"Louisiana "La-yers" Peeps"

[LemonMeringue]

You couldn't get that lucky!! But I've heard that feed fermented feed does throw more pullets. This is per Beekissed. She has a 75% girl hatch rate.

Really. Well, guess I will start my FF bucket back up and see how that works for me. Lol. With our new rooster, (whose name is still cracking me up.......Roger Bacon. Because, Roger, we will be bacon your children. These kids of mine are a hoot) we are going to make some babies from him to grow out for the freezer. Its always easier to keep the peace with a group of hens and not have a bunch of naughty cockerels cutting up and causing chaos.

 

[Ron Skekel]

I've been told on the HAL thread that with still air incubators to avoid the problem of having a chick in a cooler spot be behind all of the rest of the chicks I should just rotate eggs. Some people that are hand turning their eggs are moving them every time they turn. I have an automatic turner. So we have settled on moving them every 2 days.

I'm gonna try this my next hatch. Thanks for the info. Pam

 

[Ron Skekel]

Thanx, no it was not me who asked about the milk. I asked about turmeric. I do have a question though. A neighbor got 4 hens from me and I told him I feed my hens rice & pasta sometimes. But he fed the hens raw rice and their poop has blood in it. could the rice have torn the intestine?  I don't know what to tell him I always cook my rice and pasta for my hen:/

Well I know its not good thats why they don't allow it at weddings anymore. If they recover he souldn't do it any more. For a feww days I'd stick with soft food ferment it while they heal their digestive system. Their is a list on BYC of foos you shouldn't feed chickens. Might be a list your neighbor should print and refer too. I haven't for got your tumeric. Pam

 

[Ron Skekel]

You couldn't get that lucky!!    But I've heard that feed fermented feed does throw more pullets.  This is per Beekissed.  She has a 75% girl hatch rate.   

I thought I was just lucky when I only hatched 1 rooster. Thanks for the info.Pam

 

[Cody A]

I know what you mean. Asking plenty of advice can help avoid most problems, but I dare say not 100%. But you seem sharp enough to avoid big problems.

If it were me I would build so that I had options. Doors that connect sections that can be opened or closed. If you had different breeds, but had a "breeding season" you could open up doors (proving everyone was getting along) and allow then to take full advantage of the whole facility. It would help alleviate boredom and give more exercise space. Then a month or so before collecting eggs you could separate again. And if you built an external fence outside the extended run that would give a safe free ranging area. You could plant greens that are beneficial to their diet and would supplement feed cost. There are some seed blends that are really good for that. Nice high protein. I found one brand even at TSC. Mostly people use it for planting feed plots for deer. Because the fenced area isn't the chickens normal run, and they only get to go there every so often it would certainly make it am enrichment type of activity that would make happy well balanced chickens.

Another thing to consider with breeding and what not. Possibilities for extra smaller casing requirements. Like a sick or injured bird. A rooster that you may want to keep, but for some reason he may need to be housed alone for a time. Smaller caging for specific pair breeding if you need to determine details of a certain pairing. Safe broody housing or safe brooder housing.
Most, if not all of the smaller housing can be used interchangeably and can be built inside of larger caging areas with necessary modifications for safety integrated.

Scroll through and read as much here on byc about threads that you think might give you any tips, hints or tricks to help with small details.

Oh, I forgot. Something I will add to ours with more space given, to medical and tool for caring for chickens. And more space for black plastic garbage cans with snap on lids for feed. We call our little chicken barn our "practice barn". We don't look at mistakes or things that need changed as bad, just added knowledge and lessons learned.

Lemon you've given me great advice and things to consider. I have a section in the coop designated for brooder/broody hens that is enclosed with hardware cloth. I am going to do a garden next year for the chickens and myself. Come fall I want to try my hand at planting greens such as collards or turnips for the birds and will be planting more variety for them to forage on. They gobble down the rye grass I planted this year. I've seen the food plot seed at TSC it caught my eye.

I do need to build some play things like swing or perches in the run for entertainment. Before I finished building the coop I had an extension cord draped over a door and the birds were playing on it. Since then I've read that some breeds like to swing and others don't.

Thank you for the help. Cody

 

[LindaB220]

Really. Well, guess I will start my FF bucket back up and see how that works for me. Lol. With our new rooster, (whose name is still cracking me up.......Roger Bacon. Because, Roger, we will be bacon your children. These kids of mine are a hoot) we are going to make some babies from him to grow out for the freezer. Its always easier to keep the peace with a group of hens and not have a bunch of naughty cockerels cutting up and causing chaos.

I'm giving the girls another couple of weeks, then I will start cranking up the light slowly. Getting ready to do a lot of hatching in spring. For selling, but the hatching I'll be doing for myself, I'm going to be hatching in the fall, maybe Sept. That way they will go threw the winter while still little and growing. Ready to start laying around March.
Love your roosters name. Roger Bacon.

The Blosl white rock I'm getting this weekend is named Larry. Hmmm. Thinking of changing that. Big Boy or something. 'Cause he's huge. 18 mo old. All Man from what I hear. That's going to shake up the girls for sure. I have 15 that can be bred. The Cobb 500 are just for eggs but I bet they could grow some big babies..

I got notification this am that my EO Marraduna Basque eggs are being shipped from TX on Monday.

