A road trip to Idaho Falls sure sounds fun, Lisa. Depending on the day......
Delarooshens, If I have seen pictures of you, I don't remember. I'm sure you look plenty young though. I'm starting to feel my age occasionally. When that happens, I make an extra effort to go be childish to convince myself I'm not old yet.
Lisa, do you think the tube lighting helps deter predators? I like the idea, that's for sure.
I do have supplemental light for my birds. My timer is set to turn on at dusk and go for 4 hours. I don't use heat. Sometimes I'm tempted to bring a small space heater out there and put it in a safe place when the temps are below zero, but I never have done it.
Cynthia, how's your sizzle looking? Mine's feathers were being much more controlled than yours, and then suddenly, yesterday, two of the wing feathers started poking out at crazy angles.
My coronation sussex has suddenly gone very, very red in the face. I'm thinking maybe she'll be the next to lay, even though she's one of the younger girls at 21 weeks. I did catch the speckled sussex checking out the nest boxes. She's around 24-25 weeks.
Aravis, I have chicken watering nipples. I have one inside my large coop, another one in the run on the small coop side (remember that my two coops can be totally separate. I just barely took down the barrier between the two over the weekend), and then a tiny, liter bottle one also in the large coop because Fonzie is too short to reach the big ones. They seem to be messy drinkers, so I had to put a plastic tub/plate thing underneath the inside waterer because they were making a mess of the bedding. It didn't seem to matter much with the outdoor one. I bought my nipples from http://www.cconly.com/chicken_supplies/waterers and then used a 3 and 5 gallon bucket to make them. I got the heavy duty nipples.
Delarooshens, If I have seen pictures of you, I don't remember. I'm sure you look plenty young though. I'm starting to feel my age occasionally. When that happens, I make an extra effort to go be childish to convince myself I'm not old yet.
Lisa, do you think the tube lighting helps deter predators? I like the idea, that's for sure.
I do have supplemental light for my birds. My timer is set to turn on at dusk and go for 4 hours. I don't use heat. Sometimes I'm tempted to bring a small space heater out there and put it in a safe place when the temps are below zero, but I never have done it.
Cynthia, how's your sizzle looking? Mine's feathers were being much more controlled than yours, and then suddenly, yesterday, two of the wing feathers started poking out at crazy angles.
My coronation sussex has suddenly gone very, very red in the face. I'm thinking maybe she'll be the next to lay, even though she's one of the younger girls at 21 weeks. I did catch the speckled sussex checking out the nest boxes. She's around 24-25 weeks.
Aravis, I have chicken watering nipples. I have one inside my large coop, another one in the run on the small coop side (remember that my two coops can be totally separate. I just barely took down the barrier between the two over the weekend), and then a tiny, liter bottle one also in the large coop because Fonzie is too short to reach the big ones. They seem to be messy drinkers, so I had to put a plastic tub/plate thing underneath the inside waterer because they were making a mess of the bedding. It didn't seem to matter much with the outdoor one. I bought my nipples from http://www.cconly.com/chicken_supplies/waterers and then used a 3 and 5 gallon bucket to make them. I got the heavy duty nipples.
My husband has a solar spotlight in the run too, so we really can see out there pretty well to check on things. Mostly when our chicken-eating-terrier goes out to potty at night, we can make sure we know he is not around the run trying to get in all sneaky like in the dark. bad dog.
they will make less of a mess if you have your bucket set at the right height, its a very common mistake to make.
