Poor Planning...my advice to you new to chickens...

[fowlmood]

Sc00ter4900---I'm not sure there is such a thing as too many chickens. As long as you have enough coop space for them anyway. Around here I give away any extra eggs or feed them back to my flocks of various birds. Hard boiled eggs are great for them too. As my family need for eggs increased, (holidays and such) or when egg production drops, I don't have so many to give away. Typically my friends and I work on the trade system. I give eggs when I can and in return I get free corn for my animals, free veggies from someones garden. Heck, I've even been given beer for eggs.

Don't worry about the eggs. Just give in and get more chickens.

 

[Sc00ter4900]

Thats my plan thanks .My wife thinks im nuts but likes the fresh eggs LOL, Feb im going to order 25 but only want 12 . Im already saving wood for the new coop . As soon as screws go on sale ill get them too. Im hoping to have all the materials before I start.im not going to worry about waste. Eggs can be a good gift LOL thanks Scotty


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[The Vail Benton"s]

I am sooooooo relieved to hear that I am not the only one! I started out with a pretty large coop - 16X32. Next came the 5X12 coop. After that, the 4X8 condo, and finally we turned the Pig shelter into another coop since we don't have pigs anymore and won't have any for awhile. The thing is, I have less than 1/2 the number I started with when we built the big coop, and I feel certain it would behoove us to build a couple more "condos". We have cockerels ready to go outside and eggs in the bator ready to hatch in a few days. I sell what I can, and we do use our cockerels for meat, but it never fails... I come across a young male with looks and personality and I can't bear to part with him and a new coop is born!
If I had it to do over (or the funds to start over again the right way), I would have built a pole barn for them since I have no self control

 

[SC_Hugh]

I blame you guys for telling every newbie that THEY WILL WANT MORE CHICKENS!

No blame in a bad way, but this site is chicken obsessed!

I belong to other forums, but this one is always a flurry of activity. The # of posts and constant new members per day

With that said, I thought I had enough chickens when we started out with 4 chicks this past spring, then I joined BYC and then one of my chicks grew into a beautiful rooster. Now, Little Ricky only has three hens and he wants more

or is it I want more eggs?

Or is it you all telling Ricky that 10 hens is an ideal ratio?

I know that I have egg quantity envy big time... Members constantly posting pics of dozens of eggs (some even put it as their avatar), maybe the reason I have a comic book rooster as my avatar? Because that is all I've got!

How many eggs did you get today? How many eggs did you sell today? I am getting one egg a day

and still loving it!

Why don't we agree that newbies should build a coop and run for 10 chickens (minimum), but suggest that they build it twice as big as the minimums 8'x10' coop and 10'x20' run. That way, they could keep 10 chickens or bump up to 20 without adding another coop or expanding the run?

Me: 4 chickens (1 roo), currently building another coop for 6 new spring chickens!

I blame you all and also thank you all,

--Hugh

 

[Tala]

Yup. I thought 4 hens would provide for us nicely. They do. We eat plenty of eggs and I have eggs to give away now and then.

Why then did I get 8 new chicks, 4 of which are pullets who will be laying in the spring???


I'm already thinking along the lines of "we should get 4 new chicks to replace those 4 cockerels that I'm fattening up....and if they turn out to be cocks too....I really want someone to hatch some of my own barnyard mutt eggs, just cos I want to see what my grandbabies would look like......"

It's that obsession thing.

I dare not buy a 'bater till we live on more land!!

 

[OrpingtonManor]

well, I thought I could resist. I built a coop big enough for 8 birds. I started out with 3, then added 1 more just one week later, in case one turned out to be a roo. They were all pullets. Oh darn.

One of the girls got very sick. I brought her in the house for hospital care, but suspected she would not make it. Before she even died (6 weeks in the house) I had ordered 3 more to replace her next spring. Better hope for some roos, or I am over my legal limit. It's pretty hopeless. Any excuse, more chickens.

 

[Freeholder]

We would have all the eggs we could use and then some with only a dozen hens, but I always seem to have a bunch of last year's hens still running around, plus some young ones growing up -- and I can't make up my mind what kind to settle on to raise (I want to focus on one breed, particularly a rare breed that needs help, but there are so many to choose from!). I did decide that I need to have hens that will go broody and hatch eggs for me, as I don't want to mess with incubators, but that automatically increases the flock whether I really need more chickens or not!

Kathleen

 

[NurseNettie]

Off topic, but hello fellow Mainer! We're a bit north of you in The County! I love when I see new Maine faces here!

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[chickensRheaven]

Not totally unrelated though! I am originally from the County! PI/ Washburn to be exact! Went to college up there too. Hello to you!!

 

[gryeyes]

I planned on 4 chickens. I built a non-movable A-Frame "tractor" style coop suitable for 6 - 8, according to the plans I semi-followed.

Bought 4 chicks. 1 "failed to thrive" and I replaced it with 2 more chicks. "Just in case." Hmm, I went to five, there; my coop should hold six easily. Bought, well, 2, because buying one chick to take home in a bag was so sad for that 30 minute drive. And I couldn't decide between BO and SLW. So I got 'em both. That made 7.

Then my expletive-deleted, elderly dachshund killed one at 5 wks. Down to the "should be okay" six. When he killed a second chicken a week later, I was broken-hearted, so I bought ... you guessed it, THREE more chicks. What if one turns out to be a rooster and I have to take it back? (The feed store said they'd take it back and even replace it with a new chick. But I thought I'd be... ummmm..... proactive and ahead of the game.)

At least that's how I remember arriving at my current 8 chickens. Who would NOT go up the ramp into the coop. (That was okay at that stage, because I still put 'em back in the brooder in the bathroom at night, anyway... but I worried about that ramp and chickens refusing to go up it once they were out there 24/7.)

And then I saw a really good deal for coop kit on eBay, and it promised to hold "up to 10 chickens" and it only needed a screwdriver and a rubber mallet to put it AND its attachable, covered run, together. Only 4 inches above ground level, really short pop door and ramp. So I bought it and put it together.

Nifty. But then I needed more space because the two coops, set up side by side, took up most of the fenced in run I'd set up. But the 8 chickens were sleeping in the eBay coop at night, by then.

So I turned more of my large backyard into a chicken run. Moved the eBay coop closer to the house, so I could be more aware of night time predators scoping it out.

During the daylight hours on weekends, the chickens have the whole area to roam, between and around the two coops. They like going in under the A-Frame, and I DID see one chicken go halfway up the ramp inside it, but not all the way to the top. I shoo 'em all back to the shorter, eBay coop at night.

So you see, I have this second coop (built by myself, first) all ready for more chickens. Chickens that might know how to go up ramps....

In the spring, I'm gonna get more chicks. I can separate the newly-fenced, larger run area into two halves, for... safety, I guess, so the older chickens don't do something bad to the new chicks... something like that.... must read up more on BYC......