New member from BC Canada

Tatiana110

Songster
5 Years
Nov 29, 2014
217
41
136
Vancouver area, BC, Canada
Hello everybody,

We do not have chickens yet, but we plan to get some in early spring.

We have a large vegetable garden that is maintained naturally, with no sprays or chemicals. The soil is covered with woodchips, which helps to build up the soil and not irrigate, even in summer months when we hardly get any rainfall. We also have a few fruit trees - apples, pears,persimmon, and plums. Our garden is missing chickens, and we need to fix that :)

I had lots of experience raising chickens and ducks when I was a kid and lived on my gradmother's farm, but have not had any burds in the last 30 years, so I have to start remembering how to do it :)

We plan to build a chicken coop and run under our deck (23' x 8'; and 9' under the deck), and put an acrylic greenhouse along the south wall of the coop. There will be a chicken wire between the greenhouse and the coop, to facilitate the heat exchange. This is an idea that shows up in some permaculture designs, and I would love to try it and see if chickens will help to heat up the greenhouse in winter and keep chickens warmer. It sounds like it may work well in our coastal climate, but I still worried about the excessive moisture that may build up in the greenhouse which would not be good for chickens, so we have to figure out how to keep the air relatively dry.

We are in Pacific Northwest, so our winters are mild, we get a few days once in a while in winter with below freezing temperatures, most of the time the winter temperatures are in 28-40F range. We get lots of rainfall in winter and very little sunshine, so having winter chicken run under the deck seems like a good idea, to keep them dry. Summers are quite cool, the average high is 74F in our 'hottest' months, so we use our greenhouses in summer to grow warm weather veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. We plan to let chickens to free range in summer, in selected garden areas or in the orchard.

I would like to hatch my own chicks, ideally before February, so they can grow indoors for 2 months and then moved into the coop in the greenhouse when it warms up in late March/early April. The idea is to get them to lay eggs in mid-summer.

The challenge that I am facing is that we do not have any fertile eggs available at this time of the year (I know hens are usually on 'holidays' and not laying in winter). Actually, we do not have much choice with fertile eggs locally anyway, so I will have to look around to find eggs.

We want to keep about 5-6 laying hens and raise a 10-12 meat birds. So I am guessing I will need to start about 2 dozens of eggs.

My question is whether it is all all possible to find fertile eggs in December or January. We are willing to travel to the USA (we are close to Seattle) to get eggs, if it is possible to find them at this time of the year.


Thank you so much for your expert advice!

I am still lurking around the forum and enjoying reading the posts - this is a very informative forum, I am so happy I am here.

Tatiana
 
You could try posting on the Canadian thread to see if anyone has eggs available - it is called "Canadians, check in here.! thread. If you put that in the search box, it should pop up. You could also check out the Seattle thread since it is near enough to you.

Maybe if you would consider "point of lay" pullets, someone would have those and you'd be getting eggs much sooner. Do you have an interest in certain breeds?
 
The Learning center would be a good refresher course if you are interested and also the "Raising Backyard chickens," forum Welcome to BYC.
 
Hello there and welcome to BYC!
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You might stop by the Canadian thread and do some chatting with your chicken neighbors. Maybe someone locally can set you up with some chicks or eggs this time of year...https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/144/canadians-check-in-here

As for your greenhouse, as long as you have vents in the ceiling to let out the warm moist air, there should be no reason you can't use it for your chickens. However just remember, greenhouses don't hold heat. So they are going to cool off fast when the sun goes down.

Good luck on this new adventure and ask any questions you may have. Welcome to our flock!
 
Thank you so much folks - I am checking the Canadian thread.

The new greenhouse will have the double acrylic walls and 2 large water tanks inside for keeping it warmer at night. I also hope that the deep litter and chickens will help to generate more heat at night, so we can have our salad greens all winter long, and possibly overwinter some pepper plants.

I am not very particular with breeds at the moment, as we will be just starting - as long as we get good egg layers and some larger birds for meat, we will be happy.But I like variety :)

Tatiana
 

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