Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

We will be drilling ventilation holes in the Nestera, which needs MUCH more ventilation.

I have 4 Nesteras, and I have not found that necessary. Look carefully at the coop and one side will have ventilation gaps all along the top under the overhanging roof, and the other has two closable round vents. I've removed the covers from the latter and they are permanently open. No issues with condensation or frostbite. Nor with the storms that blew threw, including Darryl, that felled really big trees round here.

 

[Perris]

are building a platform for the Nestera 2 1/2’ (~75 cm) off the ground

why didn't you get the raised version?

 

[BDutch]

Hi @Shadrach, I am still reading through this amazing thread, and I’ve gotten through summer 2022,

A wonderful job and welcome to the BYT (backyard tribes). I already found a way to get to know you and your flock a bit better.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chaosmom-here.1651462/
Hope you can free range a bit under supervision with all the predators you have there.

I have 4 Nesteras, and I have not found that necessary. Look carefully at the coop and one side will have ventilation gaps all along the top under the overhanging roof, and the other has two closable round vents. I've removed the covers from the latter and they are permanently open. No issues with condensation or frostbite. Nor with the storms that blew threw, including Darryl, that felled really big trees round here.

I think the climate in the North Carolina mountains has higher temps in summer than you have in the UK. So maybe @ChaosMom is right about the need for more ventilation?

 

[Perris]

I think the climate in the North Carolina mountains has higher temps in summer than you have in the UK. So maybe @ChaosMom is right about the need for more ventilation?

maybe. The Solway's was inadequate for sure, and Shad made adjustments accordingly. I just hope that @ChaosMom isn't conflating Nestera with Solway; they are both made of recycled plastic, but there the similarities end.

 

[Molpet]

they are, as you pointed out with the reason why they abandoned them.

And that's also why it won't change until the fines for breaking the animal welfare laws are set at higher than the cost of collecting and shipping/ killing them all properly. Paltry fines are viewed as just another (probably tax-deductible, given the idiocy of much tax bureaucracy) business expense.

I guess this abandonment would also be breaking the food hygiene and bird flu rules, because the sheds are supposed to be empty for a certain period after clearance, as part of the sanitary process, and some dead and dying leftover chickens wandering over supposedly clean and sterile surfaces are obviously contrary to that.

And they wonder why the sheds and commercial flocks are so disease ridden. Good rules have to be enforced, not just passed.

Crazy waste of life and resource.
Before CX spent hens had a useful end in Campbell's soup. They used to come around and buy spent hens from my area.
Doubtful they were treated well, except for bruising the meat wouldn't be wanted.

Our society is built on waste because it's cheaper to use new than reuse or repurpose.
People's lives and quality of life don't matter, much less a poor spent hen . Just the love of money

 

[L-plate chicken mum]

A wonderful job and welcome to the BYT (backyard tribes). I already found a way to get to know you and your flock a bit better.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chaosmom-here.1651462/
Hope you can free range a bit under supervision with all the predators you have there.

I think the climate in the North Carolina mountains has higher temps in summer than you have in the UK. So maybe @ChaosMom is right about the need for more ventilation?

I have a nephew in N Carolina, nr Durham & there the summers get to very hot & humid & the winters colder & snowier than UK. Also they can be on the path of hurricanes…

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I have 4 Nesteras, and I have not found that necessary. Look carefully at the coop and one side will have ventilation gaps all along the top under the overhanging roof, and the other has two closable round vents. I've removed the covers from the latter and they are permanently open. No issues with condensation or frostbite. Nor with the storms that blew threw, including Darryl, that felled really big trees round here.

Thanks, that’s useful to know! I was pondering whether the covers would ever be closed, even partially.

Your coops sit directly on the ground, don’t they? (That’s what I’ve seen in your posted pics.) I truly can’t visualize ours tumbling around the run if they were already down on the ground. Just a bit concerned about them being blown off the platform.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

why didn't you get the raised version?

The Lodge (four individual legs) wasn’t high enough to preserve usable space beneath, and I choked at an extra $160 for the Penthouse.

Even with my current lumber bill, I can still beat THAT.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I have 4 Nesteras, and I have not found that necessary. Look carefully at the coop and one side will have ventilation gaps all along the top under the overhanging roof, and the other has two closable round vents. I've removed the covers from the latter and they are permanently open. No issues with condensation or frostbite. Nor with the storms that blew through, including Darryl, that felled really big trees round here.

I will hold off on the vent holes for now.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

A wonderful job and welcome to the BYT (backyard tribes). I already found a way to get to know you and your flock a bit better.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chaosmom-here.1651462/
Hope you can free range a bit under supervision with all the predators you have there.

I think the climate in the North Carolina mountains has higher temps in summer than you have in the UK. So maybe @ChaosMom is right about the need for more ventilation?

Thanks for the welcome! We live on a very tiny urban lot, so it’s hard to say “free range” with a straight face, but we plan to let them out at least several hours a day while we’re present. We have a side yard that has converted itself to jungle, so I’ll point them in that direction so that they can do their chicken destruction. I’ll put up aviary netting, because we have high hawk predation. This is a juvenile Cooper’s hawk, perched on the fence edging the jungle area:

The climate up here in the mountains was until very recently lovely, four-seasons temperate, rarely too cold and rarely too hot. But in the last 12 years or so, it’s gone from USDA zone 6B through 7A to 7B, an unprecedented change in such a short time. (This is a measure of average winter low temps; I don’t know how widely it’s used beyond the US.) Last summer had an unbroken month+ stretch above 32°C, which was absolutely unheard of. I’m focusing on providing shade. We hit -14°C a few times this winter, which is not over.

And it’s only going to get weirder and more extreme, of course. So who knows?