Michigan

[Totalcolour]

RaZ that is awesome! Now, you need a privacy fence around the back yard, Or a 6 foot wall of hay bales! Lol... And animal sounds on cd and play them all day long on speakers in the window... Lol.

I wouldn't do animal sounds, I'd do bagpipes (someone LEARNING to play bagpipes) very VERY Loud! {I actually like bagpipes, but not by bad players.}

 

[babigyrl22]

Ah, the mitten crew! I'm Melody Nye and we have a farm in Yale, Mi www.melofarms.com. We have a small flock of egg layers and I opted for the Light Brahma as I wanted a heritage breed. We sell eggs and our heritage, pastured Berkshire at Detroit Eastern Market on Saturdays.

During the summer we have farm visitors on Sunday's and everyone is in awe of our chickens. We have a show quality rooster and the girls are just stunning. I have had other chicken breeds before but I love these.

So - here's to farming in Michigan

Howdy!!


I want to see pictures of these stunning chickens. HH already has me drooling over hers...I might as well drool over yours too.

 

[snowflake]

it is out side, I work and would not feel save leaving it open especially at night. we have a cat and she is real good with the hens but would not trust her with chicks. So the lid really needs to be closed. I am trying a lower watt bulb.got time to experiment.

 

[chicken grandma]

WELCOME MELODY!

 

[babigyrl22]

Honesty and integrity always win in the long run.

Raz - Unfortuneatly she is probably right. Your neighbor only has to hear a chicken and she'll call again, I wouldn't put it past her from what you've told us about her. He won't be so nice the next time around. It sucks tha she could probably get away with what she is doing, but maybe she won't, and that would be the sweetest revenge.

 

[un-named543]

Good luck Raz!
Hi Melody; welcome!

Hello to everybody else. Back from a 5 day nasty, nasty downswing which made me want to go out to the woods and...I can't say. I feel better but like I have an emotional hangover or something.
Gotta run. Elliptical and back to work for a bit.
My drake got sick again so he is on another round of antibiotics and doing good at this point. He and his girl are caged in the barn where they can see everybody but he cannot use too much energy as he recovers. I let him out in the yard for 15 minutes this afternoon. I think he liked it.

 

[snowflake]

Welcome Melody

Will chickens eat little frogs? With all of the rain and wetlands we have around our house, plus the warm temps, we are having a frog orgy around here. Those little buggers are all over the place. It is so loud w/ their croaking and mating calling at night, that my inlaws asked if there were ducks in the trees!

some frogs taste Bad, my cat wont touch them,but chickens might

Mom so glad you went to your DR. and had it double checked.

 

[1muttsfan]

Hi Unnamed, nice to have you back

Hi Melody, welcome to BYC and the Michigan thread - Mmmm, love pork in all its many forms

I think I may possibly have accidentally bought some Wheaten/Blue Wheaten Am eggs on Ebay - brings me up to 105ish

(just a little consolation for myself)

 

[sarah92480]

Well you guys sure weren't kidding when you said good luck keeping up with the posts here!! I didn't read any posts all weekend because I was outside building my coop in the awesome weather. Then I log on today and it takes me 4 hours to read 30 pages!! haha...I haven't posted a lot here so far because I'm new to this chicken farming thing...but I love it already. I've had my chicks for 1 week now (they were 1 wk old when I got them) and they are growing so fast! I will post some pics later if anyone cares to see, they are super cute. I had them outside every day this weekend for most of the day and they are probably crabby today having to stay inside in their brooder (bf didn't want to babysit since there were errands to run). I will have to try giving them some peas as I read in these posts, maybe they'll forgive me.

Just tell her "Thanks, that's the best part of a man !" Bet she would shut up then.

This is hilarious, I laughed out loud when I read that. Good one, RBahmer.

I had to laugh on that one too...you guys are funny.

Also, thanks for welcoming me to the family. I do have a couple questions I've been wondering about, I'd like some opinions if you don't mind. First, I created a chicken yard from an existing small dog run (at least I think that is what it previously was) and I'm not sure if it's too small. I have 6 chicks (4 and maybe 5 will be hens, hopefully 6 but one I think might be a rooster). The area I made which I plan to use during the day when we're at work is about 4 feet (ish) by about 10-12 feet. Do you think this will be big enough? Their coop is in another area (a covered lean-to off the other side of the shed, around the corner from the chicken yard), which I am going to connect with some fencing so they can come and go as they please. When we're home on weekends & evenings they will be running around free ranging the rest of the yard (about 1 acre). I want to make sure their area is not too small for the majority of the day when they'll be out there? Not sure if that made sense, I see now I was kind of rambling there lol...

Also, I know we're having freakish weather here, but if it stays like this, at what age should they be able to go outside in their coop without a light on them for heat? Since they are inside right now I had the light on for the first week but they don't seem to be needing it much anymore (I hope I'm right about that). Most of their wing feathers are in & I can feel them coming in on the rest of their bodies at this point. If it goes back to our normal March/April weather, what should the night time temps be to avoid using a light, & about what age? We don't have electricity out where their coop will be, which is why I'm trying to figure that out so I don't have to run a million cords out there.

Any advice about these topics (or any other chicken stuff) would be greatly appreciated!! Sorry I'm so rambly...lol... I look forward to making some friends here w/you guys.

 

[chicken grandma]

Hi Sarah,
Your run sounds just fine for 6 chickens. If you can keep a rooster (if you accidently have one in the group), a rooster is a very good chicken to have since he will defend your flock.
Be sure to use tight wire (1/2 inch spaces) or hardware cloth around the bottom of your run and even dig it down in the earth so that a predator cannot dig under. My helpers put wire down into the ground and then curved it so that if a dog were digging, he would hit wire.
We also covered the top of our chicken run because we have had hawks attack from above.

I put my chicks in the coop at 5 weeks last year but I ran an extention cord out to the coop and hung a heat lamp over one part of the perch so they could choose to sit under it or choose to move away from the heat. I used a red bulb and heat lamp from the feed store. Hope that helps!