Hello everyone

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jeffnteresa

jeffnteresa

Hatching
9 Years
Sep 25, 2010
4
0
7
Hi everyone,
My wife Teresa and I live in Ontario, Canada and have picked up some wonderful chickens at a local auction house. We have had them about 4 months now and they are such neat little creatures !!! I still find myself running on less sleep than I should, waking up and running out to the barn to try to catch a couple attempts of our males trying to do their call, or just to let them out for their morning "run" before work. I have done quite a bit of research on their proper care and such, but i am reaching a new stage of their development that has brought a few unanswered questions. I'm not sure if I can post here but here it goes --

I am new to raising chickens and want to ensure they will get what they need.
I have 4 Jersey Giants--2 hens and 2 roosters; I figure they are almost 5 months old now- born around the beginning of May. The roosters stand around 20-22 inches high now, and the hens around 16 inches and all look like they are growing nicely. I have caught the roosters "practicing" their call already- quite funny.
They are housed inside a barn in a coop about 5' X5' square and about 20-25 feet long with ramps, perches and heat available for the winter, with a hole outside (locked at night) into a fenced pen about 20' X 15' for them to play in and have their dustbaths.
They get a free run twice a day for a couple hours out of the pen that they love (free roam of about an acre with the other animals).

Now, one question is; the hens are not laying yet but I was thinking if they are close, should I feed them their laying feed yet? The roosters will also be eating this laying feed and I am not sure if they should be. They are all very friendly toward each other and I would not like to break them up for feeding reasons. Right now they have a general feed all day with scratch in their fenced area and what they consume while free.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure my setup is sufficient, but if there are any concerns or comments, please feel free to reply.

Thank you !!

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The hens should eat laying mash or laying pellets if you want them to lay. The roosters could eat laying mash if you wanted to fed them it but its extra food you have to pay for. You could seperated the two roosters and just the hens laying mash and feed the roosters corn feed.
 
Welcome, What I have found is, they do better with grower feed, with oyster shells fed free joice, for calcium. The grower is higher in protien, 20 percent or more. The layer feed is around 16 percent. Also the roosters don't need the additional calcium that is added layer feed.
 
I would go ahead with the layer feed, too. I feed all my chickens together, so the roos eat layer feed also. You may want to eventually get more hens, though.
I probably shouldn't be telling you to get more hens----it's hard to stop! Hubby agreed to me getting chickens last year at a swap meet----but "Only 5 total, so 4 hens and 1 rooster---we don't need that many." Well, as of now, I am up to about 35 chickens!! 4 are roosters---one of which is hopefully going today, and 13 are 4 -week-old chicks----3 that I hatched out and 10 I ordered last week!! Don't fool yourself, this could be you!
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Hope you enjoy being a memeber of BYC----Welcome!
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Hey Fellow Canuck ! Welcome !
I too have some Black Jerseys .... I have heard many things about feeding them laying feed before their first egg ....I have heard theres a chance that the shell could be to hard for them to pass ...the muscles have yet to stretch .....so some people have told me to wait until they have layed two or more eggs then feed them layer feed.

Chickens are addicting ......very very very addicting .....your becoming one of those crazy chicken people...lol
 

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