Getting Started in Wyoming

[Whistling Badger]

Yeah, I am not really expecting eggs until next spring, if we keep them that long. Like I said, this is an experiment. But with all the time and work we'll be investing into getting set up for them, I'm guessing we'll keep them.

We borrowed an incubator today--it has a nifty automatic egg turner. Now all we need is some eggs to show up. Should be in tomorrow or the next day!

Tom

 

[Katy]

Good luck with your eggs!

Has anyone warned you how addictive hatching eggs is?

 

[Whistling Badger]

Yeah, my first graders go ape over it every year (I'm a K-6 music teacher) ...so it should be about my speed.

T

 

[justduckie]

Hello, fellow Wyomingite! I'm from Gillette and started with my first chickens last year. I had one make it thru winter.....unfortunately during one of our snowstorms this past spring, something got into my coop and ate the heads off of the other 5......but now I have a bunch more babies running around.

One thing I must say is after the initial expense of setting up the coop, they haven't been much of an expense. I buy my feed from the local co-op and 50 lbs cost me about $14. And I buy one bag a pay day (every two weeks) right now. They are also free rangers, so that helps with the food cost. Once all my chicks start laying, hopefully starting around August, I will get more than $14 in eggs from them. We have a local store that will sell my eggs for me if I get too many and can't give them away to the neighbors.

Unfortunately, I think I may have 3 roosters when I only wanted one, so we may be having chicken stew some time this summer. I told my husband he would have to help me with that cause I'm not sure if I could do the deed. I told him I would pluck them, tho, if he would help with the chopping of the head.

Good luck with your new eggs!

 

[Whistling Badger]

No eggs yet! They shipped tuesday, and they aren't here yet! Can we have any reasonable expectation they'll still be alive?

T

p.s. Duckie, don't think of those extra roosters as bad luck. Your coop might be half empty, but your freezer half full. Yin and yang, all that stuff.

 

[ChickenToes]

*Sigh*...I used to live in Cody.

I would suggest hardware cloth instead of chicken wire, chicken wire is pretty useless. Where I live, a 50 lb. bag of food is about $10, and we go through about 1 1/2 bags a month for our 31 chicks. Maybe not even that much. But now that our chicks are outside during the day, they forage quite a bit.

I would think the eggs you ordered would still be ok.

Good luck!

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Some of mine that shipped tuesday just came in this morning. I've had 2 batches of eggs that took 8+ days to get here. Didn't have a great hatch, but a couple did hatch from those. Hopefully yours will show up yet today.

 

[Whistling Badger]

They're here! Only one broken, and a few more than we ordered, which is nice. Now we kick back and wait for something to happen.

Chickentoes, Cody to Wisconsin? I'd be sighing too! Wisconsin is nice and all--the farms are beautiful, and things seem to want to grow there, unlike Wyoming--but noticably lacking in mountains, elk, and sagebrush. Be strong.

I'm afraid that the amount of hardware cloth we'd need would be cost-prohibitive. We're trying to make this a money-saver by using stuff that is cheap/free/already here. We have summers off, so we can hopefully make up in work what we lack in startup money. But these aren't pets for us, they're food with feathers.

So we're trying to keep startup costs as low as possible. I'm sure the hardware cloth would keep just about anything in/out, though. I'll keep my eyes open. It would just take so darn much of it. It's a balance between spending too much up front, on the one hand, and not spending enough and loosing the investment, on the other.

Speaking of the critters not being pets, Mrs. Badger is a bit worried that she'll get attached to them and be unable to cope with putting them in the freezer when the time comes. So we decided, if/when they hatch, to name them McNugget 1, McNugget 2, McNugget 3, etc...just to keep things in perspective.

Tom

 

[Parson's Wife]

Welcome...sounds like your coming along fine. Visit often...and share pics!

 

[birdnutz]

Welcome to the board. I'm from Douglas. Justduckie,it doesn't sound like the co-op saves alot of money. Thats what I pay at the local feed store. You also have lockenvelder farms in Gillete.Their NIP and raise alot of large fowl and waterfowl.
Whistling Badger if you ever decide on waterfowl I have plenty of babies! Have fun on your new adventure.