New to raising chickens

[Book Em Danno25]

Welcome to BYC!!

I'm glad you joined the flock!!

Many adventures await you and your flock. If you have any questions, feel free to ask around!!

-Turkenstein25

 

[eqserman]

How many chicks do you have ?

 

[eqserman]

Here a question, does anyone take vacations, my wife is wondering and concerned that now that we have chickens that will be the end of any vacations, True or False ? If false is their any way to locate a reliable honest person who will be reliable to tend the flock.

 

[gawildlife]

Sent you a PM.

 

[AllredVC]

Hello everyone! I am new to the BYC forum and to raising backyard chickens. Unfortunately, I had a very bad introduction to backyard chickens, but I will not let it deter me from raising a flock and sharing this experience with my 3 small children. After reading some forums and navigating the BYC website, I decided to purchase 3 chickens from my local TSC. In doing so, my kids talked me in to buying their 'off the shelf' chicken coop. I should mention that I don't live in the city, I live on a vineyard in the county in Northern California. I have plenty of land around me with plenty of room to build a 'proper' structure for my chickens. However, I 'gave in' to my adorable 3 children and took the quick and easy way out and bought the 'inexpensive' chicken coop from TSC. However, I modified it by raising it off the ground on a 2' high table top I build lined with plywood sitting on concrete pavers. I raised my small chickens in a large bin in my garage with a warming light until they were ready for the outdoors (approximately 4 to 5 weeks old, sorry TSC didn't know exactly how old they were when I bought them so I kept them in my makeshift box for approximately 5 weeks). After only two days outdoors, what I believe was a coyote, tore open the metal screen (chicken wire) on the door of the coop and took all 3 chickens. The screen was peeled back and bent upward, making a large square opening in the coop. You could also see that sections of screen had been 'beaten' on or tested for weakness by whatever was attacking my chickens. The panels were clearly bent inward on all sides of the coop. Even plywood I had installed on the back side below the nesting boxes showed signs of shredding from the claws of the animal attacking the coop.

However, as I stated above, this will not deter me, I agree it is a chicken addiction. I am using the forum of BYC to learn everything I need to know to deter predators in the future, and will be building a much stronger coop and run for my chickens in the future. I look forward to posting pictures of my progress and completed coop in the future. I also wanted to thank everyone for their information, feedback, recommendations, and suggestions in these forums. This has been a great resource of information.

 

[eqserman]

Welcome to BYC, as being new to backyard chickens I have found Backyard Chickens to be a great resource. There are a lot of people here that have a wealth of knowledge here and are willing to share. You will definitely get " chicken addition so the one thing I will say make your coop bigger then you think you need as you may add more chickens later and will save you from additions.