I 10/10 recommend a good LGD. We very rarely lose birds to predators unless they stupidly wander very far from home. Like a turkey hen we had earlier in the spring who hatched some poults but took them way down off our property into a meadow and wooded area, and out of sight. We never saw her or the poults again. Not even a feather or shred of evidence. But that is going to happen when they wander too far off.Lost two more to coons. My bantam blue cochin and a silver Phoenix hen. Electric is incoming. Seriously thinking a dog maybe. Didn't have the gun ready and the thing was stuck in the pen.
I'm excited to see them too! I have to live vicariously through you all to get my hatching fix until fall. lol
Out of curiosity, what size are your broods?Am I the only one who deals with chicks feather picking? Our Games, and now apparently the Leghorns, are the breeds that are prone to feather picking. We assumed the Games did it because they are an aggressive breed, but now that we are raising Leghorns, they are doing it too. Yet another thing the two breeds have in common.
I do everything in my power to prevent it. I keep them on high protein starter then transition them to the the 18% conditioning gamebird feed mix we use once they are fully feathered, they have feed in front of them all the time, I remove the heat lamps once they are old enough, I move them to bigger brooders and grow out pens as they grow to prevent overcrowding. As I catch chicks in the act of feather picking, I remove the culprits as soon as I can. Usually putting them in a pen with older grow-outs solves that pretty quick and knocks them down a few rungs on the pecking order. An old timer recommended we put a little salt in the water once, but that doesn't help long term as you can't keep salt in the water all the time. Turning them loose to free range is the only cure, and I have to get them up to a sturdy enough age first before I will turn them out. It is so frustrating!!
If you cook a few cats and birds for the sake of saving the rest of them, it is worth it. Cats have 9 lives after all and are tough little things. My husband straight up ran over my son’s cat Mango with a dirt bike and she lived. I am talking the dirt bike tire ran over the cats abdomen with a full grown man on it, and she lives to this day. The cats may get lit up a time or two but they will learn quickly to avoid the hot wire.
We brood for the first 2 weeks or so in two big stock tanks, then the chicks go in the wire bottomed brooders that are about 3’x3’ approximately in each section. We make sure not to overcrowd and once they outgrow those they go outdoors to the 8x8 or 10x6 grow out pens. From those they are turned out to free range once they are 6-8 weeks old until time to pen up breeders. The rest remain free ranging, and extra roosters are butchered.
