Illinois...

[carolbiggs1965]

Hi from southern illinois. My chicks are 3 to 4 weeks old now. Our wagon coop is coming along. I need ideas for feeder and waterer.

 

[ChicagoClucker]

Welcome @carolbiggs1965 , cute babies!!!! During the summer I use the large metal feeders and when the chicks were smaller I also had a metal waterer. Metal is not good to use in the winter, combs and wattles get frozen stuck to the metal. I use the large plastic bowls now but have had an accident of a baby chick drowning last summer. The nipple waterers seem to work well. @Faraday40 could probably help you out with waterers, love her ideas!



Out cleaning today and figure I would post some pics of my runs I put up last fall. They both worked out well, but I will need to replace the roof on the pvc run, its just too light for snow and was worried about the wind taking it off. That will be a job for this summer. The conduit shelter/run worked out nicely. Plus the conduit was just laying in the garage, just had to by connectors and wire. Need to enclose the front and add a door. And I am not taking the plastic off as of yet, figure we might have another cold spell since its only February.

Sun Bathing.

Everybody enjoying the old broccoli and brussel sprout scraps



The guys enjoying the sun



Conduit run for Bantam Cochins

Conduit run/shelter

PVC run below for my LF

 

[Faraday40]

@ChicagoClucker
Are those Silver Laced English Orps?

 

[Junibutt]

Quote:
Really nice pics. Is that black boy split to mottled or is that just a reflection from the sunlight? Your SL are really nice!

 

[ChicagoClucker]

Yes they are my Silver Laced Orpingtons @Faraday40 and they are lovely. Can't wait to hatch some babies!

@Junibutt He is a pure black from Heirloom. I only have the 1 mottled girl. But planning on making some splits. I am kind of excited about both of my roos this year.

 

[chickendreams24]

Welcome @carolbiggs1965 , cute babies!!!! During the summer I use the large metal feeders and when the chicks were smaller I also had a metal waterer. Metal is not good to use in the winter, combs and wattles get frozen stuck to the metal. I use the large plastic bowls now but have had an accident of a baby chick drowning last summer. The nipple waterers seem to work well. @Faraday40 could probably help you out with waterers, love her ideas! Out cleaning today and figure I would post some pics of my runs I put up last fall. They both worked out well, but I will need to replace the roof on the pvc run, its just too light for snow and was worried about the wind taking it off. That will be a job for this summer. The conduit shelter/run worked out nicely. Plus the conduit was just laying in the garage, just had to by connectors and wire. Need to enclose the front and add a door. And I am not taking the plastic off as of yet, figure we might have another cold spell since its only February. Sun Bathing. Everybody enjoying the old broccoli and brussel sprout scraps The guys enjoying the sun Conduit run for Bantam Cochins Conduit run/shelter PVC run below for my LF

Quote:
Really nice pics. Is that black boy split to mottled or is that just a reflection from the sunlight? Your SL are really nice!

Yes they are my Silver Laced Orpingtons @Faraday40 and they are lovely. Can't wait to hatch some babies! @Junibutt He is a pure black from Heirloom. I only have the 1 mottled girl. But planning on making some splits. I am kind of excited about both of my roos this year.

I love love your siver laced orps! Do you have BBS orps as well? Your mottled girl is beautiful! I have two black split to chocolate and mottled cockerals from @Junibutt perhaps we can all work together on some mottled orps? I'm also curious about this expo you guys are talking about would you guys mind telling me about it?

 

[chickendreams24]

Had an interesting weekend around here.

We planned to process birds and we were going to try for all the spare cockerals.... Well that didn't happen.

My mother showed up with my three year old nephew who has never met the chickens that he can remember. That was pretty fun but totally ruined our plans for processing on Saturday. I got him, Ryan, to hold an OEGB on his hand of course my Mom wasn't ready with her camera. Lol we sat in the middle of the driveway with a bowl of bird seed and fed the flock which Ryan loved.

It was a big step since at first he was very intimidated by the birds and their antics.
While we were feeding a couple of my favorite birds cam and sat on my knee eating out of the bowl. At first Ryan was very upset by that and wouldn't put his hands in the bowl to feed anymore. I knew these birds wouldn't do anything to him even if he put his hands in the bowl but he was nervous so I showed him how to push them away. Lol he continued feeding when one of our big SLW cockerals walked up and began eating out of the bowl. Ryan pushed the massive bird away and kept feeding. Three times he pushed the bird away. The second time the cockeral got irritated and pecked the air gently(by Ryan's hand) as he was shoved away. He did not connect and has never shown any aggression before. My Mom freaked but I reminded her if she got upset that would make Ryan upset and he would then fear the birds. Besides that I had already shoved the cockeral away quite sternly. We will watch this bird and if he needs to be processed he will be.

