Maine

[Paulajon]

I just got back from the stevie nicks concert in boston, it was really great to have a break from all home things even if it was just over nite.

Glad all went good for you,

 

[ducklucky]

Hey all, fairly new here although been lurking in the background. So extremely happy to find a site with so many Mainers participating, this is a real treat!

We are in mid, Monroe to be exact, and started our chickens in 2006. At one time we had over 70, and free ranged when weather permitted. Due to unforseen circumstances, we had to decrease the flock, handed them over to another organic free ranger, and at this time are left with ten wonderful hens who are super tame and well behaved and produce like crazy spring summer fall.

We have been through it all, harsh winters (had to put in some heat lamps, we were losing one a day, but that solved the problem), fox (lost a hen every other day), hawks (hard to tell from the other varmints), bad food (lost a half dozen), injuries (nursed them in house), a rooster gone nasty (had to shoot him, he was tearing up the girls and us). So we've had some experiences and pretty much have it down now FINALLY! We have a lot of predators here and have recently been harrased by hawks, but have learned to stagger their free range time and confuse them, seems to work, but always keep an eye to the sky.

We are delving into the Pekin ducks, have 13, supposed to be all females, but sure we have a drake in there, which is fine. They were raised in early April as day olds in our sunroom, were only under light for a few days as the woodstove is out there, got them used to day and night very quickly. They went onto our screened porch at about 3 weeks, no heat, they hardened more quickly. Plenty of dry bedding and cardboard boxes for huddling, supervised ranging, did fine.

Now our issue is getting ready for winter ALREADY, we wanted to process some, but have a problem finding someone who will do it properly (without skinning) but now that their pin feathers are coming in, more difficult. We have a large penned area for hens, so are going to construct something temporary for them for winter, as the hens refuse to go out if there is a dusting of snow, so they will have a lot of room. We have an issue with mice and once a rat getting into our pretty secure chicken coop, so..it is already underlayed with chicken wire.

Thinking of using pallets as a base, with a big layer of sand under, and hay as bedding. The only dilemna we have is the water issue, we will have to heat it for sure, but we'll figure something out. The chickens have a water heater in winter, so guess we will have to do the same for the pekins. And will do the deep bedding, just keep adding to it, seems to work even now in summer, only clean every two weeks, but boy, does it get some heavy, and fantastic for garden, but the deep bedding does seem to work. They love their free range walks, supervised right now due to what we believe is a young inexperienced hawk who flew right over my head a few days ago while the full grown ducks were by my side in the garden. Pretty bold. They all took off for their pen except for my pet Lucky, who didn't know if she wanted to stay with me or flee. **** hawk went and sat in the tree for a while, had to fetch my big walking stick and scream at it, sure it will be back. Put up a bunch of pie tins tied to posts, hopefully that will help.

Just wanted to touch base with you all, haven't had a chance to read all of your posts, but will get to it. Hope we can all help each other and share resources. And just one question, if we end up with these 13 ducks overwinter, how the heck do you afford feeding them? We supplement with cracked corn, oats, leftover veges-fruits, whatever, but in winter that is tough, and expensive. Any other ideas??? Thanks all, good to meet you!

 

[buckabucka]

Welcome, Ducklucky!

Unfortunately, I know nothing about ducks. Superchemicalgirl on here has them, but I can't remember if she had them last winter. I'm sure she'll chime in here if she has advice.

I can speak about rats, though. Our run is sand/dirt for the floor, but it is all surrounded in hardware cloth, plus it extends a good 16" underground. The rats still managed to tunnel all the way down under the hardware cloth and back up again into the run. I use poison on them. I know many people worry that the chickens will eat the dead rats,and get sick, but in my experience, the rats go away to die. I use one of those bait traps that the chickens can't get into. I've read about different kinds of traps, too, if you prefer to avoid poison.

Good luck with your ducks! I know there are others with duck experience.

