The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[BlueMouse]

Well I decided to change gears and will be picking up 2 (female) cream legbar chicks this weekend

So exciting! Please post photos!!

Your environment is critical. That is what will make your hatch a success. Monitor your humidity levels. Choose a room that has the most even temperature controls. A room that has low traffic, no sun beating in the window and no drafts. Find one that has a humidity level that stays around 40%. You can add a pan of water to a dry room to help. Hatches work if you can keep inside and outside close. If outside is 30-40% humidity, the inside can b maintained easier at 30-40 %.

The recomended numbers work great for the large incubators and hatchery's and for people who hatch at higher temps. It will work if you have egg turners and fans and keep it at 101

Hmmmm.... our climate is very dry this time of year, and we heat with wood, so the temperature varies a lot in our house, and the humidity is low, even with pans of water out. I'm not as worried about the temperature. My husband has built our incubator. It's very well insulated, and (he's a network engineer) He built a micro computer controller. It monitors the humidity and temperature every 60 seconds, and turns the light on/off automatically to control the temps. It will send me alerts on my phone (!!!!) If the humidity drops below a certain number, and I can add warm water. It will have a fan as well. He's been very excited about the project and has been working on it for a month and a half. (he also has a humidity sensor installed in the chicken coop that uploads information to his computer.... He's trying to decide if we need more ventilation. He's worried we'll get frostbitten chickens this winter... lol...) So, that said, what makes people make the choice between incubating at 95 with 30% humidity until lockdown, and incubating at 101 with highter humidity?? I am concerned about the humidity though... maybe if I put TWO pans of water on he top of the woodstove it will bring our ambient humidity up a little more?? I could always run the kids vaporizor in the room the incubator was in too....

The Gold Laced Orpingtons are growing so fast. The male weighs almost 4 lbs already. They are with chicks 10 days older and are twice as large

These are the most BEAUTIFUL birds. I have orpington jealousy!

Had a busy, but good, day until tonight when my neighbor started giving me all sorts of crap about our roosters.

Ugh, I'm so sorry about this. I'm worried we're going to have this problem once we get our guineas. we have acreage, but our neighbor is pretty close, and she is SO crabby. We live on a private road, and if you drive by her house any faster than 5 mph she comes out and yells at you to slow down!!! I told my hubby that she's darned lucky I don't have a dirtbike anymore, because I would probably lose the battle against temptation and tear down the dirt road at 30 every so often!

Good luck figuring out a good solution. But it sounds to me like if he lives in an area where people are allowed to keep chickens he may just have to lump it. If he doesn't like the livestock he can move to a neighborhood where they're not allowed maybe?

 

[gevshiba]

A few thoughts on being a new chicken keeper. I think there's great advise on this thread. If I didn't, I wouldn't be reading it. I value the advise given. That said, I'm new to chickens, but I'm not new to keeping animals. I think everyone who's new to something will make mistakes. Even when they have great mentors. Most likely, those mentors learned by making some of those same mistakes and we get to learn from that experience. But in the end, we still have to make our own decsisions. I hope everyone realizes, when advise isn't followed, it's not disrespect. All my rambling is to say, I followed my gut feeling about my sick chick and, this time, it was a good outcome.

I was ready to put him down and decided to wait until after work. But at lunch time, I thought he might feel better if I gave him a little food/water. So I pulled up some liquid off the FF and used an eye dropper to drizzle it down his throat. After work, he was much perkier. I decided to try feeding him again. I mixed up a concoction of a few things and after a minute, he was opening his beak for the liquid. I gave him a friend for company. My tiniest yellow chick, who I always think looks a bit rough. He gets trampled a lot. Then I rounded up some mud dobber nests and got some larva. Those two chicks were grabbing them out of my hands before I could put them down. I gave them a bowl of dry chick start and both are eating and drinking. Little sick chick has a full crop this morning! He's running around like a normal chick. Unfortunately, little yellow chick has turned out to be mean as a snake and attacks me as soon as I open the door. He'll be an early freezer camper, I'm sure. I got to use someone's (can't remember who's) advise on early roo training. Yeller is hanging back now, rather than charging and pecking.

So keep that good advise coming, but please forgive me for being a bleeding heart chicken newbie.

