Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[Folly's place]

Hi everyone, so sorry about the predator losses. It's the hardest part of chicken keeping! This spring I had a daytime fox who was seen by a workman next door, and did nothing. I came home to ten dead hens, all nice active layers. The old retired ladies were all fine, he only got young birds in lay. Planned? He was a sick mangy male, poor guy, and has gone to foxy heaven since. I started chicken in 1992, when a neighbor gave us three milliefleur bantams. I was hooked!!! I still have offspring of that line, and more big birds. I've got a mixed flock, Ameracaunas, Wellsummers, one Favorelle, two nine year old undersized Jersey Giants, two Delawares, and a group of 16 week old Chanteclers. Next year I hope to replace my favorites, the Speckled Sussex, and Marans. Chicken math happens! Mary

 

[Folly's place]

Hi everyone, so sorry about the predator losses. It's the hardest part of chicken keeping! This spring I had a daytime fox who was seen by a workman next door, and did nothing. I came home to ten dead hens, all nice active layers. The old retired ladies were all fine, he only got young birds in lay. Planned? He was a sick mangy male, poor guy, and has gone to foxy heaven since. I started chicken in 1992, when a neighbor gave us three milliefleur bantams. I was hooked!!! I still have offspring of that line, and more big birds. I've got a mixed flock, Ameracaunas, Wellsummers, one Favorelle, two nine year old undersized Jersey Giants, two Delawares, and a group of 16 week old Chanteclers. Next year I hope to replace my favorites, the Speckled Sussex, and Marans. Chicken math happens! Mary

 

[fuzzybutt love]

Insulation question; I'm in deliberation myself. On one hand it keeps heat in, on the other hand if there's no heat to keep in it also keeps cold long after the sun's up. Also if your walls are thin the birds will eventually peck their way in to eat it; ask me how i know? May be what's wrong with my white and blue roo. Can't think of what else could be giving him the green poos? Very sad, i had wondered who had pecked the holes earlier this year

How did i get into chickens? Irony. I couldn't keep birds at the old apartment, and i have kept parakeets my whole life. I was not happy without my birds and DH suggested getting chickens to keep at his family's property. I said "i don't want no stupid dirty chickens!" His uncle assured us that "all you have to do is throw a few handfuls of scratch out every day, you don't need a chicken house even" Oh boy was that some bad advise! We lost the first bunch to raccoons, except for my lonely but very affectionate ee rooster. My first flock was RIR's, and i must say that i was kinda relieved as horrible as that sounds. They weren't friendly at all and wouldn't interact with me even with treat bribing.. I would have just left it with he and i but it was obvious that he was lonely when i was away. So i decided to give EE's a try since he was such a good boy. I finally found him a girl in the fall of that first year, and promptly had to google away for various illnesses that were life threatening. Found out about nutrition, housing, sour crop, lice, oh my the horror when i finally smuggled her into the apartment in the dead of night to feed her every couple hours that first night to save her, then seeing more types of lice than i EVER want to see again coming off her............ But i saved her and fell in love with her as did my rooster. They were a true love match which isn't usual with chickens. He loved her, she him, and i got the rest of my flock for them (though they mostly snubbed them) I lost them last year after 2 happy years and i'm still hanging in there for now with some i hatched from them last fall. Mine are pet ee's and porcelain d'uccles. I have also had a mini cochin before too and loved her too. I purposely picked the pet friendly breeds the second time around.
i miss my buddies very much, we spent many afternoons in the lawn chair together.

 

[NovaAman]

Holy cow Nag! That's just freaky! (I am glad I am not the only one who never sets the right date on my camera. I have one that is alway dec 2005!)

Oh how did I get into chickens...

I have these neighbors. Neighbors had chickens, they'd let them run around, and I just loved seeing them. Then they had a fox and decided to keep them locked up. I missed seeing them. Got my own. That's the jist of it. I started looking at chicken breeds and I must say that I am happy I did. Only 2 plain old girls here, and those are my NH. The rest are colorful and personable.

 

[ladyrsanti]

Back from vacation. The automatic pop door worked great! Now I will have to rig a permanent one.

How I got into chickens. I guess the root of it is that my grandfather was a farmer. None of his five children took up the practice though, opting for modern living - job, suburban house, lawn, etc. Maybe some cats and dogs, you know, the usual stuff. Always loved my grandpa's farm, even though he only kept a horse and a dog during my lifetime. There were stories of other animals on the farm and a great old film of the family tearing down the old wooden barn. I was sad I missed all the cool stuff. It all fascinated me. Country living was in my blood, despite where my life was heading. I also loved history. When I was five we moved from Mason, MI to Temperance, MI and into a two-room school house. So though we lived in a very suburban area, there was this cool historical landmark that I LIVED IN> So history also fascinated me.

