New to BYC

Hi all - I'm new to BYC and wanted to say hello. My story into urban chicken raising started in March of this year (2016). Arriving home one afternoon, I heard what was an unmistakable sound... the sound of a chicken clucking at me from behind. Now, I must point out that I live in Metro Detroit. The sounds of chickens aren't really something we are used to.

Turning around, I saw, in all it's glory - a large white chicken sitting on my chain link fence. We looked at each other, and as I moved around the fence, I talked to it. It jumped down from the fence, into the neighbors yard and walked toward the other side of their property. As I approached, this pretty little bird walked a little, turned, and clearly waited for me to pick it up. This was someone's pet.

So, I picked it up and started to pet it. It loved interaction, but being a chicken I wasn't about to wear a new color on my clothes. My wife and I setup a dog crate for it, and gave it a little spot to nest with some straw. Not knowing what to feed this chicken, we gave it some kale and did a little reading. Where did I end up? Here.

After some reading I decided this was a leghorn and given I am in the city, I figured this had to be a hen (this was an un-educated best guess). We bought it some feed (at a not-so-nearby story.) When we came back, we had an egg. A very large, white egg.

We fed her and let her range in the bottomless cage around the yard. We posted on some lost pet facebook pages to find her owner. Another day goes by, and out came another planetoid sized white egg. Later that day, we got a phone call - it was her owner. Her name was Luna, and they lived one street behind us. She checked out how well we took care of this little lady, and she asked us if we have ever thought of raising chickens. I didn't realize we could even have chickens where I live.

Long story short, a week later I had a brood box built and she bought three Isa Browns for us from a small scale breeder she knows. Over the following weeks I built a coop in the garage, attached to an external run outside which can be opened into our greenhouse. I have spent the last 6 months reading everything I could on this site, and our girls are loving life. They are healthy, and are producing.

I just want to say this site has been a wealth of info - and up until today I have never made an account. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone.

 

Well, here is a little pictorial of what I am working on...

This is Luna 10 minutes after I picked her up. I put here in this box because it was handy, until I could figure out what the heck I just found... It was a few hours later we set her up in the dog crate. She laid the largest eggs I've ever seen. We took a pic of them against store bought grade A large eggs and it dwarfed them.


This is an early pic of our setup. I let them into the run for just a short time at first to train them what the coop was all about, but in the end it took a few evenings of putting them onto the ladder before they figured out how it worked.


This is an early look at the coop, I since added a PVC poultry nipple watering setup on the left, and did away with the hanging waterer. Nesting boxes are on the right out of view. At this point they were closed off, and opened them about 18 weeks.


This was after I finished the greenhouse, and we let the girls troll around and take care of business.


This is a panorama of the entire setup. We put the run door leading into the greenhouse. During the winter when it is sealed up, we plan to let them range in there. They love to eat our cabbage so they don't have access all the time.


These are the girls a few weeks ago.



We have had egg from two starting at 18 weeks, and the other at 22. The lighter colored one started at 22 weeks(we call her "Red" after Kate Mulgrews character in "Orange is the New Black" which is funny because she is CLEARLY the leader) lays large, very very light brown eggs, almost white. The other two lay medium-large brown eggs (The smaller one lays the smaller egg I assume?) They love my wife, she talks to them and they just go nuts and what attention from her.

Thanks for the warm welcome - I DO have some questions, which I will throw out there in the next few days. I just wanted to share what I am up to. I welcome any constructive criticism based on my limited photorama.