What were your worst mistakes when you first started?

[BantyChooks]

Leaving out water buckets and expecting chickens not to just randomly drown themselves.

I swear the little buggers are suicidal. How hard can it possibly be to climb out of a shallow pool??

 

[MissChick@dee]

What?!? That can happen? Eeewwwww!

Umm...yes,yes it can Mimi.

 

[Compost King]

Too Small of a brooder, perfect size for the first week though. I have made so many huge mistakes since but starting out I did fairly well.

 

[PattyNH]

Clipping my Roosters claws with human toe nail clippers.
Having a running bloody mess and no quick-stop.
Not crating the running bloody mess once I got the blood stopped.
Then trying to bandage a Single toe rather than the whole foot.
Not using vet-wrap to make the bandage.
Then feeding my Rooster stool softeners to pass the swallowed bandage.

 

[PattyNH]

When I first got chickens
A friend came over with a tote full of chicks...he said you pick.
I picked ALL roosters and just one hen!


ETA: I still have the HEN !

I'm dying over here!! Same luck!

 

[PattyNH]

Thinking "Oh they'll be fine outside for just one night" one too many nights

Convincing myself I could pick all pullets from the "straight run chicks"

Thinking "This will be easy!"

Thinking "Solar motion lights will scare predators away. Why doesn't everyone just get some??"

 

[aart]

x2, that was a downside, though it was nice having an easy 'transition' into chickens. ...
I wouldn't say I regret it... but I won't do it again, if I ever have to restart my flock.

I was lucky, it could have been much worse...and it was a good entry.

I avoided many 'mistakes' by reading here for months of hours a day before building coop and getting birds...see, I built coop before getting birds, took all summer, but had to hurry to build run, that only took two weeks.

 

[GC-Raptor]

Getting Day old Chicks first. Then figuring out a plan to build my own coop. Buy material, Assemble, Wire for electricity. 5 1/2 weeks later. Chicks are in coop.

I'm smarter now? Nearly 2 1/2 years later.
I buy day old Chicks.
I search online for a week or so for a ready to assemble coop. I get it about 10 days later, DAMAGED.
A couple of phone calls over a couple of weeks, company says they will replace damaged wall and I should receive it in a week to 10 days.

In the meantime.
I assembled the pen for the Chicks while I waited and was carrying Chicks to the pen in the morning in a dog carrier, . and back to the brooder in the enclosed porch of my house in the evening. As you can see in second pic I put up tarp.

Why didn't I put them in with my Hens? Because that coop is only 4' x 5'.

I get the replacement wall and assemble coop, and wire for electricity. . Chicks are in coop at 7 1/2 weeks. .

Moral of the story. Don't even look at Chicks in the store until the coop is built and ready to inhabit.
Will I do it again? I hope not, but Chicks are so cute and if I hear them when picking up feed, I have to investigate.
These are the biggest mistakes I've made since buying my first Chicks.

I was a lurker on BYC for about a year before signing up. So I learned a lot before building my first coop. GC

 

[4 Georgia Hens]

Silkies are more fragile than I could have ever imagined!

 

[Doc7]

I would construct my nest box differently the lid didn’t weigh 40 lbs after shingling.

Probably a front open style instead of top open.

To be honest I feel great about practically every single decision I made. Coop and run right size for 6 hens. Used a mama heating pad with chicks in the coop from Day 1 (no house / brooder). The coop and run are on solid enclosure so I only use the coop to run access door for maintenance (have probably closed it 3 times, to trap chickens in coop while adding leaves to the run or etc). Water nipples, on 5 gallon buckets and a big PVC no waste feeder means I have left my chickens for 7 or more consecutive days, with no chicken sitter, with no problems, 3 times.

Many folks stress about chicken sitters and closing their coop/run doors. I have zero of these concerns, I can visit my henhouse as little as one time per 7-10 days to dump and refill water buckets and fill the food bucket every 3 weeks, if I am busy or out of town.

I took care of it immediately but having BlueKote on hand when one chick had a feather torn out that became a pecking target was an important item for me. Sprayed that on her an hour later after a trip to tractor supply and she never got pecked again.