven't seen that fox since. The beagle got a big fat steak bone for that one.
So by this point we were down to 10 chickens and we were finally being able to tell the sex difference between them all, but still had no idea really as to what we were doing. We lost one more about a month later but that coon did not make it far before the beagle got a hold of him, but he had unfortunately done enough damage to the, previously hurt hen, that she didnt make it. So I built a small coop to keep them in that was surround by fencing and only big enough for them to fly up to or climb into at night.
We finally ended up with 3 roosters and 4 hens when all said and done after the July 4th cookout. Yeah we didnt eat that many, the kids wouldnt allow it nor would the wife.
So the summer drought came and as the roosters started doing their "Mine is bigger than yours" the meanest one was removed from the flock, as he would beat the crap out of all of the others just because he thought he could. At this point the hens are starting to lay eggs and were over whelmed by how many we were getting a day. We started just giving them away, because we couldnt eat them fast enough.
We spent the entire winter planning on what we were going to do this spring with our flock of 7. They stayed in the garage around a wood burner all winter, roosted on a couple of wooden pallets or on the wood box. At least 3 of the 4 hens were laying eggs for most of the winter, but when the spring came we lost one of our favorites, Stella, to an unknown source. The week prior she had layed an egg that was so big it took her 2 days on the nest, she had made on my work bench, to lay it. The next day she was gone and only a few feathers on the ground I could find.
So as of spring we had 2 small brown hens, Penny and Wiggly, our 8 yr old named them, and the 3 white ones, 2 roosters, Dumb and Dumber, I named them, and Momma the only white hen left, which she has not layed an egg since summer.
Well that is the first part of our story of becoming chicken owners by proxy, we still have no clue what kind they are but the white ones are all between 12-19lbs each. Everyone swears they are turkeys because they are so big but I assure them they are not.
I will try to post some pictures of them as soon as they will sit still long enough for me to do so. They free run the yard all day and unless I shake the bag of feed, only Penny will come say Hi to us. She is a funny bird that one.
Until we update you on the additions we purchased about a month ago in the next post, thx for reading my "Ramblings of a Drop Off Chicken Owner"
Raymond (Edge Family)
Anyway I wanted to stop by and say hello after reading a lot of the posts on the forums for almost a year now. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself/ourselves into when I told my cousin he could bring his chickens over here since he was not able to keep them where he lived.
To tell the story as short as possible, this time last year I was called by my cousin who, 5 weeks earlier, had bought 20 chickens at the local Rural King or TSC can't remember, and was unable to keep the kids away from them for one, and the landlord was not liking the idea of chickens on his rental property. So having about 3 acres of property out in the country I decided to take them off of his hands or at least take care of them as best as I/we could.
Neither my wife or I had ever had chickens growing up as we lived in the city, so we knew nothing about them at all. So being the techy person I am I "Googled" chickens and found this site. BYC FTW(for the win).
At the time we acquired these 20 rambunctious birds, who had all been given names btw, chicken sandwich, chicken nugget, BBQ, etc. prior to arriving, I set out to see what in the world we needed to do to take care of them properly, at least until they were big enough to become one of the above names.
We didn't realize that we would become so attached to them as we did. Do not get me wrong we had every intention at first to have a huge BBQ chicken cookout in July when they were much bigger.
As the weeks past my wife, kids and I became pretty attached to them as they did us. When I would get home from work in the afternoons I had 20 chickens hawling butt across the yard to meet me as I stepped out of the truck. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Of course they didn't really want to just see me they wanted food.
So for the next couple of months this same ritual happened every morning and afternoon as they grew.
Unfortunately for 2 days we came out to feed them and found we were missing some of them. 7 in all had vanished and one was hurt pretty bad. We thought it was the neighbors cat at first but after doing some reading for predators I quickly changed my mind. Since where we live is pretty much varmint area I was pretty sure that they had been attacked by one of the "neighborhood" wildlife predators. i.e. fox, coon, opossum, hawk etc.
So being the hunting enthusiast that I am I set up a couple of trail cameras around the barn where they would go into at night to roost, and sure enough I caught a fox on camera 2 nights in a row at the same times. So the next night my neighbor and I set out to rid our area of the chicken thief. About 30 mins before it was coming in we set up in a couple of trees with our bows and waited and waited and waited and waited. Nothing!!!!!! They aren't called "sly" for nothing.
So the next night we sat on the back porch around the same time with my beagle sitting with us. Man those dogs have good smellers. About the same time as we could hear this chickens starting to get scared the dog started growling. I grabbed him by the collar and ran off to behind the barn, sure enough I saw that fox running from the back of the barn back into the woods. Off came the leash and off went the beagle. He had to of chased that fox for over an hour, all we could hear was that beagle howl for a good 45 mins.
We haven't seen that fox since. The beagle got a big fat steak bone for that one.
So by this point we were down to 10 chickens and we were finally being able to tell the sex difference between them all, but still had no idea really as to what we were doing. We lost one more about a month later but that coon did not make it far before the beagle got a hold of him, but he had unfortunately done enough damage to the, previously hurt hen, that she didnt make it. So I built a small coop to keep them in that was surround by fencing and only big enough for them to fly up to or climb into at night.
We finally ended up with 3 roosters and 4 hens when all said and done after the July 4th cookout. Yeah we didnt eat that many, the kids wouldnt allow it nor would the wife.
So the summer drought came and as the roosters started doing their "Mine is bigger than yours" the meanest one was removed from the flock, as he would beat the crap out of all of the others just because he thought he could. At this point the hens are starting to lay eggs and were over whelmed by how many we were getting a day. We started just giving them away, because we couldnt eat them fast enough.
We spent the entire winter planning on what we were going to do this spring with our flock of 7. They stayed in the garage around a wood burner all winter, roosted on a couple of wooden pallets or on the wood box. At least 3 of the 4 hens were laying eggs for most of the winter, but when the spring came we lost one of our favorites, Stella, to an unknown source. The week prior she had layed an egg that was so big it took her 2 days on the nest, she had made on my work bench, to lay it. The next day she was gone and only a few feathers on the ground I could find.
So as of spring we had 2 small brown hens, Penny and Wiggly, our 8 yr old named them, and the 3 white ones, 2 roosters, Dumb and Dumber, I named them, and Momma the only white hen left, which she has not layed an egg since summer.
Well that is the first part of our story of becoming chicken owners by proxy, we still have no clue what kind they are but the white ones are all between 12-19lbs each. Everyone swears they are turkeys because they are so big but I assure them they are not.
I will try to post some pictures of them as soon as they will sit still long enough for me to do so. They free run the yard all day and unless I shake the bag of feed, only Penny will come say Hi to us. She is a funny bird that one.
Until we update you on the additions we purchased about a month ago in the next post, thx for reading my "Ramblings of a Drop Off Chicken Owner"
Raymond (Edge Family)