All in all though I would say it was quite a success. The SLW cockeral did come back and eat from the bowl again later. Ryan shoved him away and the bird left willingly. The SLW cockerals we have are mature but still young and learning the ropes.

It never failed though on Saturday Ryan always kept going back to our chocolate cuckoo English orp roosters. Lol they weigh almost as much as Ryan himself but he loved them! Of course I was there the whole time making sure the boys were okay with this tiny human they had never seen running around. None of them seemed bothered. The girls were curious about him but there again none of them bothered him in the least. I have never been more grateful we only keep calm and gentle birds and proud of my flock than I was watching my nephew surrounded by our main flock which currently includes 14 cockeral/roos(5 English Orpingtons-2 black, 3 chocolate cuckoo, a CL, 2 silkies, 1 OEGB, 1 EE, 3 SLW, 1 English orp/legbar mix) not all of these cockerals are staying though. Several are just waiting for their turn on the bus to freezer camp, unfortunately they were too docile to go into the cockeral pens to wait BC some of the other cockerals are real pieces of work and tried to kill them or wouldn't allow them to eat and drink from the multiple feeders and waterers. So the jerks are being processed first. The other boys will then be separated and processed. However our flock is relatively calm in spite of the high number of cocks.

It was just wonderful to know that even with all those boys I didn't have to worry about Ryan. I was also proud of Ryan as he's in the past had problems with chasing other animals, including my mother's dog, because his mother mostly didn't set rules for him. Yet he didn't chase the flock. Except one guinea one time for a couple feet lol I didn't think he knew what to make of such an alien creature and their funny noises.

Sunday we got two cockerals done and had planned to do more but the second one DH2B cut to bleed out moved slightly and DH2B sliced himself pretty badly. I'm sure he could have used a couple stitches. Gorilla tape and paper towel covered the slice and applied pressure to the cut while the birds were finished with three hands between the two of us. Lol then I slipped and gave myself a small cut at the base of my left thumb nail on the same bird... We've never ever cut ourselves processing birds before lol I guess today was just a bad day for it. We finished the two birds quickly. We managed to stop all the bleeding and bandaged DH2B up good. We figure somewhere in chicken heaven that cockeral is laughing saying "I gotcha both!"

Homemade bread, broccoli(store bought since ours died last year), and pulled home grown BBQ chicken for dinner last night in the slow cooker.

Last night we also began making chicken and homemade noodle soup for dinner tonight. Just need to make and add the noodles tonight. Yum!

We have large plastic waterers that we use for the bigger birds we also have some smaller green and other colored ones commonly sold at feed stores. One of the things we now look for in waterers is making sure they have a solid base that locks on. The cheaper ones have slits where they lock onto the container but if those ones aren't perfectly level they leak very easily. So we like the plastic ones with the solid base. The metal ones corrode if you put any type of medication, corid, electrolytes or probiotics or apple cider vinegar in them. So we avoid the metal ones for that reason also.

We have multiple feeders smaller ones sold at the feed store etc but we have also made our own using cleaned out tidy cat litter container buckets. We made slits on either side and using a heat gun I believe (I wasn't there when DH2B made them) softened the metal and bent it in above the slit. There is a thread I believe for feeders and waterers.

Now Faraday40 has gotten us hooked on vertical nipple waterers and we use those for our quail and also for our chicks now but it's not practical for our flock of around 40-50 because of the size of the water reservoir and number of nipples we would need. Plus suspending it at the right level for our large fowl and our bantams.

 

[Junibutt]

Its a small expo at the Chicago Agricultural School every year to raise awareness about Urban Livestock. Here is the facebook link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1804942886438292/

 

[chickendreams24]

Its a small expo at the Chicago Agricultural School every year to raise awareness about Urban Livestock. Here is the facebook link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1804942886438292/

Oh wonderful thank you! I was just reading about that school in either our Mother Earth News or Grit magazine I forget which. How wonderful. I wish our local school did more with agricultural studies and such since it's in farm country. Our school doesn't even hatch chicks!

Also we snapped some pictures yesterday of some of the flock before DH2B's phone died I'll try to grab some more today or this evening before it's dark and post them tonight.

 

[Junibutt]

Quote:
Yes they are both very nice.