The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Bulldogma]

Good hatch for shipped eggs. Assuming there was 12 that is!

Not sharing this on our FB page yet. Want to wait until the barn warming party to show it off there.. If I can hold off that long.
You guys are getting a sneak peak at the finished exterior! Just a couple of things needed to be finished inside - hardly anything at all.

Door to chicken room. It was recycled. I love it. Especially that you can see into the room from the hallway.

Aoxa - yes, I had sent RR 12 eggs from Gunnar's last batch.

Your barn looks AMAZING!!!! You must be so excited! I'm so happy for you girls!

 

[FridayYet]

Not sharing this on our FB page yet. Want to wait until the barn warming party to show it off there.. If I can hold off that long.

Looks Fantastic! Can't wait to see it full of animals

 

[Bulldogma]

So we got the big wind storm as promised here in southern VA... and boy was I thankful for the horse trailer coop!!!

I put all the chickens in different compartments and went inside. Our big, heavy hoop coop hovered a few times and I was so glad there were no chickens in it as I would have gone into cardiac arrest worrying. Of course the horse trailer didn't budge. When we parked it originally, I put the rounded front end in the direction our wind usually comes from. The aerodynamics (as horse trailers go) helped too, I believe.

The doll house coop is on the lee side of the house and when I heard the storm was coming I moved the quarantine coop to a safer location too.

Everybody was just fine... even the worry-wart chicken mom!

 

[armorfirelady]

Aoxa your barn looks amazing. Congrats !!

BDM glad to hear your coops survived the high winds. I think if we had high winds here my hoop coop wouldn't budge with all the rain we have had. It's stuck tight in the mud. Even after moving it to higher ground the ground in the coop is mushy. We have had so much rain the soil doesn't absorb it anymore

I have worked more hours than I have been home in the last 48 hours. Spent an hour out with the big girls & tots today getting them set for my friends who are chicken sitting while I am on vacation. I swear those BCM Greta & Sophie have doubled in size in 2 days !!! And boy do they love their greens. Maybe all the rain we are having everyday is making the tots grow faster ?

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Quote: Lovely Barn.

Quote:

glad to hear all is well.

one of our hens tripped while running from the cat, who was not chasing it. She just happened to notice that he was sleeping in the nearby grass. Now my hen is limping. I did not see or feel anything out of place. But the best I could do was compare it to another hen's leg. It did not act in pain when I was examining it. She puts her weight on her sore leg for a flash of a second but does not appear to be using her wings to balance or walk. I have her by herself tonight to keep her away from the others and to make sure she gets food and water. About how long should a sprained leg take to heal? Is there anything I can give her for the pain?

 

[bluebirdnanny]

RedRidge congrats on the SFH chicks. They are so cute

Loin....I would but only the cheap beer

A small dish of beer in your veggie garden attracts slugs & drowns them

Helps with compost activation too. But draw back is skunks are also drawn to it as are bears!!!! But around my chickens??? No way. Don't want them drunk! haha

So we got the big wind storm as promised here in southern VA... and boy was I thankful for the horse trailer coop!!!

I put all the chickens in different compartments and went inside. Our big, heavy hoop coop hovered a few times and I was so glad there were no chickens in it as I would have gone into cardiac arrest worrying. Of course the horse trailer didn't budge. When we parked it originally, I put the rounded front end in the direction our wind usually comes from. The aerodynamics (as horse trailers go) helped too, I believe.

The doll house coop is on the lee side of the house and when I heard the storm was coming I moved the quarantine coop to a safer location too.

Everybody was just fine... even the worry-wart chicken mom!

Glad for you! I understand the windy issue.... ours come from across the street from the farmers fields. My old windows got blown out of track a couple times. We will see how these new ones do. That is also the reason the coop is on the East side of the shed even though the shed has no gutters yet!

 

[aoxa]

So we got the big wind storm as promised here in southern VA... and boy was I thankful for the horse trailer coop!!!

I put all the chickens in different compartments and went inside. Our big, heavy hoop coop hovered a few times and I was so glad there were no chickens in it as I would have gone into cardiac arrest worrying. Of course the horse trailer didn't budge. When we parked it originally, I put the rounded front end in the direction our wind usually comes from. The aerodynamics (as horse trailers go) helped too, I believe.

The doll house coop is on the lee side of the house and when I heard the storm was coming I moved the quarantine coop to a safer location too.

Everybody was just fine... even the worry-wart chicken mom!

Scary! Wind storms make Susan panic. I don't have time to panic.. I have to keep her calm. She is also afraid of thunder and lightening. She is pretty much only afraid of things I am not afraid of myself.. Works out really well that way

Aoxa - yes, I had sent RR 12 eggs from Gunnar's last batch.

Your barn looks AMAZING!!!! You must be so excited! I'm so happy for you girls!

Thanks! Yes we are so excited. It is already occupied with the goats, chicks and chickens. I am pretty much done other than hatching my own eggs and getting the geese next week.

