Hi I'm Delmar and I am a new chicken owner. I work with adults with developmental disabilities and out seniors day program decided it would be fun to raise baby chickens. They kept them until they were to old to keep inside. So to make a long story short, I ended up with 10 of them. Five roosters and five hens. My original plan was to just put some weight on them as quick as I could before winter and butcher the lot of them, but Mrs Delmar is becoming rather attached to them So I guess I am going to be building a coop for the hens in the very near future.
Here is the setup I have so far.
I keep a tarp over half of it most of the time. They also have a plastic tub with a doorway cut into it that they can go in, if it gets cool, or when the hawks are on top of their pen, examining them closely. The good news is that the hawks didn't find a way in and went away after a couple of days! That might have to do with the fact that I let the dog out when I see them too. My dog, Ziggy is a 2 1/2 year old Lad, Springer Spaniel mix, and he seemed to understand right away that the chickens are not for him. One day my wife let two of them fly out of my first, make shift pen. Mrs Delmar caught one of them and Ziggy simply cornered the other one and waited for her to come and get it. Good boy Ziggy!
Here is the setup I have so far.
I keep a tarp over half of it most of the time. They also have a plastic tub with a doorway cut into it that they can go in, if it gets cool, or when the hawks are on top of their pen, examining them closely. The good news is that the hawks didn't find a way in and went away after a couple of days! That might have to do with the fact that I let the dog out when I see them too. My dog, Ziggy is a 2 1/2 year old Lad, Springer Spaniel mix, and he seemed to understand right away that the chickens are not for him. One day my wife let two of them fly out of my first, make shift pen. Mrs Delmar caught one of them and Ziggy simply cornered the other one and waited for her to come and get it. Good boy Ziggy!
