Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

[Fancychooklady]

If those Rocks don't start to deliver us some eggs soon then they might end up in the other box, you know the REALLY cold one! We have been out for a race this morning, but not long home and completed my jobs down the run and all seemed well.

Our concern with Sal being in the main run is she keeps choosing an elevated nest, the chicks won't be able to move out of it or get back into it when the time comes. We were hoping to rooster box would protect her and also give a ground level condo but seems she would rather be with the flock. Might try a swifty on her again later, if not then we might move her to a floor level next.

Wow, thats great news Joanne. Not long to go until you have your own/her own little fluffy butts running around! Please drop back in when they do arrive.

I'd just wait till she hatches them and then move her into a separate box. Once they have hatched there no risk of her leaving them. The worst thing about her being in with others is that they will sneak in behind her and lay eggs. I let my silkie hatch out 6 and when I candled the rest they were at various stages of development when she left them. Seems like such a waste , but I had no choice but to ditch them.

 

[vehve]

I'd just wait till she hatches them and then move her into a separate box. Once they have hatched there no risk of her leaving them. The worst thing about her being in with others is that they will sneak in behind her and lay eggs. I let my silkie hatch out 6 and when I candled the rest they were at various stages of development when she left them. Seems like such a waste , but I had no choice but to ditch them.

You can always boil them and feed the flock. Good source of protein. Maybe a bit gruesome, but better than to just toss them.

By the way, it was interesting to see the difference in what the chickens and I consider a cleanly picked bone. BBQ ribs were a big hit last weekend. This whole chicken-keeping has been a fascinating experiment in waste disposal. The amount of trash we produce has gone down to under half after getting the chickens and putting up a compost. If only less packaging was used for food.

 

[Bens-Hens]

We still produce a fair amount of packaging, but our organic waste has really dropped. With the chooks, worms and compost bin it's mostly recyclables that go to our wheelie bins.

 

[vehve]

I'm waiting for some heavy rains to flush the worms out of hiding, I'd really like to throw some into the compost. It shouldn't be that hot that it kills them, at least not in the lower parts. My compost is placed in a wooded spot, so not that many worms in the ground below it, even though I did leave the bottom quite open (there's only some rodent-netting to cover it). I figure I can just keep adding worms to the compost whenever it rains, and if the environment isn't ready for supporting them yet, it will be soon once some of the fully composted stuff falls through the net and fills possible open spots under the compost.

I just turned the compost around a bit today, it's been two weeks since I got it started. All ready the stuff on the bottom is black and it's hard to distinguish what has gone in there. This chicken poop really is powerful stuff. Initially I had a problem with ants because it was too dry, but once I got in nice and wet, it really took off. Also, one thing that seemed to work was adding 50g yeast and 200g sugar to lukewarm water and pouring it in. Attracted the ants at first, but also got the processes kick-started.

*Edit*
A side note, it really seems that taking a person from the city and throwing him into a spot with a yard really can be dangerous. I've gone from having a pot of Basil a year ago in our apartment, to now having chickens, a compost, and potentially a couple hundred kilos of produce on the way. And all this crammed into about 400 square meters of yard. Which also is used by the dogs.

 

[vehve]

Somehow I thought it was June already, so I decided to let the flock out. They spent about 3 hours familiarizing themselves with our yard, the new girls had not gotten out of the run before. Now I notice that it's actually still May, but since we're a whole kilometer away from the sea, there's no possibility of our flock coming into contact with waterfowl, right? The seagulls I saw circling above where actually something else. Crows maybe. Or sparrows.

We had decent light in the yard, so I went a bit crazy with my camera again. Took about 200 shots. If anyone is interested in some chick-pics, here's an album.

Yard time

I'm going to have to figure some way of keeping them off the terrace though. Many poops where placed, and they were harassing my tomato-plants. Had to shoo them away from the potato-towers as well. And apparently a 5 foot fence is no match for Finnish Alho landrace chickens. They actually started from even lower, so they took about 8 feet of lift and landed on top of the fence. Most of them went back in the run quite nicely, but I had to chase one of them around the coop about 20 times before I finally managed to coax her back in there. I need to use canned corn next time.

Soon I can start introducing them to the dogs, that's going to be interesting. But I'm hoping to be able to have both the chickens and dogs together in the yard, unsupervised. The dachshund is going to be a pain though, I hope she continues with her maternal instincts and still considers them her babies. Every time we let the dogs out, she runs immediately to the run and counts all the chicks and becomes worried if she cant find all of them.

 

[Bens-Hens]

Our dog gets along just fine with the flock. He tends to blend in as he is similar colour and size to a LF. He likes it when we leave the gate open so he can find any treats on the floor.