 

[longgrove]

Welcome Ducklucky! We had a flock of 10 hens and one drake of K. Campbells winter before last. The litter eventually froze and we had to layer on more litter. It doesn't get messy until Spring thaw; then there is need for a huge clean up right away as it begins to smell quickly. It does make fantastic compost. One concern in keeping the house tolerable is keeping it reasonably dry, esp in winter. Their manure is wet enough, their habit of splashing the water around makes the house a mess. We helped that a lot by making a "water porch." The house had a plywood floor and was about 18" off the ground. jim made a little 2x3 foot porch with a shed roof, about 30" high on the shed wall side and 2' tall on the outside wall. The floor was 1/2x1/2" wire and drained to the ground. They had to enter it on one end and the water holder (with the heater under it) was on the other. They had to walk about 22" from the water to where the litter was; all the way the excess spilled water could drip down through the wire floor, keeping the litter much dryer.The end of the water porch where the water was, had a (well fitted) door on that end that was outside the house and the pen so it was easy to refill the water without going in the pen or the house. The outside walls of the "porch" were plywood (tho he did put a piece of plexiglass scrap in the side (which conveniently faced south) where the ducks entered. That kept the water (and the electric fount heater) protected from the elements and the whole shebang protected from drafts. I just can't imagine housing ducks in a Maine winter without a water porch! They were very reluctant to go out in any snow most of the winter, tho they did have about 10 sq feet each inside. At the Spring, when some of the snow started melting, thy seemed to suddenly realize that "wow! snow is water!" and would run out and play.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Now our issue is getting ready for winter ALREADY, we wanted to process some, but have a problem finding someone who will do it properly (without skinning) but now that their pin feathers are coming in, more difficult. We have a large penned area for hens, so are going to construct something temporary for them for winter, as the hens refuse to go out if there is a dusting of snow, so they will have a lot of room. We have an issue with mice and once a rat getting into our pretty secure chicken coop, so..it is already underlayed with chicken wire.

Thinking of using pallets as a base, with a big layer of sand under, and hay as bedding. The only dilemna we have is the water issue, we will have to heat it for sure, but we'll figure something out. The chickens have a water heater in winter, so guess we will have to do the same for the pekins. And will do the deep bedding, just keep adding to it, seems to work even now in summer, only clean every two weeks, but boy, does it get some heavy, and fantastic for garden, but the deep bedding does seem to work. They love their free range walks, supervised right now due to what we believe is a young inexperienced hawk who flew right over my head a few days ago while the full grown ducks were by my side in the garden. Pretty bold. They all took off for their pen except for my pet Lucky, who didn't know if she wanted to stay with me or flee. **** hawk went and sat in the tree for a while, had to fetch my big walking stick and scream at it, sure it will be back. Put up a bunch of pie tins tied to posts, hopefully that will help.

Just wanted to touch base with you all, haven't had a chance to read all of your posts, but will get to it. Hope we can all help each other and share resources. And just one question, if we end up with these 13 ducks overwinter, how the heck do you afford feeding them? We supplement with cracked corn, oats, leftover veges-fruits, whatever, but in winter that is tough, and expensive. Any other ideas??? Thanks all, good to meet you!

Hi there ducklucky,

I've found my chickens won't go out if they can't see the ground so I do snowblow the chicken run (at least probably about 20% of it for them to use). After I shovel and snowblow I put down a half to a whole flake of hay right outside their pop door. They come right out and stay out. Repeat after each snowstorm. I love that they come outside, because they get more light (and lay better), peck each other less and the most important part... poop in the coop less.

Now, on to your duck questions.
I had 5 large ducks for the latter part of the winter this year (they hatched December 2011 as a replacement for the ducks that I lost to a hawk last fall). They were a giant pain in the butt to overwinter but only because of the water situation. I do NOT keep water in their coop, that would be a total disaster, and even in summer I don't. I am going to remove their large 55 gallon tub and use a rubber bucket like I did last winter when it stops getting above freezing each day. Each morning when I let them out I'lll bring a couple of buckets of warm water and fill up the rubber bucket. I bring out a bucket of hot water and a hammer when I get home from work to melt and smash the ice in their bucket. They mostly play in it and keep it from freezing completely over. I am thinking of purchasing one of those heaters that have a protective cage over it for their water, and may do so if it's a bad winter. I think worse than hauling water was the fact that they'd splash the water and then it would freeze. Boyfriend had to go out on multiple occasions and chip ice out of the duck run and haul it to the woods. There was some huge ice chunks. Also some impressive icicles on their tubs. The splashing and freezing of water also makes it really slick in there.

