"gambling" with fate to defend my eggs' life (he/she make it!!!!)

[mulia24]

ups, stand back barbara otherwise you'll get your dress full of dirt/soil/sand.

mine love to dust bathing at noon.

that's a problem, although you've large coop that can hold so many chickens, it means that there will be no problem for you to walk in, since the coop is big. but that's not effective, i'd rather have an outdoor access to nestbox, surely it's easier when we have outdoor access to the nestbox. isn't it?
that's why i build an outdoor access when i build my coop, learn it from coop section

. ugly, but works. perhaps you should make an outdoor access so you will not have too many fans pecking your feet.

wow, the girl seems to be happy with those dust bath session.

she's really fully feed since she looks much healthy and *filled*. i guess she have ever hatch any babies, haven't she?

 

[tomato lady]

Mulia, I have a large coop because the building has been there for many years. I built it when my daughters were young and they had goats. It is 200 sq. ft. and I just had to add roosts and nest boxes to turn it into a chicken coop. There was a 4 ft. high wall that I now use for part of their roosts. I built the nest boxes on the other side of that wall.

Here are some of my chickens getting ready for bed. They always fight over the "best" spot on the roost.

Over half of the coop has a cement floor so I use lots of bedding (wood chips) to keep it warmer and easier to clean. The part that is not cement has a dirt floor where they do their dust bathing. They can really stir up a lot of dust!

Lots of people like to have an outside door on their nest boxes. Maybe it is just because I am an old lady, but I like to go in the coop to collect their eggs and see how they are all doing. I must confess, I talk to my chickens. Also, I like to get out of the rain while I collect eggs. I live in the North West corner of the US. and we have lots of days when it is cold and wet.

The dust bathing chicken is young and I am not sure if she has started laying yet or not. I get about 10 eggs a day now from 28 pullets so I am not sure which ones are laying. I have not had any chickens go broody yet. I think these eggs might hatch out pretty funny looking chicks because my roosters are Polish. Maybe I will try to hatch some someday. Right now I don't want any more chicks till spring because it is going to get cold here.

Today I will take my camera up and try to get a picture of them all crowded around my feet. It is hard to walk without stepping on chicken toes.

 

[wegotchickens]

Mulia, you put a lot of work into that coop! And without easy access to materials. I would never measure your success against anyone else. You have an entirely different set of obstacles to overcome.
I like your outside access door for eggs. I used to have those on my 2 little coops. Now that I have one big coop I have to go inside. And I get aggravated because they spill feed all over the floor, walk on it, and then act like they're starving! So I guess chickens are all alike in many ways!! Our next project is making different feeders to make it harder for my chickens to waste their food.

Mulia, does your country have any holiday around Oct 31 or Nov 1?
I was thinking about that this weekend....

 

[mulia24]

@ tomato lady : wew, goats, milk producer? so fresh milk available everyday at past?
yes, mine also used to fight to get the highest branch of jambu fruit (i don't know the english

) but after being wing cut and even now with coop, no more flier.

no, don't mention it, it sounds like you blame yourself as an old lady, i'm really young, perhaps just same age like your but i also love to get inside my coop although i must admit my coop is not as high as me and i just build another part to be joined to the main coop but it only 1 meter in high to save wood (wood is quite expensive), perhaps easily counted as run but it have roof so i count it as coop also.

and i also have to admit sometimes i talk to my girls "keep laying please, i need fresh egg to make my breakfast tomorrow" but i'm sure they don't understand what i'm talking about since i only get about 3-4 eggs per week (the luckiest is 5/week) and asked the roo to mate the girls or he will be my dinner

but also he didn't understand since i never see him successfully mount any girls.

real dumb roo he is, the mean one is successfully mount all girls with negative effect of torturing and make the girls bald.

10 eggs per day? wew, never run out of egg supply for breakfast.

i hope my arabic will soon lay an egg, i forecast the day they lay first must be on February 2010 ( passing 20 weeks old) , perhaps as valentine gift for me

polish roo? the one with *feather crown* on his head.

great looking roo. i've heard many people on BYC want to give up their roo and i'm always the one who asked it, the problem is how to set the transport, i've no experience in this, if only i can have any roo that many want to throw away, i can have some breed here other than arabic and village here, both just looks same, except for the arabic more *darker* in feet and all body. i guess i just know why people named it arabic chicken.

the pic showed great chickens roosting. great so many chickens and vary in colors.

unfortunately i wrong designed my coop so there's no roost available, they just climb inside the coop using ladder and sleep on the floor of coop. i guess the safest time to get pics/take egg is when they're sleeping

no more toe get stepped on

but that will be no funny at all since you'll have no one that crowding you beg for treat.

 

[mulia24]

@ wegotchickens :

thank you wegotchickens, that bit *freshing* my mind. i can't include mine to coop contest in BYC since it won't win forever since i've since the winner coop on BYC always the one that took much of money to built.

bigger coop mean better, you can accommodate more chickens in it whenever it's necessary, not like mine, i'll have to enlarge my coop if i ever hatch more than twenty chickens since i think it won't suit them, they'll keep hit each other body/head whenever they walk.

yes, that's one that i hate, keep wasting food and stepped on it and then begging for food.

they must learn to cherish any feed being given to them since that's not easy for us to feed them, it cost money.

i wish when your anti-waste feeder completed you can share us the design so we can have no feed being wasted anymore.

em, no, 1st November of course holiday for company/worker since that's sunday, but i don't count that as holiday since i keep open my shop and work on sunday, i take holiday when i think i need it.

so there's holiday between 31 oct or 1 nov at US? Halloween holiday or other?

