The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[lalaland]

welcome Glarnerchicks!

I'm sure you'll love having chickens. I can remember wondering what the heck I did before having them since I was spending all my time watching them!

Like everything else, with chickens there are a zillion opinions and contradictory facts. Given that, here's one - not everyone thinks DE is a good thing, me included. Isn't that frustrating?

I keep a mix of herbs and grass in the nest boxes - with a hay base. In the summer, I dry yarrow, wormwood, mint, clover, tansy and marigold to topdress the nests with the herbs. When I'm being silly, I collect the rosepetals from the shrub roses and toss those in too. I saw a pic somewhere of a nesting blend - it was beautiful but pricey.

Post pics of your flock and coop. glad you've joined the thread!

 

[lalaland]

ok, I've been having problems with eggs showing up in the middle of the coop floor. Yesterday figured it out:


thats 3 in the nest, and then along comes another wanting in:



hmmm......the eggs are on the floor below..... and yesterday one was broken from the fall. What you can't see is behind the big sulmtaler hen, is a corner occupied by 3 more hens. Now, these aren't the nest boxes. There are 5 nest boxes in the other portion of the coop, but the hens decided the shelf made the perfect spot. The corner is an oil pan! and they gradually removed the stuff I had in the apple crate to make room for themselves.


always something interesting happening with chickens!

 

[Mrs. K]

Mine will do this sometimes, just get a notion to lay somewhere else, and everyone thinks "Hey, that is a good idea"

 

[COChix]

hello all, well we have been having steady rain in Colorado all week and last night it snowed! We have about 3 inches on the ground, back into the 70's by Mid week, agh spring in the Rockies!

Well since I can't do much outside been working on my heating pad set up for the brooder. Here is my work in progress, I put it into the brooder last night. It was their first night without the heat lamp and also no light since no heat lamp. You have to buy a heating pad that doesn't automatically turn off after two hours.

I started with a tomatoe cage and made some cuts.

The original cut on the cage made my frame too big and too long. So I made more cuts and adjusted. I wrapped chicken wire around it for support as the chicks climb on it just like they would with a mom hen. I then went through all the wire and flattened any shar edges with a pair of pliers.

Here is the gang checking it out, typically you cover the top with straw as well. This were shots of my trial run.

After they all fell sleep napping on top, I transferred them into their warm cave. It was 92 in there and they all stayed for a bit. After that the three smallest in the flock stayed inside while the others were on top.

Last night they did great, by lights out they had all fallen asleep on top, so I turned off the lights and then transferred them into the cave. They stayed all night, some slept in front of the cave, but most slept in. They were quiet until morning and at morning light they were out of the cave and running around in their brooder. This set up is awesome, I decided to go with this set up after I got to thinking about the fact that the chicks never have a "night" per see when they are continually under the heat lamps. Think about it, if they were in the coop with mom they would be going through the night in the dark. Well I know that having that down time is extremely important for growth, rest and regeneration for people, why wouldn't this apply to chicks? In my mind it made totally sense and it affords me a way to rear the chicks more natural, as if they were with mom. This also will allow me to move them into the small coop without the use of a heat lamp, by next week. They will just be two weeks old on Wednesday.

Here is a shot of the small coop, which is where they will go next. There needs some work to it, I need to block of the nest boxes, take the roosts down and reinforce the hardware cloth over the windows. Once I can get that done then we be moving the littles out to the coop for their new brooder. I will post pictures when we move them.

Just wanted to share this information as I was asked about it, as well as I think this whole set up is pretty cool. Check out the thread
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...rooder-picture-heavy-update/570#post_15234859

 

[slordaz]

lalaland,you think think that's bad, I am still working on getting my pullets up on the perch, they still wanna sleep on the floor with the duck. We added hay into all of the boxes and crates and still only a few of them are being used ,so far out of 12 pullets only 4 like the roost, might have to try something else there. gonna let the newest babies outta the pen now they are a little bigger as they are impatient, on nice days I have had them out with the flock in the run under supervision then back to their pen inside of the coop. Am I doing something wrong here?

Still debating about free ranging them when they are older, there's an eagle in the area with about a 6-8 ft wing span, hawks ran off when it showed up in the area. There is a trained boxer that watches over them.
What do you think would be better to just make their run bigger and keep them in that, make them a portable pen to let them move around? Eagles are protected so not much I could do to them just try to keep my flock so it can't get at them

 

[Leahs Mom]

hmmm......the eggs are on the floor below..... and yesterday one was broken from the fall. What you can't see is behind the big sulmtaler hen, is a corner occupied by 3 more hens. Now, these aren't the nest boxes. There are 5 nest boxes in the other portion of the coop, but the hens decided the shelf made the perfect spot. The corner is an oil pan! and they gradually removed the stuff I had in the apple crate to make room for themselves.


always something interesting happening with chickens!

Mine were doing that too the last couple weeks. There are 3 nest boxes right next to each other and they would stand in line to use whichever one was "popular" that day.

Anyhow...
I decided to try to observe a bit and noticed that some of the meaner chickens were intimidating others. I even had one that was going into the nest and pecking another until it would leave and give up on the nest.

I finally separated off 3 birds that seemed to be harassing others and peace has returned. Bad thing is that they are good layers so I have to be done with them, but there's no excuse to be harassing just for the purpose of harassing.

Now I have to decide whether to have chicken soup, try to rehome, or maintain 2 separate areas. But it sure is nice to have peace in the chicken kingdom!

(And, of course, that doesn't change the fact that they all want in the same nest!

)

 

[slordaz]

still new so take with a grain of salt,
something special about that nest to them I guess, mine aren't laying yet but all wanted one nest until we added a little straw to each of the boxes instead of just the pine shavings, then they spread out only time they pile up is when they are outside and something scares them they run for the dog house inside their pen, which is by the way some progress from them as before they would just stand there.

Today was a good day, the ducks enjoyed themselves in the pond, without the chicks having a fit cause the duck wasn't with them. I think that was the biggest draw back of raising a duck with the chicks in the brooder, duck was bigger so chicks took it for momma then getting them to do anything separately was quite a task even though they knew they were different.

Tomorrow going to try building a couple ladder like things for them to roost on, they didn't seem to like the round poles as well see if I can get the other chicks to use a roost instead of sleeping in box on floor with the duck.

Anyone know if meat chickens roost differently from an egg layer/dual purpose or need special considerations like lowered, my friends meat birds are young but heavy and seem to want to stay on the ground too.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Often the meat birds do stay on the ground as they find it too hard to get on a roost. I know some folks that offered lowered roosts and they do use them.

 

[hellbender]

Often the meat birds do stay on the ground as they find it too hard to get on a roost. I know some folks that offered lowered roosts and they do use them.

To each their own but I could not eat a bird (cornish X) that spends it's life in gobs of poop and looks to be nearly terminal with Polio.

 

[slordaz]

Thanks Leahs mom least can quit worrying about that.

Hell bender as you said to each their own, but you have no idea what my set up is for one, so please keep your supposed facts to yourself. Jumping to conclusions is not a valid form of exercise.

Just so you know ,we have a small flock and both the run and coop are cleaned daily, at least until they are old enough to free range then just the coop, and as they were raised with a duck they have a pan that they wash their feet in if they feel the need.