What was your worst mistake as a chicken keeper?

[Pghelp]

I didn't expect so many replies.
I'll share my mistake.

1.What did you do?
when I first started chicken keeping, I didn't know about how bad prefabs are (and how addicted I'd get to chickens/ how many I'd get) and I bought one.

2.What were the consequences?
Luckily, it's really big but I still can't have as many chickens as I want. I dream of a huge walk-in coop.

3.Did you fix it? How?
I couldn't fix it, it would be a waste of money and I can't afford a larger coop. I'm lucky that all my chickens are okay and fit in well.

4.What did you learn?
Don't get prefabs, especially if you are planning to have a multiple generation flock

I'm happy enough with the 2 prefabs we inherited from other chicken owners who gave up. What made them work was installing them inside a huge walk-in chicken run my beloved son built for me. The doors of the coops can stay open except when we're using one coop as a brooder for babies. With small trees and bushes inside the run it's second best to free ranging but totally safe for them.

 

[Wrooster]

We introduced a young rooster into an established flock and it worked very poorly.

We had a happy flock of about 12 hens and one protective rooster. We had given some fertilized eggs to the local 4H because they wanted to hatch them. One of the resulting roosters became too hard for them to handle. (You'd think they would have seen that coming, but anyway...) We agreed to take it off their hands. We put him in a separate pen a few yards from the others so they could get used to each other. A few days later the old rooster got out and they had been fighting through the wire before I realized what was going on and the old guy was getting beat up.

After we nursed him back to health we decided they were going to have to work things out for themselves. We put him back with his flock and then let the new guy in. It was pretty brutal. We stopped the fight when it was clear the old guy would die before he'd give up and we humanely put him out of his misery.

Consequences? We lost a mean old rooster we were kinda fond of.

Learned? This was not the right way to take in a new rooster. It would have been better if we had gotten them together while the new one was younger.

 

[EllieandOlive]

Not having who property secured from the neighbor's horrid dog. It can squeeze through a 5 inch gap in our driveway gate posts.

 

[Cryss]

Not having who property secured from the neighbor's horrid dog. It can squeeze through a 5 inch gap in our driveway gate posts.

Chihuahua?

 

[farmer joal]

View attachment 2809406

We learn from our mistakes, right? Even pros and experts make mistakes.
I was wondering what your biggest mistakes were as chicken keepers.
Maybe newbies could find this thread and learn from it.

1. What did you do?
2. What were the consequences?
3. Did you fix it? How?
4. What did you learn?

Please remember, we all make mistakes. Please do not belittle or bully ANYONE for their mistakes.

 

[EllieandOlive]

Chihuahua?

Hah! Actually it's a malnourished mutt, probably part lab part pitbull. It's seriously scrawny. They're terrible pet owners.

 

[Isadora]

Hah! Actually it's a malnourished mutt, probably part lab part pitbull. It's seriously scrawny. They're terrible pet owners.

Poor thing.

 

[Bonnieboo]

One night I forgot to lock the chooks in their shed after they put themselves to bed at dusk.
We're not sure if it was a dog or a fox, but the screaming woke us to find two of our four dead. One was smart and was playing dead and the other had got away thank God. It was extremely traumatic for all involved and I will never forget it and how painful it was, even though it was about five years ago. The worst part was that it was my fault I had failed to protect my babies and they relied on me to keep them safe. Now I have three alarms set for bed time to lock them in safely. The three alarms are if I miss the first or second one I at least get one of them which guarantees them safely being put away. I love them all so much, to lose any others in this way would just be too terrible to bear...

 

[lauraschicks]

We had a dog that tried that once years ago. He was a lab that would climb the chain link fence. We put an electric wire around the top and at the base of the fence. The dog saw the opening between the beginning of the chain link and the house, about 3-4 inches and decided to climb through the opening since he had gotten shocked by one of the wires. Of course as a full grown muscled dog there was no way! He tried it anyway and almost made it. At the top he lost his footing and fell into the gap enough to catch his scrotum on the electric wire. He started yelping screaming and my brother ran to get his dog off the fence, then he started yelping and screaming. "Turn off the damn fence!" The fence was shocking my brother but he held his dog off that fence until we could get him off. I have always respected him for that. He really loved that dog. Hank has long since passed away, but wasn't injured then except for the momentary pain of being shocked. He never did try to climb the fence again...

 

[Ponypoor]

What did you do?
I can think of 2 serious mistakes I’ve made
1. Keeping my bantam silkie with my standard size hens
2. Not locking my coop properly

What were the consequences?
1. My silkie was attacked and killed by my other hens
2. Someone broke into my coop and stole 2 birds

Did you fix it? How?
1. I haven’t kept standard birds with bantams sense
2. I keep combination locks on my coop now but I never found out who did it

Oh no that is so sad sorry to hear of your loss.