 

[wegotchickens]

Halloween holiday is what I was thinking about. Wondering if you had such silliness in your country, or maybe different silliness.

On Halloween kids dress up and go to houses saying, "Trick or treat?" We give out candy (treat) so no one can play tricks on us.

I had 'trick or tweet', since I hatched more chickens on 10/31. We hatched 7 Silkies for my daughter. She's very pleased. I'll post pictures later today or tomorrow. I'm about to get into trouble because I still have more eggs in the incubator

Some are from my blue d'Uccles and some are more Silkies.
We have 19 adults, 18 chicks, and more chicks on the way. BUT... I found a home for 2 roosters (wish I could send them to you!) and have someone who wants some of my chicks. Of the 18 chicks we have (so far) I know we will only keep around 10-15. And we built the coop big because I knew I was going to expand

I will post pics when we are done working on our new feeder. It is like someone else on BYC did, and made out of white PVC pipe (maybe you can't get that in your country?). The feed will come down into a pipe that has holes cut a little bigger than a chicken's head. That way they can't scratch it out or sling as much food around, I hope!

 

[mulia24]

ah, i think i know which one of the feeder you're talking about.

i've seen that in BYC feed section, i think the feeder is constructed by using 2 PVC pipe to form L shape. so you'll insert the feed over top of the pipe and the feed run down to the end and fill the ___ section of L shaped feeder. and on ____ part you cut a hole/box shaped hole and to make the feeder accessible by the chicken.

can wait to see the beauty little chickas here soon wegotchickens.

so the halloween count as holiday in US? there's no formal halloween holiday here and no silliness, bad government only give holiday to useless event.

woot, i won't mind to have those chicks here, fedex/dhl/usps please

even the roo. no matter what's sex of the chicks are.

yes, that's a pain to find a house for the roo but you finally made it out.

 

[wegotchickens]

Halloween isn't the kind of holiday that gets a day off or businesses closed. Just a lot of fun and silliness.

Yes, you know exactly the kind of feeder I was describing. The bottom of the 'L' will have holes cut into it. We're going to test one this next weekend. It would be tested now, but we didn't have long enough ties to secure it in place.

Here are some of the babies, the first 5. We have 8 now. Seven Silkies and 1 Lavender d'Uccle. There are 2 more d'Uccle chicks drying in the incubator, and one more Silkie egg that may hatch.

I do have a home for the 2 extra roosters, plus a home for a few chicks. So I'm not doing too badly with my chicken addiction

I also have 18 more Silkie eggs going into the incubator

They better hatch by the 24th or I'll be in trouble!

 

[mulia24]

o ow, you're being hatch-addicted now wegotchicken.

if only i don't suffer this power failure everyday, i'll hatch as many as possible egg that my bator can hold.

but no,

my power company is going to sweep almost all of them easily by using their power switch.

more than a dozen my chicken egg have suffered and die due to that power failure.

using that feeder i'm afraid that old feed will be mixed by new feed accidentally that will lead to mold/bad/poisoned feed i think, and when the girls poop on it it will be hardly to clean it up since it is fixed to the wall. besides, PVC is quite expensive here.

waw, amazing, the babies are so cute and adorable and why that yellow one is being alone?

that black one is cute, look at his style when try to drink, we don't have such thing to watering chicken like that here. that's good to prevent them pooping the waterer but i think that's not durable/long lasting tough?

and i'm afraid the chick that can't figure it out although his brother has been drinking from it will suffer dehydration. but, that's just my thinking, haven't had it set here yet.

 

[wegotchickens]

I shared the same feed worries with the new feeder. But it will mounted with a board a few inches over it so it won't be a comfortable perch. By using ties rather than permanent mounting we can shake down old feed into the 'serving pipe' so that old feed gets used first. The actual supply pipe won't hold a ton of food, but about 10-14 days' worth. So the feed will never get terribly old in the pipe. That's the plan, anyway.

The water bottle works for young chicks, but isn't practical for older birds. Since we're going to a nipple watering system in the spring, this will let all the young birds get used to drinking from a metal pipe.
The black chick is the oldest, and learned about the water bottle first. It has showed many other chicks what to do. To make sure no one gets left out, every night I squeeze the bottle until a droplet dangles from the pipe. All the chicks rush to peck at the shiny drop, and drop by drop I make sure everyone gets a good drink. You can tell when they're done because they wander away and start preening or napping. This makes sure none get dehydrated, and also helps reinforce that water is in the 'pipe'. I've raised many chicks with water bottles! It works until time for them to go outside. That's when I use a traditional waterer. Until we get the new system rigged up!

The one laying by itself was the youngest and tiredest. It hatched 11/1. It's laying under the lamp, keeping warm and napping. The others hatched the day before, so they were investigating the feed, the water bottle, my fingers...