Moving in day at the Chicken McMansion

[BoerneChickens]

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I'm also brand new and I would like to be second on the list for coop construction help! I have a good detailed plan and have borrowed most of the tools I need (according to said plan) so I am hopeful to start building this weekend. My chicks arrive tomorrow or the next day (can't wait!) so I need to start right away as I am sure it will take me several good weekends to get it done. I love the pics of yours and agree with all the posts that the waterer is a great idea - I have just received Storey's guide so I am going to get reading!

Thanks for the inspiration!

 

[andalusn]

Busy night for me, meeting after work for a clark county advisory group and I just got home. First stop from stepping out of the truck was to check on the wee peeps in my brooder out in the barn. They appear to be wide awake and chatting away while exploring their space. I used grass hay to bed the bottom and they have had the best time sampling the tiny seed heads. Currently 36 out and no sign of any real mositure. Everyone is bedded down and appears to be warm / dry.

The brabanters roost is over 5 feet from the ground with no assistance setup at all

they just swoop to the top and look me in the eye. I call them the flyers. They have been known to fly to the rafters in the barn, not my favorite place for them. Iit's a real pain to get them to come down and if they don't they make a real mess on the hay

Not surprised your youngsters found the upper roost. I find even my flock of heavier birds prefer the top bunk in their coop.

Still working on Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens.. I am really enjoying it. It's on my Kindle book reader and not all books offer a searchable table of contents so currently I am working my way through all the ways to properly slaughter UGH!

 

[Country Heart]

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[Chieftain]

Updating again...

I keep thinking that this thread is done, then I come across reasons to revive it once again. This is my saga for chick raising this year so I guess I'll just keep it going as opposed to starting another one.

Here's a picture from last week of the RIR's up on the roost...

They are roosting every night now and the slanted poop board is working every bit as well as I hoped.

Over the weekend we positively determined that we do indeed have two Rhode Island Red cockerels in our original brood. I've had my suspicions for some time, but now along with the aggressive behavior between the two, they are both starting to grow very handsome tail feathers, neck feathers, and spurs. The two hens are surely hens, as they have duller feathers that are still mottled, while the two roos have nice brown shiny feathers with black spikes.

I have said before that I would not hesitate to put a roo in the freezer, but real life is setting in. With our daughter's wedding later this year, I really don't have the time yet to take the butchering course I wanted, and I simply do not have the facilities yet to deal properly with dressing live chickens. If I had to do it in an emergency, that would be an entirely different matter.

So we are making arrangements for a friend of ours to take both roos. He raises chickens for meat, does his own butchering, and is more than happy to take a pair of 9 week old fryers off of my hands.

That leaves us with 2 RIR hens, and 2 Golden sex link hens, which is one short of our max allowance of 5 hens. What to do?

Well, I headed to the feed store today and came home with a pair of Black Jersey Giant pullet chicks...

These two are a lot less flighty than the GSLs are, and don't mind being picked up at all. Where the RIR and GSL hens will top out at or under 8 pounds, these 2 will probably top 10 pounds. Even though they are more mellow than the others, their size should enable them to keep up with the others.

This puts us 1 hen over the legal limit here. I'm going to keep all 6 for now on the outside chance we get another roo or another casualty. But anyone who knows the henhouse is here, is already on the list for fresh eggs, and since nobody is going to be counting heads, I think we are safe as long as we keep our act together. Anyone who takes one look at the coop/run and the condition the birds are in will have no doubt they are being will tended.

Onward!

 

[andalusn]

The feedstore must have gotten a new batch of peeps. Mostly turkeys and game birds last weekend. I so wanted a Jersey Giant pullet but settled for the Buff Orphington when I picked up my two other newbies the Buckeyes. My Jersey Giant rooster is very gentle and easy to be around.

 

[Chieftain]

They still has a bunch of pheasants this morning, and a few varieties of chicks, and I got two of the last ten BJGs they had. Last week they had a couple of varieties of ducks, and an empty pen where the quail were. They still have some white turkeys and some other variety that is black and white.

These two hens are also nice healthy, robust little chicks, and have been eating and drinking freely all evening...good start!

 

[Chieftain]

delete repeat post...

 

[BellaLulaFarm]

Wow! looks great!

 

[Chieftain]

The McMansion is an official "No Roo Zone"...

I put up an ad on Craigslist today for "Free Frying Chickens" and had five hits in 15 minutes. They young lady who answered first stopped by this afternoon and picked up both roos and took them home where they will be joining her flock. She's raising chickens for meat and eggs and needed a roo (or two) so we have a happy ending for everyone!

The two remaining RIR hens are looking pretty forlorn out there, having summarily lost both of their men. They were calling for them a while ago, and it was just pitiful to hear. They will spend a lonely night I'm afraid, but tomorrow will be a new day. The GSL chicks are three weeks old today, getting just enormous and have been sans heat lamp in the pen for several days. They are really feathered up well, and the temperatures have been very moderate, even in the early mornings when the temp bottoms out. When I go out to feed the RIRs in the morning, I'll shut the door to the coop and leave them in the run, then put the GSLs in the coop for a few hours, and then let them all mingle after it warms up. I am pretty sure they will all be fine because the RIRs are pretty docile and the GSLs are anything but...

The Black Jersey Giant chicks are pretty mellow in the brooder and are nowhere near as flighty as the GSLs are. The eat and sleep a lot, but they do that leg-stretching fan dance and their wing feathers are already pretty impressive. Yesterday they were a big cotton-ball butt on feet, and today they have a slightly discernible tail. It's amazing how fast the feathers come in on these chicks! The 40 watt lightbulb seems to be plenty for the two of them, and their black feathers probably soak up more heat anyway. They crash in the litter and spread their wings out when they sleep, so the are certainly comfy. BJGs supposedly grow slower than other breeds, so we'll see how long it takes before they are ready for the coop. Since the weather continues to improve it will not be an issue.

So, we are down to three pair of laying hens, and all is well! I am not where I expected to be at this point at all, but I am not disappointed at our progress. My learning curve has been very steep, and what I am doing seems to be working. Today was a big transition day out in the coop, and I'm sure the RIRs are all ruffled about this, so I'll set about calming them down with some new roost mates tomorrow...

Onward!

 

[andalusn]

Your welcome to stop on by some weekend and meet Gus our Jersey Giant roo.. he is very impressive and gentle when you consider how big he really is. He was raised by a show breeder and even as a cull of the show stock he is nice.