New to BYC's!

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ecain85

ecain85

Hatching
6 Years
Apr 18, 2013
3
0
7
Vancouver, WA
My husband brought home a small chirping box one afternoon in early march. I was home sick that day and his only mission that day was to go get some chicken wire to keep the dogs out of a section of our yard! Needless to say the three chicks he presented me with was a pleasent surprise.
We started the project of making a chicken tractor, with scraps of lumber and plywood we had around the "property" ( we bought a house last year on 1/2 an acre in town). We've torn down a few things the previous owner had built in the yard. What projects those have been! It took us a few weeks constructing the tractor, as we worked on It between taking care of an 8 month old, work and a few other house projects. If you ask me, it turned out pretty good for a first time chicken tractor!
I'm looking forward to learning about these fascinating fowl and how they will become apart of our family. Thanks in advance to everyone who answers my noob questions!
 
Greetings from Kansas, ecain85, and
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! Pleased you joined our flock! Sounds like you have it going on!! I'd offer one piece of advice. You mentioned chicken wire - this is great for keeping chickens in, less so at keeping predators out. A determined raccoon or your average dog can get through it quite quickly. You might look into getting some hardware cloth (strong welded wire mesh - 1/4"-1/2" squares) - it is much more effective. Just would hate to you see you lose your flock! Good luck to you!!
 
Thanks for the advice! I've seen that term hardwire cloth used but didn't know what it was. I'm going to post some pictures of out tractor and would love some critique on how to make it safer for our girls!
 
so i got my ten red star pullets at the end of feb. beginning of march. i told my husband i wanted chickens, as we have 2 horses, a dog a cat & a guinea pig. so i had assumed two or three might die as the book said because i never raised any before and i wanted at least 5 or six chickens. so all ten are still doing great and the red star/golden comets are so friendly. so anyway about two weeks ago my daughter came home from tractor supply and said they had chicks! so i sent her back to get a couple of different ones so she calls me to tell me what they have and i got a couple barred rocks which were NOT sexed(fingers crossed for hens) and four black somethings i cant remember the names of but i think are Orpingtons? anyway they would not just sell 3 she had to get 6! so i said ok, get 4 black and two barred rocks. CHICKEN MATH look out!! haha. so the coop we got is a tad small for 16, it is supposed to fit 6~10 chickens but i am sure they mean 6 regular or 10 bantams as it is 3x3' on the inside!! another problem i didn't realize was the roosting bars are lower than the nesting boxes!! agh!!!! so we are trying to remedy that as they all like to pile in one side (3 boxes with the dividers removed) together at night!! great! so anyway all 16 chickens are doing great but now we decided to cut down the flock s we will probably get rid of 4 red stars and 2 black ones or maybe three. its been fun and they get to run around the yard all day.
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joanne aka chickknitter
 

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