Fatjay picks up chicks!

[fatjay]

She's doing much better today. Completely fine other than being flightless. I'm concerned about the exposed bone. Will it be fine? Or will i need to cull her.

 

[fatjay]

Fun with chickens continues...

I hung extra linoleum on the wall so their projectile turds would be easier to clean rather than scraping the wall. But as it turns out, they just sat on the linoleum and crapped down behind it. So I cut slots on the studs and stapled the thing to the wall at an angle, so if they tried to get up there they'll slide down. They're still getting up to the rafters.

Went to tractor supply today to return some posts that I didn't need, wife ended up with 14 new chicks. 4 olive eggers and 10 prairie bluebell eggers. She asked for 8 bluebell's, but there were only 10 and the guy threw the extra 2 in at no charge. Whoops.

Our Prairie Bluebell Egger™ lays a novel blue egg but produces higher quality eggs than a pure Araucana. This breed was created by crossing Araucanas and White Leghorns, this creates a chicken that lays a large quantity of eggs that have blue shells. The Prairie Bluebell Egger™ is an active bird that is very good at foraging. They are lightweight and do not eat as much as larger breeds.

Olive Egger chickens are not a breed, per se, but a cross of two breeds — usually a blue egg layer and a dark brown egg layer. For example, when an Ameraucana hen’s egg is fertilized by a Marans rooster, the resulting chick will be an Olive Egger who will lay olive green eggs. The chick will hatch out of a blue egg, but it will inherit the traits of both parents.

 

[EddieWalker]

Your wife sounds like my wife. Somehow we went from a dozen chickens in one coop to a hundred in 3 coops.

Be sure to have a plan if some of those chicks turn out to be roosters. Nothing is more evil then a rooster. He will be fine until the day he turns into the devil, then you have to kill him or get rid of him. He will only get worse every day that he exists.

 

[fatjay]

Your wife sounds like my wife. Somehow we went from a dozen chickens in one coop to a hundred in 3 coops.

Be sure to have a plan if some of those chicks turn out to be roosters. Nothing is more evil then a rooster. He will be fine until the day he turns into the devil, then you have to kill him or get rid of him. He will only get worse every day that he exists.

I have no problem culling a rooster. Part of the reason she wanted more was we suspect we have 2 roosters.

What do you do with all the eggs?

 

[EddieWalker]

We sell some, we eat some, and our 6 dogs eat a dozen every day. One with breakfast, one with dinner.

Not all of our hens lay regularly. After they turn 2 years old, they slow down. The older they get, the fewer eggs you get.

We free range, so some of the hens lay their eggs in odd places. It's always a surprise when you find several dozen eggs in a bucket or the cement mixer or a tunnel under the hay bale. Some also seem to drop an egg while wondering around. Totally random where we might find an egg. On a food day, we might get 4 dozen eggs. 3 dozen is pretty common. In winter, we will drop below 2 dozen.

 

[fatjay]

Chickens are getting along well, but they eat a lot. My 5lb feeder needs refilled every other day, as well as the 1 gallon waterer. So while picking up feed today, I picked up some sawhorse brackets and a 30lb feeder, and cleaned up my 2 gallon feeder.

Put together the saw horse so it'll hold 3-4 feeders with an 8' 2x8". Strung up some paracord and hung the feeders. Chickens took to them right away. I'm going away for 2 weeks in october, my parents will be checking in on the chickens and collecting eggs. I don't want them to have to be adding food and water every day, maybe once or twice a week. And there won't be 12 chickens in the run then, there will be 26, so I imagine food and water consumption will go up considerably.

I'm going to add a piece of plywood or something over the new hanger to provide cover. It's supposed to rain tomorrow night, so I'll probably need that sooner rather than later.

 

[BoylermanCT]

How is your wingless chicken doing? Did she recover fully?

We added 13 chicks this Spring, and they just started laying a week or two ago. We are getting 6 half size eggs a day from them. That brings us to 25 chickens, 1 rooster, 8 mallards and 4 pekins. We sell 1-2 dozen a day at our road side egg stand.

 

[fatjay]

One winged chicken is basically completely recovered. Aside from a protruding bone. The wounds seem to have healed around it, fully feathered, no signs of infection. I'm honestly shocked.

Do you free range or have a run? The wife wanted ducks but I said no because of the no water thing. She sugested a kiddy pool but I reminded her it snows and freezes here, it would be an ice rink. And 11x28 is a bit cramped if we get any more chickens.

 

[BoylermanCT]

I do both free range and have them in a run. They have a 15x15 run completely fenced in with a roof over it attached to the 12x16 coop, and I let them out each day for 3-4 hours into a 1/4 acre open air run with 4' high electric net fencing. My ducks are content with two 2 gallon bowls of water to swim in. They have access to a 2 acre pond 20' on the other side of the electric fence, and my mallards can fly, but they aren't interested in the pond! Ducks definitely make a mess but I enjoy having them around.

 

[fatjay]

26 chickens go through a good amount of feed and water, my 3gal waterer and 30lb feeder are empty in 2-3 days. Which I'm fine with filling, but I'm going on vacation and will have my elderly mother coming over a few times a day to check on them and feed the cats. I don't want her to have to deal with feeding and watering, especially those 50lb feed bags, it's to much for her.

