New Around Here

[Lazy Farmer]

 

[MissChick@dee]

Hello everyone,

I’m fairly new around here. I’ve been lurking as a non-member for almost a year and a half, and finally decided it was time to just jump into it. We live in urban Kansas City, and have a small flock of about 15 chickens (our local legal limit ). We started out with our first 5 chicks in March 2017, and it has grown from there. We have 1 Golden Comet, 1 Buff Orpington, 1 Barred Rock, 2 Silver Wyandotte, 1 RIR, 5 Black Sexlink, and we just hatched two EEs about two weeks ago.

When I’m not busy being a chicken Mama, I keep myself out of trouble homeschooling our four children and running the majority of our urban homestead while my wife works outside the home.

I’ve been stopping by BYC nearly every time I had a question for Google about our flock, and I finally just decided his was a community in which I belong!

Thanks for having me, and I look forward to “meeting” many of you around the forum!

Hiya! Nice to meet you.

 

[Amiloo928]

Heloooooo!


And welcome to this awesome community! Sounds like you've been a member- in- spirit for too long! Good to have you and I'm sure you have invaluable experiences to share, thanks for joining



BTW,

Of all your breeds, which ones do you like best and why? What would you do differently if you did it over again?

(Sorry if this question's been asked and answered already!)

Thank you for your warm welcome! What a great question! I’ve never been asked that before.


When we first started building our flock up from chicks, my favorite was the Silver Wyandotte. She definitely had the prettiest patterns and colors early on. As far as eggs go, my Comet lays the biggest, richest colored and tasting eggs of he flock for sure! But for temperament, so far our current Barred Rock is the sweetest. However, she seems to be much friendlier than the previous BR hens we had. We adopted her from a family that was losing their farm. She is about 4 years old and has a crossed beak. The family that owned her before us definitely babied her and treated her like a pet. So now she follows me around all the time and pecks at my shoes until I pick her up. She is totally content to be carried around with me for indefinite amounts of time, and still gets treated like a pet and friend!


As for what I would do differently, I would say it would have to be the way we built our first coop. We spent weeks researching all the best features for the coop, like how to get maximum air flow, how much space for how many birds to roost, number of nesting boxes, etc. what we didn’t account for was a weasel being able to pull the staples out the held the chicken wire over the air vents. We had five speckled Sussex chicks that were about 10 weeks old, and lost three of them in one night. One turned out to be a roo, so we had to get rid of him, and we were only left with one Speckled. I felt absolutely horrible when I realized what had happened. We were able to learn from the experience, and secure the coop, but it was still so disheartening.


We had a similar experience early this summer when our 6 Americana and two Isa Brown chicks were snatched by a mama fox at 8 weeks old. It was their first night outdoors and the pen we had them in wasn’t as secure as we thought. I was devastated. This time around with our chicks we bought a prefab coop that we know is secure and they have been safe and sound since the day they hatched!

 

[AlderCreekFarms]

my favorite was the Silver Wyandotte. She definitely had the prettiest patterns and colors early on.

I love all the different Wyandottes and would love to have one of each!

But for temperament, so far our current Barred Rock is the sweetest.

I totally agree that the Barred Rocks have wonderful temperaments, we have 2 almost ready to go out to the coop, along with a RIR. It sounds like you have great experiences to share! Yours sounds like one I would have taken to quickly being she has a crossed beak. Aww. I have a baby quail with a gimpy neck that I think I will keep as a pet because it doesn't seem to bother him. He eats and drinks just fine and runs around with the rest of them. They don't seem to notice and neither does he!
So, what kind of staples did you use over the vents of that coop that weren't strong enough? Were they put in with a staple gun or a hand stapler?

 

[Amiloo928]

I love all the different Wyandottes and would love to have one of each!


I totally agree that the Barred Rocks have wonderful temperaments, we have 2 almost ready to go out to the coop, along with a RIR. It sounds like you have great experiences to share! Yours sounds like one I would have taken to quickly being she has a crossed beak. Aww. I have a baby quail with a gimpy neck that I think I will keep as a pet because it doesn't seem to bother him. He eats and drinks just fine and runs around with the rest of them. They don't seem to notice and neither does he!
So, what kind of staples did you use over the vents of that coop that weren't strong enough? Were they put in with a staple gun or a hand stapler?

We used a staple gun, but we didn’t use strong enough wire, and we didn’t have very good placement either. It was the first thing my wife and I had ever built, and there was definitely a pretty large margin of error along the way. We learned a lot about coops that summer, and about structure construction. Once we got it secure, the coop worked just fine for us. That is, until chicken math took over and we ended up with more birds than we built it for. the whole thing was made from pallets, so when we upgraded to a prefab coop, we broke down the homemade one, burned most of it in a big bonfire, and used the rest of the wood plus the ash from the fire to whip up a dust bath for the girls instead!

 

[AlderCreekFarms]

I just made a quail hutch to house my new quail in once they're big enough. I used 1/4" hardwarecloth and my husband's staple gun & stapled the crap out of it. I read an article here somewhere about preaditor-proofing that said over build and then over build some more. My hutch is def. overbuilt!
Sorry y'all lost so many birds : (

 

[KLIL]

Hello and welcome to BYC!

Lovely to meet you ❤