At the age of 9, my sister and I joined 4-H but never showed any animals. But I was around those who did. My forte was art, photography, baking, etc. We had a large garden growing up but I never grew anything for the county fair. Still, we canned veggies, baked, cooked, sewed and all the "primitive" things that were slipping by the wayside with my generation. I was frequently told that I should have been born a hundred years ago, even though my skills were considered commonplace in my family (later I was called Martha Stewart. DO NOT call me Martha Stewart, just sayin'). And actually, I don't like being told that I should have been born a century ago either, women being treated the way they were. But anyway, it's just developed from there. We were also members of the historical society and attended all the local historical occasions like Frenchtown Days and stuff, getting to dress up and act the part. We used to man the Eby cabin during the Monroe Co. Fair. It was fun. My sister and I would sit really still in the loft and scare people when we finally moved. They'd think we were mannequins and I remember being called a ghost on at least one occasion. Great stuff. But yeah, it's about sustainability and learning from those who came before us.

And then there was my obsession with birds. One of my first identifiable drawings was of a procession of birds carrying sticks with decapitated birds' heads on them. Don't ask! I have no idea what I was thinking at the time. We're talking like 4 or 5 years old. *shrug* We had parakeets and cockatiels for a time but when they died, we didn't get more so it was short-lived. I did love them though. I could identify most of our local birds as a child too. Birds remained pretty much the fiber of my artistic subject matter for the rest of my life as well. In college I made some pretty sweet zombie crows out of fabric, sculpy and wire. One of them is hanging at my parent's house still. Nearly all of my intaglio prints featured buzzards and crows too. So it was no stretch of the imagination that I had dreamed of owning birds.

Our first house was in Jackson, MI and I had three toddlers and no money. Plus we had a nasty neighbor who actually tried to kill one of our 100 yr old norway maples by having her yard guy pour round-up around the base. Needless to say it didn't work and she got a talking-to by the police. Luckily (in one respect at least) my husband's employer, Jacobson's, went bankrupt so we moved. So it wasn't until our next house that I was seriously thinking about owning chickens. I had the coop all planned out and everything. But then our neighbors started in on us. We just couldn't catch a break and there was no way I was going to put all the work into getting chickens only to give the neighbors the satisfaction of putting an end to it. They seemed to relish getting us in trouble. I hated it there. Buuuuuuut... thankfully (again, relatively speaking), Borders also went bankrupt so we had the opportunity to move again. YES PLEASE!

So now we're in Kent Co. Meijer isn't going anywhere and that's a good thing. I like it here. When we saw this house pop up on the market after a failed sale, we grabbed it. There's actually a list of how many of which types of farm animals we're allowed to have on the plat map. It was practically telling me I should start a farm, how could I say no? So I wasted no time in building a coop and literally within a few months of living here, drove out to Zeeland and picked up twelve chicks of various breeds. And I loved them, still love them. They never stop entertaining me. In fact, I just took a video this morning of Custard taking her week-old chicks outside for the first time and them all taking a dust bath together. Priceless.

 

[Lisa and girls]

I love all these stories!

 

[dwalters]

Quick question! What is the name of the thing used to measure incubator humidity and where can i find one?

 

[gaitngirl]

My chicken story? I grew up in the city. Got married and stayed in the city. Had always been in love with horses and most farm animals so we bought property in the country with plans to one day build a house, barn, etc. Ten years later, we made it as far as building a house and putting up a pole building. I got sick (cancer) shortly before we got our certificate of occupancy. My (then) DH got a girlfriend while I did surgeries, chemo, radiation, etc. and left shortly after I finished my treatments. I somehow managed to keep the house and land after years of it being up for sale during a crappy market (I was saved by a loan mod and an ex that had quit making the payments) and eventually moved my horse (who had been boarded for years) to the property.
A few years later I started dating a guy that had built his own coop and had 7 chickens. I thought his chickens were adorable (they were just Isa Browns but I liked them) and I loved the fresh eggs. He built me a chicken tractor for my place and I got my first 7 chickens (4 Isa Browns and 3 BSLs). He later built me another chicken tractor when my boss thought it would be fun for his family to raise a few chicks (in their subdivision that doesn't allow them, lol) and they could bring them out to live at my 'farm' when they were ready to go in with the 'big' chickens. They enjoyed the experience (and they buy most of my eggs) so they decided to do it again, lol. They did EEs the first time around and then more EEs and a few Cuckoo Marans the second time around . . . while shopping for FBC Marans because they thought it would be cool to have really dark eggs.
In the meantime, one of my neighbors lost his house to foreclosure. He was a carpenter by trade and had tons of old 2x4's and material around his property. He couldn't take it all with him so he told me I could have whatever he left behind. I picked through a lot of it and spent several days hauling it over to my place before and after work (in 90-some degree weather!). So I used it and some scrap leftover from the pole building to have a coop built. It's not pretty but it's functional and it's sturdy. I'm not sure whether I should be grateful for the introduction to chickens or not, as I am completely hooked now. In addition to chicken math, I've been hit with duck math and I may soon be afflicted with turkey math. I enjoy the chickens antics (when they aren't being brats to each other) and have learned so much. The people on this forum have been wonderful and I've enjoyed my new 'chicken friends'.

 

[EverMystique1]

Quick question! What is the name of the thing used to measure incubator humidity and where can i find one?

Hygrometer. I believe I read that you could find them at Wal-mart, TSC, and other such stores.

 

[EverMystique1]

BTW, anyone in south central lower MI or northern IN looking for some shingles (perhaps for coop, or patching your roof), PM me. I have quite a bit in my garage that I would like to get rid of.