You can always use a metallic band, like used on wild fowl. Once crimped on, it’s on! Easily make your own outta heavy copper wire…pound semi flat, bend to shape, cut to fit! dremel your info on it.
Make a rollaway egg collection laying box. 2 1/2ft bottom drops from zero to 3”-4”(maybe less, as long as egg rolls away EVERYTIME), lined with plastic welcome mat (the kind that has the firm plastic astroturf-like fingers that clean the bottoms of boots)…1 1/2ft - 2ft of layin box, and roughly 6”-12” of covered egg collector, just high enough for eggs to roll under, but not chicken heads/necks! The mat allows semi-sanitary conditions to keep eggs clean.Those weights sound nice! Congrats
And I'm sorry to hear you have an egg eater. She may need to go in the stew pot if the usual tricks don't work lol. That's just bad luck though. You have so few hens and one turns out to be an egg eater!I'm sure you already know this stuff but make sure she's getting enough calcium and protein, and throw some fake eggs or golf balls in the nest. That's always my first course of action and then there are other steps you can take after that.
How well is this batch growing? Hope you haven’t lost anymore birds.
To me they feel like they’re growing super slow compared to the other batches…but then I looked back at hatch date and realized they’re only 3 to 4 weeks old right now; I weighed two of them today, they’re just under a pound. I don’t have any weights from previous batches at this age, so I’m not sure how that compares to my other batches but that sounds a bit small to me. They moved into the garage for now because something kept picking them off during daylight hours, and the little squirts kept escaping the run even when I wasn’t allowing free ranging. We are down to five of them from 7, and we need 3 of them for my daughters meat pan class at the county fair, so into the garage they went.
The all flock I have says for birds over 8 wks. I finally read the bag after a poor batch of meat mutts
Interesting! Might have to prioritize a trip to the feed store this evening!
Meat bird crumbles purchased this morning…we will see how the weights do, and I am also adding a reminder to weigh the newly hatched chicks at 4 weeks and see what they weigh, as that will eliminate the weather factor for the most part (since both batches are being raised in the hot humid summer) and better tell if/how much this batch’s weight was impacted by the all flock feed - the new batch will be on the meat crumbles from day 2.
