- Oct 20, 2011
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Hello, I have built a new 10X12 foot chicken coop. I live in Anchorage Alaska and it is well insulated and heated with big windows and lights and a timer setup. I started on this adventure when 3 healthy hens and two roos were dumped on the 10 acre horse stable I help with. The coop was built with all free stuff. Wood Shipping pallets, free insulation and siding and windows found on Craigslist. The labor was long and the chickens roosted in the surrounding trees each night as they watched me build the coop. They seemed to know from the start the coop would be for them. There is also a 12X30 chicken run alonside the coop. I built a feeder and set up drip nipples and covered the floor with deep litter and put a catch under the roost to catch the majority of the droppings and make it easy to clean. Things have gone pretty well and one of the hens has recently deposited two eggs in one of the nests on the same day I finished the coop. I knew I was going to add more hens when the coop was completed and I found some on craigslist. They were young at about 16 weeks old and seem pretty small for their age. The conditions they were living in were horrible in my opinion. There were about five hundred or so of these young pullets milling about in an underlit barn, minimal insulation, no nest boxes, dirty poop fouled watering trays and no obvious feed in the feeders. The floor looked as if it had never ever been cleaned with a horrible smell of amonia. The worst part was the hens had been de-beaked and it looks to me like who ever did it was not careful at all. Some seemed to have no beaks at all. I purchased 30 of these retched creatures and put them in feed bags with four inch square air holes in them and toted them home and put them in my coop. It has taken several days to get them used to the water nipples and they eat well enough and the dry litter on the floor of my coop seems to have helped to dry their feathers and they seem much cleaner now, but they don't know how to roost or when to do it. When the sun goes down they moan like they are in pain. I pick them up and place them on the roosts and they quiet right down. I leave the pop door to the outdoor run open all the time but these new pullets will not go outside. They just stare out blankly. The five original chickens have full beaks and are wicked mean to the younger smaller hens and since the newly introduced pullets dont have beaks they can not defend themselves. I find it mean to debeak the original 5 and I don't want to cull them but I don't know what to do to make these chickens get along. Will they eventually become used to each other? Will they actually kill the newbies? The abused pullets don't seem to know how to be a chicken yet. When I walk into the coop several of the abused chickens fly up and land on my shoulder or head as if asking for help. Some of them seem very friendly, or am I just reading too much into the dumb clucks actions. I could use some advise. I know the new chickens are called golden comets, and I think two of the original chickens are called rhode Island reds. But I don't have any idea what the roos are. Here is a photo of one of the hens that flys into my arms when I come into the coop. Does this seem like the beak is just too short to anybody else?
Thanks
Dan
Thanks
Dan
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