What was your worst mistake as a chicken keeper?

[Isadora]

Yes definitely.
It's not really something that people worry about until it's too late.

I was the opposite, but that's because I did a lot of reading here on BYC before my chicks were old enough to go outside. My husband thought I was a little paranoid, but he helped me get all the pens predator proof. We haven't lost any to predators except for some guineas that went exploring in the woods too deep while free ranging.

 

[KingD]

I was the opposite, but that's because I did a lot of reading here on BYC before my chicks were old enough to go outside. My husband thought I was a little paranoid, but he helped me get all the pens predator proof. We haven't lost any to predators except for some guineas that went exploring in the woods too deep while free ranging.

I wish I had known about BYC years ago. Would have helped so much.

 

[Poultrybonkers]

My worst mistake was buying other peoples chickens.
Which had mg so I culled them all and never bought peoples birds again and never had an issue since.

 

[Pippin quail]

Yes definitely.
It's not really something that people worry about until it's too late.

I can see that. I thought we made ours pretty predator proof. But it's not covered, just bird netting over most of it. Which I think would deter some flying predators, but a weasel or something could definitely climb in there. The hardware cloth apron at the bottom of the run is also not secured the greatest.
Thankfully my chicken coop is a big metal shed so I don't think anything could get to the hens while they're sleeping at least!
My cockerels, in the other hand, are sleeping out in the run, until butcher day. So we need to make that day sooner rather than later, or risk an animal eating our chickens before we do!

 

[CreveChris]

What did you do? I bought 9 new hens from 2 different flocks. I did not quarantine them and put them all directly in with my chickens.
What were the consequences? First of all, several of my 8 cockerels went crazy! They started trying to mate the new hens and pulling each other off/fighting. Also didn't inspect the hens very well or have forthcoming sellers... One has crooked toes. She seems fine and the lady told me she hatched like that and she tried to fix it but couldn't. (Thanks for letting me know beforehand lady!) Two have scaly leg mites.
Did you fix it? How? The cockerels are separated into one side of the run. But they can still see and hear and interact with the hens from behind the fence. So there's still some scuffles and attempted jail breaks. I'm hoping my husband will start butchering them this weekend before they kill each other or escape the run at night, which one did last night! Thankfully I was there to catch him and fix the fence where he climbed out.
As for the feet thing, I'm now preemptively treating all the chickens in the coop for scaly leg mites. Cleaned out the whole coop, etc. And as for Ingeburg (the swedish flower hen with the crooked toes) I guess she's fine, just looks weird and would maybe avoid breeding her, she also has a crooked comb.

What did you learn? Do my due diligence when buying chickens. Have a setup to quarantine. Don't just buy more because winter is coming and you feel like you need more to keep each other warm. Maybe don't buy any more adult chickens and just hatch my own!

Glad it's all better now.

Incubator was the best investment

 

[Pippin quail]

Glad it's all better now.

Incubator was the best investment

I do have one of those. I did two hatches this year. The first I ended up with 11 out of 15 being cockerels. Then I did another hatch 6 weeks ago and still not sure on the sex of most of them. I really wanted some guaranteed laying hens and got impatient. So that's why I bought the new 9. So far only a few have laid me an egg, hoping they're just settling in still and I didn't get duped with some old hens!!

 

[cluckcluckhens]

When we moved here in 2012 everything was fine. As the years went by so did our Australop girls. Little back ground on this is one Hen was pecking on the head of one so I protected her all day long for years. We locked up the bad girl two weeks at a time in another enclosure run that had a hen house. After two weeks we put her back in the main run. After a few months of doing this she did not learn and went after all of the Australrop Hens. Then hubby said enough he did it his way with her in 2016 or 2017 with the neck. She was the smallest of the SLW and speedy on her feet. We let her roam around on her own out of the run and she slept in our blackberry vines in the front yard. We have close to an acre. Then one day after a couple of weeks she walked back to the back yard so we let her in. Big mistake. We never did find any of her eggs so she probably ate them. I was not going to get picked by vines getting inside of the blackberry vines to look for them. This all started after our sex-link and Mr Roo left us.

I wrote a longer version of this on the message board that I am a member of years ago. I always save a copy of what happened in my email. We had three SLW and three Gold ones. After years of this happening a manager at our farm store told us we should of got rid of her right away. Bad bird.

 

[McChooky]

Absolutely. And always expect the unexpected..... I planned for all the normal predators only to have my first ever predator attack occur from a massive starving young male black bear. I've learned a lot about bears since then.

Second predator attack was from a feral cat! Killed two six-week old chicks

I've worked all spring and summer on a fence around the yard and building the chickens a coop and run.Hopefully I'll get an electric fence up before it happens to me.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I've worked all spring and summer on a fence around the yard and building the chickens a coop and run.Hopefully I'll get an electric fence up before it happens to me.

Thankfully the electric fence is the easy part! I’m a tiny person with zero electric fence experience and managed to set up an electric fence and a solar electric fence by myself both times in a day. If I can do it anyone can lol. BYC helped me a lot with that, too. Good luck!

 

[Noellereagan]

1. What did you do?
Thought I could build out my open-air coop by myself, then thought it would be easy to hire a "helper". Hired a couple of young landscapers to build the two-cement-block-high wall, but ended up having to do it myself because apparently math: geometry.

2. What were the consequences?
For a year I used a chicken tractor by day and garage brooder by night (I'm overprotective). The garage was covered with dust, but hemp bedding kept it clean-ish. Ma and Pa Kettle over here.


3. Did you fix it? How?
After building the brick-and-mortar foundation and installing 4x4s myself (with husband help), I finally got a referral on an older carpenter who got the PT lumber and hardware cloth coop/run design I carefully explained to him done.

I tried to be available but not "in the way" to ensure it was built to my plan--learned this from redoing/flipping houses.

The open air coop is Fort Knox. And only cost me 400% of my budget.

4. What did you learn?
Custom builds are hard. And expensive. And worth it!

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