Though we do have a surprise to announce soon on a soon-to-be arrival. I have to get pictures first..
No it's not the pigs.. I forgot about the pigs.. They are coming after the fence is up. Two black potbellied pigs. Really no reason for them.. Susan wants them.. She lets me have all these chickens, so I'll let her have the pigs. But I am breeding one of them to sell the piglets. Maybe next year (or the year after) once I get used to pigs, we can raise one for meat.



Here is the heated brooder room. Shelving up and right now we have no running water, so we filled a brand new trash can up so we can actually fill waterers and make FF without having to go all the way up to the house.

I'm going to need to take quality pictures once the electricity is up and running. It's all finished, but NB Power said it will take max 12 business days to get them to run the power from the pole to the barn (it's separate). They said the same thing about the pole, and it only took two days, so one can hope. I have extension cords running there now (extra heavy duty) from the temporary power set up the contractors used. Still makes me a little uneasy, but what can you do? Chicks need heat.

 

[delisha]

It isn't that emotional for me, unless as you say, it's a pet. These turkeys aren't pets, they're food. It's more 1) my personal phobia of dead things, 2) the wasted time and resources gone into the bird, and 3) not knowing what happened so I can't effectively prevent a repeat.

I have one other issue I keep forgetting to ask about. I have this one silkie. She's been acting totally fine, but her laying has gone all weird. She lays like 1 egg every few weeks, and it's always super thin in spots and kind of flattened. Every time I get near her I pick her up and check her out an palpate around her vent, and I don't think I feel anything out of sorts (but honestly, I don't know exactly what I'm feeling for...), and she's eating and acting normal. But I'm worried because she came from the same breeder as my other hen that just dropped dead out of nowhere last month. I feed her fermented GMO-free layer and she has free choice oyster shell AND my chickens get most of the egg shells from all the eggs we use. Anything else I should do/watch for?

And I can hear you all saying "cull! cull!" In this case and only this case, I can't. She is the one and only chicken that my kids consider a pet. I will cull her if she is sick with something communicable, or if she is suffering, but not otherwise (besides, I'm not worried about her polluting my gene pool, because it's obvious which eggs are hers...).

I am sorry. Your bird has medical issues. It is not normal for a chicken to lay so sporadically or have shells so wierd. I would assume it is a genetic obnomalty and your hen has oviduct and reproduction issues.

If you know the general development of an egg as it travels down to the oviduct, you can visualize where your bird has problems. If the egg inside the shell is normal, the problem would be in the shell gland and in the uterus.

Quote: Normal behavior. Pecking orders are how chickens survive.

I can't believe how fast my Cream Legbars are growing. I love when I go out there and they're passed out half under the Eco glow. I made bone in chicken breast two nights ago, and we pulled the meat off and gave the chicks one of the bones. An hour later the bone was a foot away from the plate and had zero meat left on it, the little chicks had huge crops and seemed happy.
Our Silkie broody has just over a week left on her eggs, she eats every day so I'm hoping she's not too skinny when she's done. My Cochin broody is very blasé about the whole thing, she gets up to eat and dust bathe, wanders around a bit then goes back to the eggs. We'll see how well her hatch goes.

They will both do well..!!!

Quote: My dog leaves all the larger chickens alone. I have to always watch her with the baby's.

I have been away on business and am way behind!!! But I had to share the news that Spook my lavender Catdance silkie finally laid her first egg!!! At 1 year 2-3 weeks old!!yeah spook!

woo hooo!!

Quote: it all depends on the weather and where the eggs are in development stage. You might want to cage her if she is an egg hopper.

Good question here guys and gals: we have really hard water (no chlorine or fluoride added to it) anywho my water heater started to leak and we had to clean it out of the deposits from the water to fix the leak. There is a lot of this stuff and I was wondering sense it's calcium and limestone, would it be ok to put in my compost? My chickens regularly eat from that compost pile so if I put it out there they could eat it!
The leak wasn't rust related so no rust just calcium and limestone,.,

toss it in

So we got the big wind storm as promised here in southern VA... and boy was I thankful for the horse trailer coop!!!

I put all the chickens in different compartments and went inside. Our big, heavy hoop coop hovered a few times and I was so glad there were no chickens in it as I would have gone into cardiac arrest worrying. Of course the horse trailer didn't budge. When we parked it originally, I put the rounded front end in the direction our wind usually comes from. The aerodynamics (as horse trailers go) helped too, I believe.

The doll house coop is on the lee side of the house and when I heard the storm was coming I moved the quarantine coop to a safer location too.

Everybody was just fine... even the worry-wart chicken mom!

..glad everything is good.

 

[uglychickens]

aaggjg how did you come up with the name spook?

 

[zinia8]

Good hatch for shipped eggs. Assuming there was 12 that is! Not sharing this on our FB page yet. Want to wait until the barn warming party to show it off there.. If I can hold off that long. You guys are getting a sneak peak at the finished exterior! Just a couple of things needed to be finished inside - hardly anything at all. Door to chicken room. It was recycled. I love it. Especially that you can see into the room from the hallway.

Looks great. I love all the windows.