Virginia

[Maggiesdad]

my chickens turned the goat house into thier coop on thier own...they started sleeping in the rafters. and because the goats are short and didn't need all that headroom, we built a shelf and let them have the upper part. the goats dont seem to mind.

so now we have 10 chickens in the original coop, 10 in the new coop and 14 in the goat house. (they like that one best...the one not even designed for them)

I'd sleep easy knowing the critters had to get past the goats first, too!

 

[pysankigirl]

wellI was gonna say that they are the best fleeces evah!!! oh well...not you, but goats are a great idea

 

[ki4got]

I know this will sound a bit vague but I am looking for easter eggers, laced birds like the wyandottes. It may sound silly but I want to be able to have the kids go oooh and ahhh at pretty eggs and enjoy some of the fancier looking birds I will get some regulars from the feed store like RIR and such. sooo i'm not super picky on what the birds are breed wise I just dont want to pay an arm and a leg for em. some of them are sooo expensive! I'm not a breeder and just looking for some egg layers and meaty birds if we decide that we want to do em for meat too. so a dual purpose hardy bird since i hear the weather can swing high and low here.

well, easter eggers aren't heritage... if you want to see a list of heritage breeds check out the American livestock breed conservancy. (don't remember the website right off but google it)

that will list what breeds are considered heritage..

my own heritage breed is the dorking, which I am working on to bring it back up to the standard weights and type. there are other heritage breeds and breeders of most of them around.

the feed store won't really have heritage birds, just hatchery varieties. they are usually considered two different things.

 

[pysankigirl]

I'd sleep easy knowing the critters had to get past the goats first, too!

True...perhaps I should put goats in all my coops!!!

 

[Maggiesdad]

I know this will sound a bit vague but I am looking for easter eggers, laced birds like the wyandottes. It may sound silly but I want to be able to have the kids go oooh and ahhh at pretty eggs and enjoy some of the fancier looking birds I will get some regulars from the feed store like RIR and such. sooo i'm not super picky on what the birds are breed wise I just dont want to pay an arm and a leg for em. some of them are sooo expensive! I'm not a breeder and just looking for some egg layers and meaty birds if we decide that we want to do em for meat too. so a dual purpose hardy bird since i hear the weather can swing high and low here.

Some of your local swaps, or Gilmanor in May, can be great places to pick up a little of this and a couple of that to put you a cool egg basket together. I work with Euskal Oiloak as my pet dual purpose project, and Australorps, Black Copper Marans, and barnyard mutts just for fun. As far as meat, none of them look like grocery store chicken when they are plucked, but they taste sooo much better when they are fixed right.
What's your price range, and what age are your looking to start with? Growing them out is where part of the cost can come from... chicken feed ain't cheap!

 

[Maggiesdad]

Got my very first egg today!! 22 weeks!! I think it was one of those noisy leghorns! It was a rubber egg, and broken but still an egg.

LOL She must have gotten excited, too! Tell her to dial her conveyor down just a little, give it time to form a shell...

You got 'em on laying formula?

ie - they've got the calcium they need?

 

[MistyMountain]

LOL She must have gotten excited, too!  Tell her to dial her conveyor down just a little, give it time to form a shell...

You got 'em on laying formula?

ie - they've got the calcium they need?

They do now! Made a trip to Southern States today!! I had another leghorn sit in the box for a while today. Of course I had to linger outside the coop. Nothing. But she did move the wooden egg around like she knew what she was doing. I can not wait!

 

[PinkBee]

Does someone here know a link for keeping gamebirds in Virginia? Or links for any of the DC area counties and their gamebird laws? Thanks for any help!

 

[pysankigirl]

Okay, so I have to tell you guys about my day yesterday. It was gorgeous out for the first time in a while. It amazes me that we can go from 5 degrees to 60 in less than a week. So we took the opportunity to clean out the goat shed. We have a mouse problem but as we store hay in there, we couldn’t do much about it (beyond putting out traps and beginning to store all our feed in galv metal buckets) until we whittled down the hay supply enough to be able to move it around. When we did, the tunnel complex behind the hay amazed me…it was like an ant farm.

As I disassembled it (wearing gloves!!!) the first thing I found was a nest of 7 babies. I put them on a lid and set them on the ground to deal with later. But turns out the Chickens did that for me. They ran around playing “keep away” and in no time the pinkies were no more.

But as I excavated further, it became apparent how much I had underestimated the seriousness of our infestation. Mice were running everywhere, over me and out. I managed to grab some of them and shove them into a 5 gal bucket (with DH’s help) but how many got away I will never know. just to give an idea of the magnitude, I got 14 into the bucket!!!

Their city is now leveled and we will be storing the hay somewhere else for a while, nowhere near any source of food. I am sure that the ones that got away will be telling their great-grandchildren about the Shangri-La that they once had.

Shudder. I took a long hot soapy shower.

 

[klj491]

Hello everyone!
My husband and I are about to embark on a chicken keeping journey of our own. I'm really interested in starting from hatching eggs, but I can't seem to find any locally in the Hampton Roads area on craigslist. I'd prefer not to buy shipped eggs, since the price/success rate ratio seems pretty poor from what I've read in my research. I was wondering if you have any ideas on resources for where I may be able to find eggs for sale. I honestly am not terribly concerned with breed at this point, considering this is my first go round and I'll be happy with just getting them to hatch!