Taking a more active roll in my wife's chickens.

[BantamLover21]

I'm glad you joined us!

Good luck with your chickens! What breeds do you (or your wife) have?

 

[Blooie]

Welcome! A man after my own hubby's heart! I don't know why we got started with chickens last year...we were driving home from Cody and he mentioned wanting to get some goats. By the time we got home we'd changed the subject to chickens, and a couple of weeks later I ordered some. So Ken started building a brooder for them and ended up re-arranging all kinds of filing cabinets and the desk around, then moving the brooder (with 22 chicks) into his office.

"Your stupid (grunt, groan) chickens."

The office got dustier and noisier. He was in on his computer catching up on his work while the chicks serenaded him. "Your stupid (mumble, mumble) chickens."

We came up with a plan for a coop. The plan got bigger, the budget didn't. "Your stupid (ca-ching, ca-ching) chickens."

Construction began and it was cold, cold, cold outside. The framing went up, then the siding. "Your stupid (shiver, shiver, pound, pound, OUCHdammit) chickens."

The chickens moved outside and Ken got his office back - after days of cleaning dust out of crevices we didn't even know the office had. "Your stupid (sniffle, sniffle) chickens."

We began construction of the run, another project that ended up a little bigger and a little more expensive than we planned. "Your stupid (ca-ching, OUCH) chickens."

The chickens were loving the coop and the run. Ken was loving having his office back. But the anticipated eggs hadn't arrived. "Your stupid (mumble, lazy) chickens."

Eggs finally started coming. Suddenly there was no room in the fridge. Ken dropped an entire 18 pack carton of eggs on the floor when he tried to get a soda. "Your stupid (mop, mop) chickens."

Things settled down. We got into a routine, coop was easy maintenance, grandkids were over almost every day helping with them. Then Agatha went broody. After hoping for a couple of weeks that she'd get over it, I broke down and ordered some eggs. Got one chick out of all of those eggs,then that chick got frostbitten toes, and had to come into the house for a while for pretty intensive treatment. "Your stupid chicken."

Walked into the living room in time to see Ken holding Scout, the frostbitten chick, on his lap, stroking her little head. "It's okay, little chicken. I've got ya."

Um, no, she's got YOU, Ken! And in the process, somewhere along the line, "Your stupid chickens" became "Our stupid chickens", and guess who goes out first thing in the morning to gather eggs, check on the girls, give Scout a pat on the back, and whistles while he fills the food pan? "Stupid chickens". he mumbles while they crowd around his legs and accept his petting and jibberish gladly.

I'm waiting for my stupid chickens to learn to high-five each other at their success in converting him.

 

[drumstick diva]

Very glad you joined the BYC flock,

 

[m1tankr00]

We have 2 Speckled Sussex, 2 Silver Lace Wyandotte (one of which is currently in the hospital pen), 3 Coocoo Morans (1 is the rooster), 1 Buff Cochin, 1 Americana, 1 Welsmer, 1 Mutt. We just got 2 more from a friend of mine but we seem to think that those hens are broilers of some type and are being kept separated from the others. He might be getting them back to put in his freezer.

 

[vehve]

I was about to say that poor @m1tankr00 has no idea what he's gotten himself into, but Blooie already lifted the curtain on what the future will bring.

Your going to be a crazy chicken man in no time. You will start tinkering with all kinds of chicken related builds, track their egg laying, start mixing your own feed, pretty soon you will be considering ducks, or maybe quail, and in a few years, your yard will pretty much be a petting zoo

 

[m1tankr00]

I liked your story. Ours is just about as interesting. We bought our new house and the first thing we did was buy a coop as our house is a fixer upper and I didn't have the time to build something. Well we got moved in and about a month or two later my father in law and I started digging the holes for the run. We didn't have the time to get the fence and what not up yet and the next week I went out of town. Well upon my return I found a card from the zoning officer, so I called him. He thought that we were building an un-permitted shed. When I told him what we were doing he said "I know I drove up your drive way and saw the chickens". He then went on to say that we were not allowed to have chickens and told me he called animal control. Of course now I am mad because we never saw anything in the ordinance that we couldn't have chickens. So Monday I called animal control (she is a part time person) and gave me time to get our flock to my in-laws. I was not happy that we had to take them there and would probably loose a good many of them to predators (we lost 3 ginnies, and 4 hens). Then the long process of getting the animal ordinance changed so we could bring them home. A year later and more commissioner's meetings than I can shake a stick at we brought 7 of the sixteen home and lost 4 more to unknown dieses. It is a long journey but I have ended up taking care of them more than my wife and if someone has to put them down it is on me too. That is the part I don't like to do and she doesn't want anything to do with that part. Ah and that is the short of my chicken saga.

 

[m1tankr00]

I was about to say that poor @m1tankr00 has no idea what he's gotten himself into, but Blooie already lifted the curtain on what the future will bring.

Your going to be a crazy chicken man in no time. You will start tinkering with all kinds of chicken related builds, track their egg laying, start mixing your own feed, pretty soon you will be considering ducks, or maybe quail, and in a few years, your yard will pretty much be a petting zoo

Oh I know what I have gotten myself into and thanks to working to get the ordinance changed I know what we can and can't have. I am already working on a brooder pen so our Cochin (aka Fluffy) can hatch some more peeps. I don't know about mixing feed. That does sound interesting though.

 

[vehve]

Feel free to utilize this as a base if you get interested. The nutritional breakup is mainly for Finnish grains, so you'll have to redo those to match something grown closer to you and add whatever ingredients you have readily available, but it can be used as a base.