Help first winter with chickens

[pbarr86]

It's been a blast so far... The day that I had my very first egg, I calculated the cost of the coop, the feed, and the water, etc. and discovered that I did, indeed have the golden egg. That first egg cost $750 .
The good news is, at this rate I only need to sell the eggs for $9,000 per dozen to break even. LOL

How many dozen can I put you down for?

**slowly backing out of the room** Sorry my friend, you will have to sell those eggs to someone else... If I was to add up all of my costs my first egg was probably 2k, including the webcams, automatic door, water heater, etc, etc, etc, etc (there is a long list of etc) lol

My wife thinks i'm insane but I would have assumed at this point she would have been aware of that... She grew up with this stuff but it's all new to me... seeing that first brown egg in the nesting box was so cool, and I was even more excited when we got our first colored egg.....

 

[coop-er]

Pbarr...I did a similar thing with my coop regarding the plastic and the hardware cloth-is your entire coop wrapped? I wrapped my coop over the hardware cloth but did not cover the wood sides. I am wondering if on the west side (where our weather blows in) we should cover the wood also? I am sure it is not airtight and may have small areas where cold could come in. What do you think?

 

[pbarr86]

I did not wrap the entire coop, just the run portion where the hardware cloth is.. I did leave it open over the door and the top at the end for venting... On the wood henhouse portion of the coop I just closed the windows.. mine is pretty solid so I'm not worried about air getting in except for where my vents are, the vents are important to let the moisture out...

 

[sn0wwhite]

You guys are so funny. I got my first egg today, I estimate it cost me around $1300.

I made shower curtain panels that I can put up and remove from the hardware cloth covered areas of my run. The chickens don't seem to notice that I'm freezing out there, they just want treats.

 

[Dadroot]

I only put a tarp up on the west side of the 'dog run'.... that is also where our weather and wind blows the hardest from.

We have big dogs, so we put the coop and my ladies inside a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot (tall) dog run fence. Think castle with a moat. I secured a row of 3/4 inch wire mesh to the interior perimeter and to the top of the dog run.

It may by wise for me to insulate the outer part of the coop somewhat, the trick might be in finding a material that my ladies wont pick and and eat. Have you had any experience yet with what insulation would be good? I'm thinking some sort of encapsulated fiberglass insulation, like on my hot water heater. The insulation material itself isn't exposed, so hopefully the ladies will just ignore it and go about their business.

The lifesaves thus far has been the electric waterer. I've got it up on a 2" block so the feathery dopes don't kick TOO much debris into the water, and their water doesn't freeze overnight.

 

[Dadroot]

Now THAT'S funny, Snow white. Curtain panels? You're right, the ladies are pretty clueless of what I'm doing unless I happen to be carrying something into the pen, which they assume must be food or treats.

I two large hens that wait for me by the gate of the run and if I have a container in my hand, they peck at it and if it's low enough they try to look inside to see what I brought them.

I think my grandkids spoiled them this past summer, because I bought a bag of LIVE meal worms for the grandbabies to take out there. The grandbabies (8 and 6 years old) have a blast having all five hens crow in to eat out of their hands.

Any other eggs yet? -Don

 

[JanetS]

pbarr86- Love the cameras! Were they hard to set up? I've been looking around at cameras for our coop but haven't found any I like yet. I would love to be able to check on our chickens when we're out of town. Thanks.

 

[pbarr86]

pbarr86- Love the cameras! Were they hard to set up? I've been looking around at cameras for our coop but haven't found any I like yet. I would love to be able to check on our chickens when we're out of town. Thanks.

The cameras were wicked easy to setup assuming you have a good wireless router and the cameras are in range of it. My coop isn't too far away from my house so it has been working pretty well..
The dropcams have been working great but they are not rated for outdoors (not waterproof) With that said the one inside the henhouse is closed to the elements so that isn't an issue. and the one out in the run I put as high as possible to keep it under the roof and I made a plexiglass box for it that blocks any potential wind driven rain from getting to it from the sides.. I couldn't be happier with the whole setup...

 

[Dadroot]

The cameras ARE a cool idea! I'm not that high tech... in fact it took me two friggin' days to figure out how to run power to the coop for the water heater. I think that I will put that on my list of things to do, though.

 

[pbarr86]

I got lucky with the power, I few years ago before chickens were ever a topic of conversation I had ripped out our above ground pool but the power that ran the pool filter system remained. When the chicken coop plans began I built the coop right next to the existing power box and ran the power into the coop from there...