Hello BYC members from Connecticut!

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LuvinCochins

LuvinCochins

Hatching
6 Years
Sep 11, 2013
4
1
9
Greetings All! Having recently retired, I decided to have my own little backyard flock. Living on a farm, we have had chickens in the past as well as guineas, ducks, geese and peafowl. Despite all that experience, I have found BYC invaluable for getting info from experienced chickeneers.

I currently have a 14 chicken flock of banty cochins and 1 oddball silky obtained from MurrayMcMurray as a mixed straight run. As far as I can tell I have a Golden Laced Roo and 3 golden laced pullets, a pair of reds, a pair of barred, a pair of blue, 1 black roo, a black frizzle pullet, a white frizzle pullet, and a buff pullet. The silky is a buff color with a stripe pattern in it's wing feathers. Spending the time to handle them and feed them out of my hand from the time they were chick chicks has paid off for sure as they seem friendly and don't mind too much being touched.

I have a sturdy coop and a good chain link run, netted across the top and it all seems to be working well. We are well aware of the predators in the neighborhood, raccoons, skunks, barred owls, hawks, and coyotes, so free ranging may not be an option. The flock has a little goat and some table bound turkeys for back yard neighbors.

I know I will need to reduce my rooster population, that will be a tough one as they are all so darned cute!

Anyway, that is me. 1 Hubby, 3 children, 2 granddaughters, 2 pugs, a goat, turkeys and a flock of banty cochins!
 
Welcome to BYC from California wine country in the Western Sierra Foothills. :frow

I shudder to think what my flock might have suffered had I not found BYC.

May I suggest you get some hardware cloth (welded wire with holes no larger than half an inch) to place like an "apron" at the base of your chain link run? Bend it so half is against the chain link fence and the other half is flat on the ground. Then you just put rocks or pavers or even a layer of dirt over the flat part, and hog ring the hardware cloth to the chain link so it cannot be pulled down.

Digging predators are not smart enough (thankfully) to back up to dig further away, beyond the hardware cloth when they encounter it at the base of the run. Also. chickens are not smart enough (unfortunately) to run to open space in he middle of a run when predators frighten them. They will mass in corners, allowing raccoons to reach through chain link and pull heads, body parts through the openings to eat the poor things alive.

With the icky part out of the way..... Dontcha just love the individual personalities in your flock? I was initially amazed that CHICKENS are so social, with each one possessing different attitudes, exhibiting their own quirks.

....I no longer worry someone might catch me carrying on conversations with 'em.... My flock gives me so much pleasure in addition to eggs. Plus, it's HARD to find bugs here, now - that's the best thing (I think) about having chickens.
 
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THANK YOU for the great tip! I have installed small gauge chicken wire at the ground level as you described. I will certainly be watching with the thought of switching it to hardware cloth.

Personalities definitely vary as do the great sounds that they make. Just a riot to watch.

Have a great day!
 

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