Wow, what an active forum! I'm thrilled to see so many others who understand the joy of chickens! One of the greatest things about the Internet is that no matter how disconnected your interests may be from the people in your everyday life, you can always find like-minded friends in the Web.
I've been raising chickens since I was a little kid (back in the Stone Age
), and I introduced my wife to them about 25 years ago. Now they are as much a part of our family as the dogs, cats, sheep, and goats. One of the greatest pleasures in our lives right now is sitting on the back porch sipping tequila and watching the chickens put themselves to bed while the setting sun makes the Sandia Mountains glow bright red. I'm so nuts I even shoot videos of that to watch whenever I get stressed during the rest of the day.
We started our new flock this spring. All our old chicken babies got picked off by predators one by one as my old coop disintegrated from our flood irrigation taking its toll on the plywood. We had gone for a couple of years without chickens, but it is a way of life that we sorely missed. I built a new coop from all the pieces of the old one I could salvage and elevated it above the flood level. I'm no carpenter by any means, but so far it has served its purpose well. I learned a lot about building from this site, and the whole project is still a work in progress... but it's safe enough for now from the coyotes and the raccoons.
We started the bunch with six Ameraucanas, and I'll be darned if the dog I love the most didn't pick off the chicken I loved the most when she was only eight weeks old! (caught me by surprise; had even seen that little Jack Russell protect the hens from other critters! won't happen again, though.) A pair of wild guineas adopted us about the same time, so we decided to add three more of them to our flock. So far the chickens accept them with very little pecking, so now we have eight birds, all about three months old, roaming the back yard. The two "wild thangs" keep to themselves in the half-acre orchard for now, and I hope my wife allows me to allow the flock in there with them someday soon.
Looking forward to learning a lot more from y'all!
I've been raising chickens since I was a little kid (back in the Stone Age
We started our new flock this spring. All our old chicken babies got picked off by predators one by one as my old coop disintegrated from our flood irrigation taking its toll on the plywood. We had gone for a couple of years without chickens, but it is a way of life that we sorely missed. I built a new coop from all the pieces of the old one I could salvage and elevated it above the flood level. I'm no carpenter by any means, but so far it has served its purpose well. I learned a lot about building from this site, and the whole project is still a work in progress... but it's safe enough for now from the coyotes and the raccoons.
We started the bunch with six Ameraucanas, and I'll be darned if the dog I love the most didn't pick off the chicken I loved the most when she was only eight weeks old! (caught me by surprise; had even seen that little Jack Russell protect the hens from other critters! won't happen again, though.) A pair of wild guineas adopted us about the same time, so we decided to add three more of them to our flock. So far the chickens accept them with very little pecking, so now we have eight birds, all about three months old, roaming the back yard. The two "wild thangs" keep to themselves in the half-acre orchard for now, and I hope my wife allows me to allow the flock in there with them someday soon.
Looking forward to learning a lot more from y'all!
