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Noraaaaa said:
Welcome to the .com! Breeding is going to be so fun : )
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I'm SO looking forward to breeding! Gonna start with OE's this season, and maybe start on developing darker BCM eggs. I figure OE's won't be too hard, but the really dark shades will take time, as will the darker BCM eggs. I think I have a pretty good assortment of the best breeds to accomplish those goals. I'm adding some more leghorns and welsummers this season as well.
 
chickentender1074 said:
I'm SO looking forward to breeding! Gonna start with OE's this season, and maybe start on developing darker BCM eggs. I figure OE's won't be too hard, but the really dark shades will take time, as will the darker BCM eggs. I think I have a pretty good assortment of the best breeds to accomplish those goals. I'm adding some more leghorns and welsummers this season as well.
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That looks great! OEs are super cute : ) I don't have much experience with them, but I definitely want some! I breed wyandottes : D
 
Debbie292d said:
Hiya, and welcome to BYC! :frow

Good luck with your breeding ventures. I'm doing it too with silkies and it is really rewarding to see what we help them create. :)

P.S. You'll find BYC is much nicer than FB. Peeps can be pretty brutal there.
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I hear ya on the FB brutality. I'm in several chicken groups on there, but I tend to just read a lot and don't comment much. It's unbelievable how mean people can be when someone is just looking for help to try to do right by their birds.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I think I'm really going to like it here. I'll have to post some pics of our coop and everything when I can. I just built it brand new last season, and I'm still working on it. Thankfully, I finished it enough before the bitter cold hit here so the flock could be moved in from the couple different coops that they were in before that. It's not perfect, but I designed and built it myself, and I'm pretty happy with it. This season I just have to replace some temporary panels with doors to facilitate easy cleaning, trim it out, then paint it. I could probably finish it during a long weekend, maybe two. Progress on things is slow sometimes since I work full time and spend around 10 hours a week driving to and from work. I'm still learning a lot, and still making mistakes, but I'm trying. I didn't use heat in my coop this past winter because there are so many mixed opinions and I didn't know quite what to do. Then a few of my birds got frostbite on their combs. I feel terrible, so I will be adding some of our brooder/coop heaters in next year. I'll also be running power to the coop during the summer.
 
chickentender1074 said:
I hear ya on the FB brutality. I'm in several chicken groups on there, but I tend to just read a lot and don't comment much. It's unbelievable how mean people can be when someone is just looking for help to try to do right by their birds.
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That's why I do not hang out in those groups, I'm more looking for customers or for a particular silkie. But, when I happen to see a post of someone needing help, and see how people are all over the place with their answers and many being rude, I won't even post anything but put the link to here there. I hope if they are frustrated, they'll just join here and ask the same question and get only helpful answers.
 
chickentender1074 said:
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I think I'm really going to like it here. I'll have to post some pics of our coop and everything when I can. I just built it brand new last season, and I'm still working on it. Thankfully, I finished it enough before the bitter cold hit here so the flock could be moved in from the couple different coops that they were in before that. It's not perfect, but I designed and built it myself, and I'm pretty happy with it. This season I just have to replace some temporary panels with doors to facilitate easy cleaning, trim it out, then paint it. I could probably finish it during a long weekend, maybe two. Progress on things is slow sometimes since I work full time and spend around 10 hours a week driving to and from work. I'm still learning a lot, and still making mistakes, but I'm trying. I didn't use heat in my coop this past winter because there are so many mixed opinions and I didn't know quite what to do. Then a few of my birds got frostbite on their combs. I feel terrible, so I will be adding some of our brooder/coop heaters in next year. I'll also be running power to the coop during the summer.
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That's one thing about the "heating a coop" discussion on Facebook vs here. There, you get the "your chickens are wearing down coats and they'll be fine," or "chickens lived just fine hundreds of years ago without heat," people.

But while some here, too, may not believe in heating a coop, there is a level of respect here for those who do, so we're not razzed or lectured about it.

We heat our coops to 40F so water and eggs won't freeze, and so homie here doesn't have to trudge out to the coop twice a day in frigid temps through two feet of snow to try bring my fluffies some water.

In one coop it's a thin oil-filled radiator heater by NewAir (non-digital). In the other, it's an electric one with a blower that's installed onto a wall. It is also non-digital, so it will come right back on if the power goes out and back on again. Digital ones usually won't come back on themselves; someone has to turn them back on. Our coops are insulated, so if the power does go out, the coop temp will fall from 40F to whatever slowly, giving chickens time to acclimate. They free range at 20F provided it's not windy out, so they don't need to acclimate to much, if anything.

Frostbite comes from moisture in the air + below freezing temps. If coop has low humidity, they most likely won't get frostbite. Ours never have, but these are silkies who aren't known to as much due to walnut comb and feathered feet. We use a 5-gallon nipple bucket for water, so there is no open water in the coop. Horse bedding pellets on the floor dry up the poops. You might want to look at increasing your ventilation a bit, but here we couldn't, so put in a digital exhaust fan and a vent in our human door between that coop and the garden shed.

Get your humidity down in your coop and you'll run less risk of frostbite guaranteed.

In the outside pens, they each have a hutch that we put a Cozy Coop radiant heat panel in.
 

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