New with a few questions

[jamiebelle1207]

Hello everyone....I am brand-new to having chickens. We brought our three hens home yesterday from a friend of mine who has a small farm and was willing to sell us a few from their flock. I have no clue what breed they are, but I imagine they are mixed breeds mostly. We have a chicken tractor we put together from amazon.com and so far things seem to be going fairly well. The hens all got up in the coop part last night without any prodding from us, and I was able to shut them in for the night. But here are my questions:

1. There is a roost bar inside the coop that runs perpendicular to the area where the two nest boxes are. Last night I'm pretty sure two of the hens slept in the nest boxes; they were full of poops this morning. Will they eventually start to sleep on the roost bar or is there something I can do to encourage this?

2. We have made a drinking bottle with a chicken nipple and attached it to the inside wall of the coop. As of last night they had not explored this, so I've put a small pan of water on the ground in the pen area of the tractor and they are drinking from this. We are going to put another chicken-nipple waterer on the chicken wire side of the pen area tomorrow, but I'm not sure how to encourage them to explore this so they can figure out that they can get water from it. Any thoughts?

3. They are in my yard, which has grass/weeds. How much laying pellet do they need? I toss a handful in and it's gone within seconds. Is there a specified amount of pellets that each needs per day?

Thank you!
Jamie

 

[ronmauldin]

They will take to the roost bar when they want. I have one who prefers to sleep in the nest boxes, also.

My didn't care for the nipples, either. May want to just try a hanging waterer.

As far as food, keep a feeder full available at all times. They will eat as much as they need. Chickens are self regulating when it comes to food and water.

 

[vehve]

Chickens tend to want to sleep as high up as possible, so if your nest boxes are at the same level as the roost bar, it could lead to problems. How old are they, are they laying yet? If not, you could block off the nest boxes until they start to reach laying age.

You can try pecking at the water nipple with your finger, at least for us this was a good way to get them interested in the waterer.

 

[B-Goock]

I have some young chickens that I was raising and they still prefer to pile up in a nesting box instead of get on the roost so maybe it's an age thing. Do your chickens have bright red combs and waddles? Have you gotten any eggs yet? If no and no then they may be just young chickens. Post up a pic of them.

A good idea would to be to block off the nest box at night.
Another thing is to go out at dark and move her onto the roost. Yeah she will not like it but it may get her in the habit of getting on the roost with the other birds. Thats my plan to do with my chicks.

The nipple will be ignored if you have a waterer or trough. You can hold the chicken and make her touch the nipple with her beak. Try not to freak them out doing it. A buddy did this with his birds a couple times then took his waterer out and left only the nipples. They started going right to them. Lazy chickens just choose the easier way.

On how much food. I have 8 full size hens and 8 chicks/young chickens. I have a 7lb feeder for the chicks and a 10lb feeder for the hens. Each have to be filled every couple days. I go through about two 50lb bags of feed a month roughly and they also get kitchen scraps/garden scraps.

Have fun Jamie.

 

[jamiebelle1207]

Here they are....and the good news is I found three eggs already today and all three are drinking from the waterer after I showed one how to do it haha. Things are going really well so far.