MaryPoopins5
In the Brooder
- Jun 9, 2022
- 8
- 50
- 48
My name is Tiffany and I am incredibly new to raising chickens. My mom has lots of experience and when she suggested that she would have to find a home for one of her young roosters that was beginning to stress out her hens and possibly eat 4 hens that lay fairly small eggs I decided to take them all and give the chicken mom life my all. I've had them about 2 months so far.
I have 1 rooster(Pickle) and 4 hens(AbraHen Lincoln, Mary Poopins, Henrietta, and Meggatron) as a trial run to see how well my dogs behave and how well suited I am for adding in more animals to my already enormous animal family. I couldn't tell you what kind they are(will include photo of the different types since it's hard to get them still in one photo) but they're all adorable, especially my little black one with the floof on her head(that's AbraHen Lincoln). I am interested in possibly adding some Buff Orpingtons to the mix if they won't peck my babies to death, I imagine they would be a bit larger but I've been told they are gentle and their eggs are very rich in flavour. My girls lay 3-6 small eggs per day in total and I am already overrun but as I learn more egg centered recipes I'm hoping we can easily add 4-6 more hens, I can always give some eggs away if I end up with more than I can handle!
I love how caring my rooster (Pickle) is. When I go out to feed them any sort of treat, he will eat 1 and call the hens over to watch them devour every last thing that moves or appears to be edible. When I got them only one hen had accepted him as their rooster. Over the next few days, they started to roost and stay closer and closer and now they sleep crammed together on one small branch and if he gets too far from them they come flying around the corner, screeching and searching for him! When I tried to corral them this morning and had trouble with the last one, Pickle understood what I was trying to do. By the time I had gone inside for a treat and come back out he had all the hens back in order and safely inside the pen.
I have 3 children ranging in age from 8-11y/o, 11 Beagles, 1 Jack Russel terrier, 1 Treeing Feist, 2 horses and currently 1 rabbit. I recently cared for and released 1 cottontail rabbit that had been left without a family and home in a horrible grass cutting incident and I released a house wren that had been orphaned when it's mother drowned in a bucket of water at my aunt's house, he's still hanging around the woods behind our house but has found some friends and started finding all his own food. I spend the majority of my time doing what my kids want to do and caring for animals but I love fishing and swimming.
I found BYC while searching whether or not my chickens could eat a small piece of bread(ran out of treats
) and welcome any advice for a newbie.
I had a small mealworm farm in a 6x12 plastic container when I got the hens, I have since upgraded to a fairly large 3 drawer set-up and am currently waiting for my mealworms to multiply before continuing to feed them to the chickens. I keep layer feed and water accessible at all times. I rotate between live mealworms and freeze dried black soldier fly larvae as a daily treat(the soldier fly were originally so I could hold back on the mealworms since the house wren was eating 100 a day by itself and my supply dwindled, they seriously stink so I'll probably drop those and try to find something else). I also cut up apples, carrots, celery, and berries as more of a weekly(every 5-7 days) treat. I have been tossing in 1/4 cup scratch every morning along with 1 or 2 other treats but my mom has informed me that they may get too fat for the summer months so I am looking for ways to cut back on scratch while continuing to provide something. I am headed to the grocery store in a bit to grab some greens for my rabbit and I think I'll try hanging some romaine lettuce/turnip greens for them to peck at(with plans to grow myself in the fall) in place of scratch a couple days per week. They also seem to love scrambled eggs mixed with a bit of blended eggshells. I don't generally have a lot of leftover food that isn't from an abundance of fruit or vegetables but I would welcome cost effective ideas for treats. They free range from approximately 3-8pm so I like to offer snacks in the morning to give them something to do while they patiently wait for my Treeing Feist to have his turn in the yard. He is the only one that seems to think I need to be saved from a hen but he saved the hens from an opossum and me from a very large snake a couple weeks ago so I'll have to try and make do with a rotating schedule. I love the mealworms because they replenish themselves and would welcome ideas for easy DIY chicken gardens or really anything that I wouldn't constantly have the pay for! If you hung in this long, thank you and I hope eventually I will have something to contribute to this community besides questions!