 

[Sally8]

I just have to comment. Most of you have so much more experience hatching than I but hatching BCM have been the easier hatches for me. It is hard to see in the shell but with a strong flashlight attached to an empty toilet paper tube allows me to watch the air sac. I dry hatch and at hatching time once I see the crack/hole, it's only a matter of a few hours and they are out.
I can kill anything but these seem to be the easiest to me. So far, Silkies, the un chicken, people call them, are the hardest. I need to post an updated pic of Thor, Harper is a Silkie mix and now we have the 2 new ones. No idea of what they are. (Names subject to change)

 

[jlynnet]

I have 14 eggs that I picked up. He gave me a couple of extras. I'm going to get everything ready and check for air tonight. I don't expect to see much in most of them because they are really dark

 

[Bulldogma]

Had a busy, but good, day until tonight when my neighbor started giving me all sorts of crap about our roosters. We're allowed to have them where we are. We lock them up from 9p.m. to 8a.m. so that they don't crow and wake anyone up before 8a.m. in the neighborhood and he still is mad. Said he sat outside in his hot tub and they crowed 100 times this evening in the one hour he was out there.

Sounds like this guy needs a polite reminder that YOU moved to where you are so you could have chickens and other livestock if you so chose. When a person moves to a rural setting, they have to understand that other rural dwellers will have things like roosters... and since you've checked your zoning requirements, you are within your rights to keep these animals. (An if you had known you were going to get a troll for a neighbor, I'm sure you would have moved elsewhere too.

Help your neighbor gain perspective by providing him with a little desensitization therapy:
1. Put up a flyer at your local high school inviting teen bands to come practice at your place.
2. Put an ad on Craig's List renting out space for folks to keep (and work on) their project cars and motorcycles. Offer lower prices to those without mufflers or that have "pipes."
3. Start a donkey rescue and then toss food for the coyotes around the fence line a few times a night.
4. Have a load of uncut firewood dropped off at your place, and fire up that chainsaw!
5. Keep your yard mowed... every evening!

My husband has built our incubator. It's very well insulated, and (he's a network engineer) He built a micro computer controller. It monitors the humidity and temperature every 60 seconds, and turns the light on/off automatically to control the temps. It will send me alerts on my phone (!!!!) If the humidity drops below a certain number, and I can add warm water. It will have a fan as well. He's been very excited about the project and has been working on it for a month and a half. (he also has a humidity sensor installed in the chicken coop that uploads information to his computer.... He's trying to decide if we need more ventilation. He's worried we'll get frostbitten chickens this winter... lol...) So, that said, what makes people make the choice between incubating at 95 with 30% humidity until lockdown, and incubating at 101 with highter humidity?? I am concerned about the humidity though... maybe if I put TWO pans of water on he top of the woodstove it will bring our ambient humidity up a little more?? I could always run the kids vaporizor in the room the incubator was in too....

Do you loan him out??? LOL. At very least, would he be willing to write down his "recipe" for this incubator? I have a major "want."


So happy your chick is doing better! One think to know about this thread is that while many long-time chicken keepers will offer advice, we are not a group that feels there is only one way to do something correctly. Diversity makes life taste better, so please know you will never be looked harshly upon for trying things your own way by the folks on this thread. Advice given here is take it or leave it and in the end, you have to go with your own gut and do what you think is best for your chickens and for you. We won't judge... just support!

 

[lalaland]

A few thoughts on being a new chicken keeper. I think there's great advise on this thread. If I didn't, I wouldn't be reading it. I value the advise given. That said, I'm new to chickens, but I'm not new to keeping animals. I think everyone who's new to something will make mistakes. Even when they have great mentors. Most likely, those mentors learned by making some of those same mistakes and we get to learn from that experience. But in the end, we still have to make our own decsisions. I hope everyone realizes, when advise isn't followed, it's not disrespect. All my rambling is to say, I followed my gut feeling about my sick chick and, this time, it was a good outcome.
.

Amen to that! and thats the thing - when you are there in person, you absorb so much info from what is happening - I think sometimes we translate that into "my gut feeling". Impossible to provide that detail when you post for assistance. Then you get advice based on what you have communicated - and you still have to take that advice, some of it contradicting another poster, and apply it to your circumstances. And it might not feel like a good fit - sometimes for reasons you can't explain, or sometimes because something in the advice doesn't seem to apply to your particular situatoin.

And then....you get to make your decision.

And, hopefully post back about what you decided to do and what the outcome was! And then we all learn a bit.
I sure don't think anyone on this thread has a problem with each of us trying to figure out the best thing to do which may or may not be exactly what someone suggested.

