The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[mlowen]

@mlowen


It looks like you are using your tunnels to primarily move chickens from one covered area to another.  Are all the areas that you let them into completely covered over the top for hawk protection?

The tunnels are to move from one area to another. I have hot pink string up in the yard and behind the coop. I don't know that it really protects from hawks. My hope is that it at least looks weird enough from the sky that it gives them pause. My town's ordinance requires chickens to be behind a fence at all times and I can't afford to fence my whole property--small though it is.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Well, then... a creative "fence" for them! Very wonderful, @mlowen

 

[Leahs Mom]

Hey...my "Hedgehog Broody" made it into a Grit Blog post!

http://www.grit.com/animals/chickens/when-chickens-become-hedgehogs.aspx


She's famous!
Last year she had the worst molt I've ever seen...and looked like this just when it hit the 20's (F) She had to come in so I figured I'd put her to work brooding while she was waiting for the feathers to grow in.

 

[mlowen]

Hey...my "Hedgehog Broody" made it into a Grit Blog post!

http://www.grit.com/animals/chickens/when-chickens-become-hedgehogs.aspx


She's famous!
Last year she had the worst molt I've ever seen...and looked like this just when it hit the 20's (F) She had to come in so I figured I'd put her to work brooding while she was waiting for the feathers to grow in.

I LOVE that picture! (Poor thing.) If she could write, I'd ask for her autograph.

 

[armorfirelady]

For the tunnels I built frames from 4 to 12 feet long, 2 feet wide. I cut 4 foot 2x4 welded wire fencing the length of the frame and stapled/u-nailed it on the sides of the frame. That makes the "tunnel" part a perfect height for the chickens. They look like high school track runners when they run down the tunnels, jumping over the cross braces.

They look awesome

Hey...my "Hedgehog Broody" made it into a Grit Blog post!

http://www.grit.com/animals/chickens/when-chickens-become-hedgehogs.aspx


She's famous!
Last year she had the worst molt I've ever seen...and looked like this just when it hit the 20's (F) She had to come in so I figured I'd put her to work brooding while she was waiting for the feathers to grow in.

Congrats !!!

 

[slordaz]

ok our chickens know when we are tired, got this one we think is a rooster getting in nest trying to lay an egg, got them in April

Then we got a barred rock hen that is laying and she's trying to crow

some humor for ya all while we wait on incubator ( day 12)

 

[mlowen]

ok our chickens know when we are tired, got this one we think is a rooster getting in nest trying to lay an egg, got them in April

Then we got a barred rock hen that is laying and she's trying to crow

some humor for ya all while we wait on incubator ( day 12)

I have a white leghorn hen (laid almost every single day until her second winter) who now crows at random...usually the day after she lays an egg! My daughter read that sometimes rooster less flocks will have a dominant hen take over rooster duties--being extra vigilant about predators and keeping order, sometimes including crowing.
On a related note: when I was a child in Mississippi, my grandmother said, "Whistling girls and crowing hens are sure to come to some bad end." So I immediately set about learning to whistle. Spite has always been a big motivator for me.

 

[slordaz]

We have a BR rooster and 3 RIR Roosters, BR stays with the hens and the RIR's patrol the area .won't even go in the coop. The Amerecuana that my friend got in April is the one that is making us wonder. Hens are all mad cause it gets in their favorite nest lol.

Selling 2 of the RIR's today,

All in all would say it wasn't to bad of a first year free ranging our flock lost 2 egg layers and the cornish x that we got to laying, we are almost done winterizing before weather gets bad here. They like the nests put in hay bales we stacked around the inside to give added warmth. made little cave in the bottom that we can put a barrier in front of for when the chicks hatch, as we have 2 hens that aren't interested in brooding but love to raise babies, thinking might be a good idea to put both of them in there when the chicks hatch, any opinions on 1 or 2 hens?

The flock really likes their FF now it's getting colder added in 1 tsp of cayenne pepper to a 5 gal bucket along with the garlic we are keeping in it.

 

[gjamesi]

Was "gifted" a rooster a few months ago and chicken math seems to have taken over. Still learning but I'm a follower of KISS and so glad I found this thread.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@gjamesi

Glad you found us too!