Craigatcsi
Chirping
My wife and I are somewhat new to chickens. A couple of years ago, a neighbor across the street moved out and just abandoned 12 free-ranged chickens to the neighborhood. This really bothered my wife so she started buying feed for them. After a few months of them getting killed off one by one by neighborhood predators, She decided that we need to build them a coop to keep them safe. Then, we couldn’t get them to use the coop. So we were told to catch them and lock them in the coop for 5 days. Since they free-ranged for months, we were only able to catch 4 of them. When we let them out, they wouldn’t go back in. So, we watched them dwindle down until they were all gone. When we hadn’t seen the very last in about a week or so, we figured all were gone. So we decided we need to clean the unused coop out. My wife opened the door and their sat our last hen, on 12 eggs! When we told a friend about it, she gave us 12 fertilized eggs to swap out after dark, so we did. I then installed a couple cameras in the coop and locked her in there, sitting on her new eggs. So we kept the cameras running on a tablet next to our bed nightly, watching for them to hatch. After the first hatched, we waited a few days before checking the other eggs. Once we did, they were all bad. So, the next day, I took my wife and bought her 7 chicks. I waited until 0200 then slipped the chicks under the mama. I was shocked to see 5 them go under her on their own. The other two, I lightly nudged them under her. The following weekend, we started on a fully enclosed run.
So Between a coop and run, we spent over $1000 on our ‘Free’ chickens. And this doesn’t include 2 cameras in the coop and one in the run. We still keep the cameras running on the tablet next to our bed 24/7.
So Between a coop and run, we spent over $1000 on our ‘Free’ chickens. And this doesn’t include 2 cameras in the coop and one in the run. We still keep the cameras running on the tablet next to our bed 24/7.
Glad you joined. 