I have 1 rooster(Pickle) and 4 hens(AbraHen Lincoln, Mary Poopins, Henrietta, and Meggatron) as a trial run to see how well my dogs behave and how well suited I am for adding in more animals to my already enormous animal family. I couldn't tell you what kind they are(will include photo of the different types since it's hard to get them still in one photo) but they're all adorable, especially my little black one with the floof on her head(that's AbraHen Lincoln). I am interested in possibly adding some Buff Orpingtons to the mix if they won't peck my babies to death, I imagine they would be a bit larger but I've been told they are gentle and their eggs are very rich in flavour. My girls lay 3-6 small eggs per day in total and I am already overrun but as I learn more egg centered recipes I'm hoping we can easily add 4-6 more hens, I can always give some eggs away if I end up with more than I can handle!
I love how caring my rooster (Pickle) is. When I go out to feed them any sort of treat, he will eat 1 and call the hens over to watch them devour every last thing that moves or appears to be edible. When I got them only one hen had accepted him as their rooster. Over the next few days, they started to roost and stay closer and closer and now they sleep crammed together on one small branch and if he gets too far from them they come flying around the corner, screeching and searching for him! When I tried to corral them this morning and had trouble with the last one, Pickle understood what I was trying to do. By the time I had gone inside for a treat and come back out he had all the hens back in order and safely inside the pen.
I have 3 children ranging in age from 8-11y/o, 11 Beagles, 1 Jack Russel terrier, 1 Treeing Feist, 2 horses and currently 1 rabbit. I recently cared for and released 1 cottontail rabbit that had been left without a family and home in a horrible grass cutting incident and I released a house wren that had been orphaned when it's mother drowned in a bucket of water at my aunt's house, he's still hanging around the woods behind our house but has found some friends and started finding all his own food. I spend the majority of my time doing what my kids want to do and caring for animals but I love fishing and swimming.
I found BYC while searching whether or not my chickens could eat a small piece of bread(ran out of treats
) and welcome any advice for a newbie.I had a small mealworm farm in a 6x12 plastic container when I got the hens, I have since upgraded to a fairly large 3 drawer set-up and am currently waiting for my mealworms to multiply before continuing to feed them to the chickens. I keep layer feed and water accessible at all times. I rotate between live mealworms and freeze dried black soldier fly larvae as a daily treat(the soldier fly were originally so I could hold back on the mealworms since the house wren was eating 100 a day by itself and my supply dwindled, they seriously stink so I'll probably drop those and try to find something else). I also cut up apples, carrots, celery, and berries as more of a weekly(every 5-7 days) treat. I have been tossing in 1/4 cup scratch every morning along with 1 or 2 other treats but my mom has informed me that they may get too fat for the summer months so I am looking for ways to cut back on scratch while continuing to provide something. I am headed to the grocery store in a bit to grab some greens for my rabbit and I think I'll try hanging some romaine lettuce/turnip greens for them to peck at(with plans to grow myself in the fall) in place of scratch a couple days per week. They also seem to love scrambled eggs mixed with a bit of blended eggshells. I don't generally have a lot of leftover food that isn't from an abundance of fruit or vegetables but I would welcome cost effective ideas for treats. They free range from approximately 3-8pm so I like to offer snacks in the morning to give them something to do while they patiently wait for my Treeing Feist to have his turn in the yard. He is the only one that seems to think I need to be saved from a hen but he saved the hens from an opossum and me from a very large snake a couple weeks ago so I'll have to try and make do with a rotating schedule. I love the mealworms because they replenish themselves and would welcome ideas for easy DIY chicken gardens or really anything that I wouldn't constantly have the pay for! If you hung in this long, thank you and I hope eventually I will have something to contribute to this community besides questions!
A thread here was the reason I joined and it said it was okay in moderation. Someone said they were like garbage disposals but I am trying to avoid any sort of processed food for the most part, I just ran out of everything. Thank you for letting me know! The mealworms, vegetables, fruit are about 1-2tbsp per bird(veggies one or two days a week, fruit about once every 5 days and mealworms and scratch daily) but I see I am definitely overfeeding scratch and everything else if it's limited to 1tbsp a week!! Are the mealworms a safe daily morning snack since they forage for bugs? I will definitely cut the fruit/veggies down to once a week and cut out the scratch completely for the summer and fall until I find the best amount and frequency to provide it!
