Getting the flock out of here - a diary of a crazy chicken man

we seem to be having a round of dry fowl pox. sigh. I had chickens for 10 years in the past and didn't have half the stuff going on with them as the ones I've had the last few years.

 

yup i'm with ya
this isn't the piglett gun thread
it's the OZ chicken thread
at times i forget that everyone doesn't think like i do & live way out in the sticks where i live.
so they may have a different outlook on some things than the old pigster does.

OZ how is the Philippine flock doing??

 

we lost a female turkey
now i only have 1 boy & 1 girl for breeding

 

I live in a neighborhood and I just let them run around my backyard (4ft chain link fence around 3/4 acre yard)with the kids and dogs. In order to do the netting I would still have to fence off an area for them because of the kids. They have a swing set and trampoline and all that back there, and to net the whole yard would inhibit that. I have a friend who has bred her Karakachan/Great Pyr mix and will have pups ready in Jan if it took, but that's a long way off.

 

Curious...how do you deal with the inevitable chicken waste + children running around? I would let my birds free range, except my four kiddos run all over the property and usually they are barefoot. (Nobody around here wears shoes in the summer, lol).

My kids track enough dirt into the house, I would not love to have bird poop tracked in, too.

 

Everyone has to wear shoes and they take them off at the door and that is where they stay until they go back out. Honestly though, my chickens tend to only stay I'm certain areas, which seems to be dependent on the breed/size. My large ones (LB & BLRW) patrol the fence line of hang out under the fishing boat (we nick named them the "Cool Kids", and my smaller ones (Silkies/Bantam Cochins/Serema/OEGB) tend to stay near the coop, run and on the side yard that no one ventures to play at, and I think that's why they free range in that area, because there is no foot traffic. Sometimes they hang out under my mulberry bush, but it's only 10ft from my coop.

 

i can't any bronze hens on craigslist
i may have to go a couple white ones
i guess mixed turkey babies are better than none at all
i worry that my 1 hen will take sick & die over the winter
this would leave me with a big tom who would only have value in a roasting pan