 

[countrygirl74]

Sounds like this guy needs a polite reminder that YOU moved to where you are so you could have chickens and other livestock if you so chose. When a person moves to a rural setting, they have to understand that other rural dwellers will have things like roosters... and since you've checked your zoning requirements, you are within your rights to keep these animals. (An if you had known you were going to get a troll for a neighbor, I'm sure you would have moved elsewhere too.

Help your neighbor gain perspective by providing him with a little desensitization therapy:
1. Put up a flyer at your local high school inviting teen bands to come practice at your place.
2. Put an ad on Craig's List renting out space for folks to keep (and work on) their project cars and motorcycles. Offer lower prices to those without mufflers or that have "pipes."
3. Start a donkey rescue and then toss food for the coyotes around the fence line a few times a night.
4. Have a load of uncut firewood dropped off at your place, and fire up that chainsaw!
5. Keep your yard mowed... every evening!

He even uses his chainsaw to cut his own firewood in his backyard! All in all, though, I wish I could move! I want more land, space between neighbors. I think I could happily live in the middle of nowhere. I am only on a 1/2 acre so the houses are close.

 

[mlowen]

Sounds like this guy needs a polite reminder that YOU moved to where you are so you could have chickens and other livestock if you so chose. When a person moves to a rural setting, they have to understand that other rural dwellers will have things like roosters... and since you've checked your zoning requirements, you are within your rights to keep these animals. (An if you had known you were going to get a troll for a neighbor, I'm sure you would have moved elsewhere too.

Help your neighbor gain perspective by providing him with a little desensitization therapy:
1. Put up a flyer at your local high school inviting teen bands to come practice at your place.
2. Put an ad on Craig's List renting out space for folks to keep (and work on) their project cars and motorcycles. Offer lower prices to those without mufflers or that have "pipes."
3. Start a donkey rescue and then toss food for the coyotes around the fence line a few times a night.
4. Have a load of uncut firewood dropped off at your place, and fire up that chainsaw!
5. Keep your yard mowed... every evening!

If I'd been drinking coffee I would have spat it all over everything...including the computer!! All great ideas. (And you could offer fresh eggs...if he takes you up on it, he's honor bound to shut up. If he refuses them, then you're sure what kind of person he is.)

 

[mg15]

Sounds like this guy needs a polite reminder that YOU moved to where you are so you could have chickens and other livestock if you so chose. When a person moves to a rural setting, they have to understand that other rural dwellers will have things like roosters... and since you've checked your zoning requirements, you are within your rights to keep these animals. (An if you had known you were going to get a troll for a neighbor, I'm sure you would have moved elsewhere too.

Help your neighbor gain perspective by providing him with a little desensitization therapy:
1. Put up a flyer at your local high school inviting teen bands to come practice at your place.
2. Put an ad on Craig's List renting out space for folks to keep (and work on) their project cars and motorcycles. Offer lower prices to those without mufflers or that have "pipes."
3. Start a donkey rescue and then toss food for the coyotes around the fence line a few times a night.
4. Have a load of uncut firewood dropped off at your place, and fire up that chainsaw!
5. Keep your yard mowed... every evening!

Best advice ever !!

 

[countrygirl74]

If I'd been drinking coffee I would have spat it all over everything...including the computer!! All great ideas. (And you could offer fresh eggs...if he takes you up on it, he's honor bound to shut up. If he refuses them, then you're sure what kind of person he is.)

He has agreed to let us try putting up a privacy fence on just one side of property - his side - to see if it helps to muffle the sound. Then, we'll go from there I guess... I wish I made enough money to sell this place and get a new house somewhere else! When we talked, he did start out mad, using choice words, but I just kept my cool and stayed sweet and he mellowed out. He agreeable to wait long enough for us to try some other options before having to get rid of them - only because he has daughters too and he realizes how upset my daughter is, about possibly having to give them away.
As for the eggs, he already gets all the fresh eggs he wants from his mother-in-law who has tons of chickens. He says he just doesn't want any living next to him. He's complained about our ducks some too but says he's "willing to put up with the ducks, just not the roosters". When he first saw us building our coop, his first response was, "I better not be able to smell them when I'm sitting in my hot tub in the evening" and "You're not going to make an eyesore of the coop, are you?" I almost laughed out loud at that one because you should see his yard compared to mine... night and day. That comment just blew me away.