What were your worst mistakes when you first started?

[9SpiceyChickens]

Before I got my current flock, we had 4 laying hens, one of them a splash Silkie. She somehow was able to roost pretty high.


My FIRST FIRST mistake was letting them roost (Out of the coop) at night. No way is that happening here!

 

[Cragg Klefor]

Thinking Chicken wire was for, well, securing and protecting chickens! Pine martin showed me. Hardware cloth all the way. Everywhere.

 

[RonP]

Had my first flock long before the internet existed, I was 12 in 1970.
Many mistakes from listening to the elder experts...
Worst was impossible manure management...
Unbearable odors made for a miserable situation.

Was told to expect nothing less having a contained flock.

My biggest regret is that they have passed and cannot see what I have created as a viable, productive solution to the miserable situation (deep litter composting).

 

[townchicks]

Oh, let me count the ways... first, got 2 pullets before I had a coop. they spent their first week in a dog crate in the garage at night, and a dog x-pen in the backyard during the day, while waiting for prefab coop to arrive. Well, prefab coop was sort of second mistake, really small but ok for 2 hens, but not walk-in, and short. Too much bending to clean for this old back. Attached run was too small, of course, so third mistake, spending too much time and energy making a PVC hoop tractor for variety for the girls, carting them back and forth to tractor and coop was not fun, cause they don't like to be caught. So more bending and crawling in the tractor to catch them.. Fourth, deciding to just attach tractor to prefab run, more bending and crawling. Finally, I just built a bigger walk in run, and then I built a still small, but bigger coop, on legs, so I don't have to bend. Still, I don't really regret the prefab, as that gave me the knowledge of what worked for me or not. If I had tried to build a coop from the start, I wouldn't have a clue where to start. Prefab will be a great quarantine and intro coop when I do add a few more hens, so it wasn't really a mistake.

 

[Compost King]

I thought of another first year mistake. I put down thick high mil plastic on the floor of the coop to keep the manure from ruining the floor, I also put in a hanging waterer that myself and the chickens constantly bumped into. Water would spill and soak up in the straw and manure. Talk about chemical warfare. Ammonia attack! I keep water outside of the coops now unless its a dirt floor coop.

 

[Compost King]

Buying chicks before you build a coop isn't a mistake for everyone. I sat around procrastinating on building a coop for months. Then TSC had chicks and I bought some. Before the sun went down I had a coop built that day. For some of us we need motivation to get a coop built or it doesn't get built. Now a brooder... you don't want to get home with chicks and have no brooder ready. I don't recommend anyone else do what I did unless you have that same personality type I have. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[feathermaid]

Two words- "Prefab Coop"
I'm fine with my coop- a Prefab with a hecka lot of improvements- added run, automattic door, added coop.

So...what do you mean by chicken math? Are you going by the info you get when looking at coop designs? Such as, "Suitable for 4-6 chickens" and so on? Or is there another relevant equation?

Don't believe any suggestions for "how many chickens fit" if it's printed on the side of a pre-fab coop boxed kit. Look only at the total square footage and divide by 10, minimum! My first prefab coop footprint was 35"x85" which came to 20 SF plus another 6 SF in the little house. So divide 26 by 10.... comes to less than 3 chickens (box said 9 chickens free ranged!) That is still not enough room! My 3 girls free ranged all day until I could build a bigger coop.

This is Chicken Math

They say chickens are the "Gateway Livestock"
Gotta be careful!!!

 

[staceyj]

I thought of another one, and this ones IMPORTANT!

“Free ranging fairy tales”

Free ranging is great- don’t get me wrong, i free range daily. BUT there are drawbacks that you have to work out ahead of time.

1. PREDATORS
And
2. Total destruction of your yard.

You need a LOT of space
or
a VERY well planned “restrict and rotate” system to avoid having your yard end up a moonscape by the end of year 1.

Those pictures you see on blogs and in magazines...
of beautiful chickens happily grazing in pastoral settings...
with the sun shimmering off their beautiful feathers....
amidst lovely gardens and lush lawns....


Oh honey,
That’s fake news!

 

[Shadrach]

Mistakes

Believing I could always heal the sick.
Believing I could keep them safe.
Using an incubator and broody coop.
Trying to integrate chicks instead of letting the mother do it.
Feeding layer pellets to a mixed sex and age flock.
Not understanding more about why they behave the way they do.
Not learning quickly enough that how you keep chickens influences their behavior.
Thinking that the advice given on forums was always from experience.
Using cheap plywood for coop builds rather than getting Marine ply.
Leaving food in a coop.
Not carrying my cutthroat razor when investigating a general alarm call.

Probably lots more and I’m still making mistakes.

 

[feathermaid]

I'm with @erlibrd about feeding too many treats! I thought I was doing a great thing by putting my compost bin in the chicken run (which actually can be a good thing if done properly), but I put "everything" in there! All our family dinner leftovers, veggie peelings, oatmeal, pb&j sandwiches, spaghettios, I mean you name it, it went in there... and they loved it. So a year or so later, I noticed one of my girls hadn't laid in a while, became very lethargic, then she died. I couldn't afford a necropsy so I tried performing one myself and found an inch thick layer of visceral fat covering her organs. That particular chicken always went for the carbs first, every time. Even though I didn't have medical confirmation, I'm pretty sure the fatty foods in the compost were to blame, and I think she ended up being the most obese, as the other always went for fruits and veggies first. So now the compost gets mostly yard debris and very little "scraps" and my girls are still just as happy.