We have very low fences, and never had a bird fly away (why would they...heated nests and all) yet our friend has birds jump the higher fence regularly. Maybe they are hungry, or maybe they chase each other I don't know.

Poop patience is hard to earn, we love seeing the flock wondering around the yard, but hate standing in their right at the back door. We limit the outside time to a couple hours at the end of the day. Once they have had their fill and made some new holes someplace they put themselves to bed. I just go down and shut the gate and coop door after dusk. Only had one locked out once and found her on the handrail when I went out later in the night.

 

[vehve]

Our dog gets along just fine with the flock. He tends to blend in as he is similar colour and size to a LF. He likes it when we leave the gate open so he can find any treats on the floor.

We have very low fences, and never had a bird fly away (why would they...heated nests and all) yet our friend has birds jump the higher fence regularly. Maybe they are hungry, or maybe they chase each other I don't know.

Poop patience is hard to earn, we love seeing the flock wondering around the yard, but hate standing in their right at the back door. We limit the outside time to a couple hours at the end of the day. Once they have had their fill and made some new holes someplace they put themselves to bed. I just go down and shut the gate and coop door after dusk. Only had one locked out once and found her on the handrail when I went out later in the night.

Yeah, they came back quite quickly, just sat on the fence for a while. I try to check that everyone's inside when I lock them up. Mostly we just have rabbits and deer here, but there are foxes around and lynxes are not unheard of. Would be cool to see one sometime, I've only ever come across their tracks in nature. Wolves usually don't venture this far southwest, they tend to keep to the northern and eastern parts of the country. And bears alike. Does anyone have any experience with seagulls bothering chickens by the way?

 

[cwrite]

I don't have any experiences with seagulls, but one of our cats climbed into the chicken run today while we were working in there & was fine with the chickens. I'm thrilled, even though I know it's only because the chickens are now bigger than her & you can't train a cat. I wouldn't trust Tiger with them for a minute. He's a big boy.
Vehve - I had a quick look at your pics & the one with the yellow feather on her neck/shoulders is my favourite - very pretty. I also noticed you have decking. How does that work for you in Winter? When we lived in the UK we had decking & it used to get black ice on it frequently in Winter. The number of times I nearly broke my neck stepping out the back door... If it wasn't so close to the house it would have made a nice bonfire.

 

[vehve]

I don't have any experiences with seagulls, but one of our cats climbed into the chicken run today while we were working in there & was fine with the chickens. I'm thrilled, even though I know it's only because the chickens are now bigger than her & you can't train a cat. I wouldn't trust Tiger with them for a minute. He's a big boy.
Vehve - I had a quick look at your pics & the one with the yellow feather on her neck/shoulders is my favourite - very pretty. I also noticed you have decking. How does that work for you in Winter? When we lived in the UK we had decking & it used to get black ice on it frequently in Winter. The number of times I nearly broke my neck stepping out the back door... If it wasn't so close to the house it would have made a nice bonfire.

Regarding cat training:

The decking is installed by some idiot, I would never install it the way it's put there. The grooves on the decking look a bit silly in my opinion, even though they do add structural integrity. But I would have installed them the other way, putting the smooth surface on top. Now if there's black ice on them you tend to slip horribly, and because they're installed the way they are, you always slip sideways when going out. Luckily we usually don't get that much black ice, the deck is mainly covered by snow in winter.

The brown one with yellowy orange around her neck is my favorite too, they're Finnish Alho landrace chickens. Her name is Viiru ("Stripe"). Should lay about 200 medium sized eggs annually. And they're supposed to be quite cold hardy. I thought the Marans and the Araucana-Maranses would be my favorite, and while the purple and green coming through the black is quite beautiful, there's something about the coloring and gaminess of the landraces that really appeals to me. So in a week they've become my favorite. My better half really wanted the Speckled Sussexes, and sure they're pretty, but I'm not that excited about them. But we'll see how they stack up once they start paying for their keep. We're thinking of keeping the SS roo, he seems like a gentle little dude. But the crowing of the EE's is pretty funny to listen to too. And the other one has started to get an interesting coppertone around his neck, so he might turn out quite handsome as well. Won't affect his taste too much though. Now I just have to figure out a way to tell the neighbors kids that we ate them once they're off to either a very cold or a very hot room. The kids brought a drawing of Taneli, one of the EE roo's, the other day. It had stickers of salad, carrots, flowers and water on the back side since that's what he eats, it was quite endearing. We'll have to process the boys while they're gone I think.

 

[joannefiddler]

Vehve, Lovely pics of your girls! Beautiful surroundings too. I'd say they have found a great home. Be very careful with the dogs. Some breeds feel it is their solemn duty to subdue large relatively flightless fluffy things.