Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[BentoMinion]

I live in Muskegon. Not inside the city, but outside of it. out here the lots are around .4 acre. We just happen to have a .8 acre lot. I would LOVE to move to something larger and have goats or pigs, but that will not happen for a long time.

 

[1muttsfan]

Herducks, that swap site is addictive, isn't it?

Hi Minion, and welcome to BYC and the Michigan thread

 

[SillyChicken]

MPC is a drop-shipper, so you order from them, and then THEY go to the various hatcheries to see who can fill the order, and the order is shipped from the hatchery (Ideal, McMurray, Meyer, etc). They're a middle-man. Tractor Supply should have chicks in April. I don't know what their minimum is though.

Olive egg layers are a cross between a dark brown egg layer (marans and welsummers are usually one half) and a blue or green egg layer (EEs, Ameraucanas, Araucanas, Legbars, etc). So there is no "breed" that lays olive eggs. They're all mixes.





So I injected my hen with around 1/2cc of Tylan 50. Do you think I should go ahead and put Tylan in the waterer in the coop she was in as a preventative measure? This is seriously ridiculous. At the rate we're going, we're going to have more dead chickens than live chickens in our first year.

Generally 6 chicks is the min for TSC.

 

[mrcush]

There are some folks in Capac, I am getting a few from them the end of this month, if you are on Facebook you can look them up at https://www.facebook.com/CrAzYcHiCkEnRaNcH?fref=ts sorry don't know why it didn't make a link.

Thanks!

 

[NovaAman]

naglady, sorry you had to do it, but yeah, definitely after seeing that, there was no cure, just prolonging. Sucks, I know...

FFH will let you get away with 4 birds. As much as I want to, I will not buy birds this year. I am just going to work on the faverolles, and the mutts maybe just for variety of color. LOL. 2 favs are under Skatter right now. Not one of the serema eggs was fertile. Fritz the Jerk has not done his duty with Ekta... Fibber did! But I can't even imagine the though of a serema egg hatching out a polish mixed baby.

 

[naglady]

looks like a severe infection in her reproductive area... the yolks kinda hang out and are quite visible when you vivisect a bird. Liver damage probably a result of what ever was going on in her body... poor girl, you did the right thing

Thank you..

 

[naglady]

naglady, sorry you had to do it, but yeah, definitely after seeing that, there was no cure, just prolonging. Sucks, I know...

FFH will let you get away with 4 birds. As much as I want to, I will not buy birds this year. I am just going to work on the faverolles, and the mutts maybe just for variety of color. LOL. 2 favs are under Skatter right now. Not one of the serema eggs was fertile. Fritz the Jerk has not done his duty with Ekta... Fibber did! But I can't even imagine the though of a serema egg hatching out a polish mixed baby.

Thank you

 

[Herducks]

Herducks, that swap site is addictive, isn't it?

Hi Minion, and welcome to BYC and the Michigan thread

Yes it is! I am limiting myself. 1 per week is my max. The orlaffs were my first for the year. I really need to not claim anything more. I have a bunch of mystery eggs coming too.

I figure anything I hatch I decide not to keep I will take to chickenstock. I have over 13 dozen chicks/ eggs coming in the spring!!!!!

 

[BentoMinion]

I hope it is ok if I post this here. I will post it in the coop section too. I am looking for a little advice on placement. I am new, so I thought I would ask. Since you all are from Michigan, you know our weather and all that is Michigan. This is my back yard (remember, we have twice as much as the normal people out here). Can you tell I have kids? My back yard is fenced in with several gates (including a double gate at the bottom left). We own the "drive" along the left side of the fence too. The yard is separated into the top tier and the bottom tier. The dark patch in the lower area is my gardening area. The lower tier begins right on the other side of the cement slab. There is a retaining wall there. I am told that my garden area was once an in ground pool. To the right there is also a bit of a wall. In the middle there is a small dirt slope down to the bottom area. I want the chickens in the bottom area. I would prefer them to be where I can see them. There is plenty of room on the other side of the blue shed in the lower area, but I can't see them there.




This is the left side in the picture above. You can see the darker area of where the garden is. There is a good space (at least 8 feet) from the wall to the garden. I was thinking about adding that wall into the chicken coop some how. OR if I place the coop in the corner, I can use some of the top cement slab for the coop and have it run to the below area.


This is from the right side of the top picture. There is no way my SO will allow me to take over that second blue shed. He says when we resell the place it will make it hard to sell it if that is a chicken coop. *shrugs*. The only way we will move is if he gets a out of area promotion. And in that case, the government will buy our house at market value.

You see the wood fence on the other side of our chainlink fence? That is where my neighbor has her ducks. It is a dog pen attached to the white shed you can see the top of. If I put the coop over here, I would want to put it into the area with the little cement wall. That was dug a little bit down (hard to tell in the picture) and I kinda like it. I do not know if you can tell or not, it does slope there as well. So the whole thing would slope down. The perk of this spot is that the shelter would get some shade from the trees in the summer. The run would get full sun.



Both spaces would need some clean up and I would have to level the coop area in both spots a bit.

I am still uncertain about the coop style. I like the A frame type, but I think in a spot like this it would be a pain because it is not perfectly flat. If I did one like that, it would need to be on the other side. Then again, I also like the box/shed style.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?

 

[1muttsfan]

Blue shed looks like it would make a Great coop....