The duck coop we have is totally ghetto, but they do like it. When I first put them out I gave them their choice of coop, one that was an old doghouse with 3 solid sides and then another one with wire on 2 sides. They chose the wire one and hated the closed one. I put a tarp over it to keep it mostly dry and when it's really blowing and snowing I put a quilt over the front. They snuggled down in the hay and were fine. I leave the run door open now that they know it's home and they free range all day and go back at night to be locked in the run and coop. That also cuts down on the insane amount of mud in there. We have another child pool outside their coop in the middle of the lawn.

You could probably butcher the ducks yourself. We've butchered one duck so far, it was also a pain but doable. The plucking took forever but the actual butchering wasn't that bad. The pekin that we did got rigor really quickly, too, it was strange compared to a chicken. However, it was utterly delicious and we'll be doing 2 more of the boys soon. I also have 2 more ducks eggs hopefully hatching soon to butcher this fall. I've been contemplating just butchering all the ducks this fall because of what a pain the winter is... but I think I'll keep 2.

If you have all girl pekins, you're about to be in for an egg surprise. My pekin girl has given me an egg every single day since May 15th when she started laying, with the exception of 1 day - the day after she laid a double yolker. It's insane. She lays better than a leghorn.

As far as feeding everyone goes, yes, they do eat a lot. I up the chickens protein in their food as much as possible. For the ducks I also buy big bags of kale at the store for cheap, and you can freeze certain veggies for the ducks from your summer garden. I used a lot of summer squash and zucchini that I had shredded.

Here you can see their ghetto coop (this is one of their first days out) - I had 5 ducks in there during the winter.



Here's what I did on a sub-zero night... a good use for my wedding quilt if I do say so myself.



Forgot to actually post a picture of the coop that you can see... totally ghetto... we built it out of scraps in about 2 hours. Also shows the previous occupants.


Hopefully this answered some of your questions and/or gave you some ideas. Good luck.

 

[annabananaandfamily]

Anyone have any tips on controlling flies in coops? Its getting crazy out there!

 

[echosrevenge]

I've been scattering down some diatomaceous earth every time I put a new layer of shavings in the motley flocks' coop - not much of a fly problem over there, so I think it's working? The goat pen was getting pretty ridiculous with flies and mosquitos, but it's gotten WAY better since I moved the young chooks out to the coop that has the goat pen for a run - sixteen baby Faverolles eating snapping mosquitos out of the air is a lovely sight.

 

[GoodwinMaine]

Anyone have any tips on controlling flies in coops? Its getting crazy out there!

Same here! Getting out of control. It was like one day there were a few and the next day there were hundreds! I notice they look green, is that a farm animal thing? Never noticed that before. Great to see you at TSC last week

 

[Mainechick168]

I am wondering if anyone can help ease my mind here- One of my 10 week old EEs has a swollen upper eye lid. She seems to be acting fine, but I am wondering if this is an indicator or a problem, or if it could just be caused by a bug bite or something? I looked, and did not see anything in or on it ( I did pull a nymphal tick off one of the other girls eyelids a while back) SO... should I be worried? looking our for anything else??? I can get a picture if needed.

 

[MaineGigi]

One of my hens recently had the same thing. We kept a close eye on it and we decided it was a mosquito or black fly bite. It took about 3-4 days before the swelling went down. Our mosquito population is horrible right now. Right around 6 pm we start getting bombarded by the darn things! If thats what it is, it should get better in a few days. Stay cool!!
~Cathy