 

[Cody A]

I assume you have the BRs in the big section and they do fine there, if so, i think you could merge the 2 8' sections and build another off the other end from the big section, the end towards the woods, 16x 30, that would give you 3 sections of the same size, you could the ad an 8' section down the length of the front and devide as needed for breeding pens, it would be less work because you would utilize fencing that is already there, The none free range scale for square ft per bird is 10 each, so 480 devided x 10 = 48 birds per 16 x 30 section. so 3 sections of 16 x 30 will sufice 144 birds, that is with out counting the coop footage, i hope this helps you with your decission, You coul add a big yard for free range across the front with access to each section and rotate free range days allowing each group free range time as Lemon suggested. good luck with your plans CA

TD, I've considered doing something similar to what you've suggested and am going to have to think about doing it this way.

Let me run this by you and others.

Say I extend the run as it is in the pic 50' longer but add a 16' wide section to the "woods" side. So there would be one continuous 16x80 section and the two 8' sections would each merge into there own 16'x50' section. Then build breeding pens when needed in a convenient place. I eventually plan to utilize the area on the other side of the coop where the burn piles are as a free range area. I would need to cut in chicken doors.
If I did it this way then I can separate by breed in the runs when needed and let them have free range to the other side, let the breeds mingle together. Or I could create sections on the free range side.

If I let the breeds free range and mingle together and they have access to three different sections in the coop what happens to the pecking orders when it's time to separate again and vice versa. If they can only access each section by chicken doors and they want to go to another section to say a different roost or nest box are they smart enough to do this? I assume they figure these things out. I'm wondering if giving too many options will it create problems and confusion.

 

[Cody A]

I'm giving the girls another couple of weeks, then I will start cranking up the light slowly. Getting ready to do a lot of hatching in spring. For selling, but the hatching I'll be doing for myself, I'm going to be hatching in the fall, maybe Sept. That way they will go threw the winter while still little and growing. Ready to start laying around March.
Love your roosters name. Roger Bacon.

The Blosl white rock I'm getting this weekend is named Larry. Hmmm. Thinking of changing that. Big Boy or something. 'Cause he's huge. 18 mo old. All Man from what I hear. That's going to shake up the girls for sure. I have 15 that can be bred. The Cobb 500 are just for eggs but I bet they could grow some big babies..

I got notification this am that my EO Marraduna Basque eggs are being shipped from TX on Monday.

Congratulations on the eggs! Ok. I'm not going to say I'm jealous, not a bit, not one single bit.

 

[LemonMeringue]

I'm giving the girls another couple of weeks, then I will start cranking up the light slowly.   Getting ready to do a lot of hatching in spring.  For selling, but the hatching I'll be doing for myself, I'm going to be hatching in the fall, maybe Sept.  That way they will go threw the winter while still little and growing.  Ready to start laying around March.   
Love your roosters name. Roger Bacon.     The Blosl white rock I'm getting this weekend is named Larry.  Hmmm.  Thinking of changing that.  Big Boy or something.  'Cause he's huge.  18 mo old.  All Man from what I hear.  That's going to shake up the girls for sure.  I have 15 that can be bred.  The Cobb 500 are just for eggs but I bet they could grow some big babies..  

I got notification this am that my EO Marraduna Basque eggs are being shipped from TX on Monday.   

I think I would be happy to hatch out some eggs from Big boy and those Cobb girls! Yes indeed.

 

[topdog24]

TD, I've considered doing something similar to what you've suggested and am going to have to think about doing it this way.

Let me run this by you and others.

Say I extend the run as it is in the pic 50' longer but add a 16' wide section to the "woods" side. So there would be one continuous 16x80 section and the two 8' sections would each merge into there own 16'x50' section. Then build breeding pens when needed in a convenient place. I eventually plan to utilize the area on the other side of the coop where the burn piles are as a free range area. I would need to cut in chicken doors.
If I did it this way then I can separate by breed in the runs when needed and let them have free range to the other side, let the breeds mingle together. Or I could create sections on the free range side.

If I let the breeds free range and mingle together and they have access to three different sections in the coop what happens to the pecking orders when it's time to separate again and vice versa. If they can only access each section by chicken doors and they want to go to another section to say a different roost or nest box are they smart enough to do this? I assume they figure these things out. I'm wondering if giving too many options will it create problems and confusion.

I would suggest keeping them separate unless you raise them together, letting them mingle will create trouble in all groups, ie pecking order, once you allow them to settle things out, you should leave them that way or they will have to re-establish pecking order in their own group each time they are separated and then again when allowed to mingle again, I have tried to do as you suggest but there is always conflict between flock leader and sub roosters in the combined group, although when separate the sub roosters become their group leader again, this back and forth will only make for constant ranting/conflicts between them, the same goes for the dominant hens of each group, the stress will effect egg production in the layers and reduce growth in the meat birds and then you need to think about possible injury's from the conflicts and medical attention relating to this.
Also if a member of a group gets sick, if they all mingle you run a greater risk of infecting the whole flock and not just the one group. Some one else may have a different view on this but every time I have tried to co-mingle mine, egg production has suffered and there was a constant conflict going on in the run, once a chicken gets injured or bloodied, the others are apt to team up against it as they see this as a weakness, a threat to the survival of the flock. You would have to be vigilant about watching for this and this would be esier done if in smaller groups instead of 1 large group, you will have to keep them seperate until they are all the same size anyway because the older group will dominant and wont take kindly to younger chicks being introduced.
With the plan of extending the covered runs another 50' you would not need to free range unless you just want to as long as you keep your # around 100 total, the recomended formula for chickens with no free range is 10 square ft per bird, the 16 x 80 is 1280 square ft, room for 128 birds, you could put 60 in it and still be under 50% capacity, then have 2 sections 8 x 80 = 640sf= 64 birds each section, put 30 birds each in of those 2 and be under 50% capacity, 60+30+30= 120 birds, so in other words, if you keep your #s under 50 % you are in a sense free ranging, just not exsposing them to attack from the air.