So I picked up a 16 gallon heated water tank and a 27 gallon tub for feed. Picked up some feeders and waterers off amazon.

Started off with the feeder. Ordered 8 feeders, drilled 8 holes, received 6 feeders, turns out i picked hte wrong one. So I covered the holes on the inside with plexiglass and taped the outside so I could see how much feed was in there. Made a triangle out of cardboard to prevent feed from piling up in the middle that wouldn't be able to be reached by the chickens. And made a roof thing so the chickens can't stand and crap all over the top.

 

[fatjay]

First day of laying, got 3 eggs! Chickens born on May 27, it's Oct 11, so 4 months and 14 days. No idea who layed them. 2 in the morning, 1 in the evening. Hopefully moving forward egg production will pick up, no more buying eggs!

And of course, we have one bad egg.

 

[Yander]

That is a great looking looking coup. That's almost exactly the amount of time it took for our chickens to start laying.

We just started getting eggs from our chickens couple weeks ago. I let them out about 1 in the afternoon to free range and then put them in about 6:30. We also have a lot of coyote around us and I don't want to have to watch them all day.

I have 18 total 15 of them are laying hens. Only getting six to eight eggs a day so far some of the breeds don't start laying until later. I hear you on not wanting to sell eggs we also need a lot of eggs as to our kids and my dad.

@EddieWalker @scaredychicken I had no idea that you guys had so many chickens. I'm new to chickens it's a little bit of a love-hate relationship lol.

Some of my larger Columbian wyandottes are causing me grief. They are big birds also a meat bird. I think they may end up in the freezer. They take off and when I try to get them back in it is a real pain. The rest of the birds seem to go right in.

My golden comments are hard to keep in but they are already laying and they are supposed to produce 300 plus eggs a year.

And I have six silver laced wyandottes. They seem pretty well behaved and just follow what the roosters do.

 

[Yander]

They love my compost pile. Stay in a 40 by 40 fenced area until I let them out in the afternoon.

 

[Jstpssng]

Deleted. (Sorry, no delete button.)

 

[lman]

First day of laying, got 3 eggs! Chickens born on May 27, it's Oct 11, so 4 months and 14 days. No idea who layed them. 2 in the morning, 1 in the evening. Hopefully moving forward egg production will pick up, no more buying eggs!

And of course, we have one bad egg.

It looks like you forgot to teach one chicken how to read.

 

[EddieWalker]

I believe meat birds need to be harvested at 10 weeks. My wife wants to start getting Cornish broilers, so we've talked about it, but haven't committed to it yet. For me, it sounds like a very busy day butchering and cleaning chickens that I would rather spend doing something else. I'm also not seeing the cost savings compared to buying them at the store compared to buying the chicks, then the cost of feed for 10 weeks, and a full day of labor cleaning them.

In my experience, the first eggs tend to have super soft shells. After a week, the shell gets harder and they don't break as easily on you. I've had them crush just by picking them up. They will lay pretty good as long through Fall, then slow down in Winter, then pick back up again in the Spring. Average is every 30 hours they lay an egg. So you might not get as many one day, then extra another day. It's never going to be the same every day. After 2 years, they slow down. By the time they are 5, you are pretty much done getting eggs.

A chicken that lays eggs is almost worthless to eat. They just don't have very much meat on them, and the older they get, the tougher the meat becomes. Butchering roosters is also pretty much worthless if you wait past 10 weeks. It takes about 4 months for them to turn into the devil. We always wait for that to happen because we're always hoping for one that isn't pure evil. It happens, and we have a few that are really nice. But I've killed hundreds that where horrible. We've tried pulling the breasts for dog food, but it's not really worth the effort. Better to just shoot them with the 22 and dump them in the burn pile.

 

[Yander]

I'm also not seeing the cost savings compared to buying them at the store compared to buying the chicks, then the cost of feed for 10 weeks, and a full day of labor cleaning them.

Especially when you can go to Costco and buy large rotiseree chickens for $5 and they are good. We pick up two every time we go and my wife pulls the meat off and puts it in mason jars and freezes it for cooking with. Talk about cheap meat. My son and DIL work there and they use those chickens as "Loss leaders" to get people in the door. Though that could change in an instant.

 

[fatjay]

As the price of everything creeps up, i dont' want to rely on costco's $5 chicken. There were times where costco wasn't carrying them in the past 2 years. Shows how unreliable our system can be. This is why I'm doing chickens. I dont' want to rely on a system that is not reliable. I'm planning to do meat birds as well next year, just want to get everything set up and producing eggs for now.

 

[EddieWalker]

That's my wife's argument too. Price of chicken breasts used to be $1.99 a pound. In the last year and a half, it's been going up almost every month. I buy 6 to 10 packages at a time that weigh around 7 to 8 pounds at Walmart about once a week. I need to buy more. I think it's up to $2.89 a pound now. Still not worth raising birds in my opinion, but if Walmart runs out, we're in trouble. We use chicken in our home made dog food.

 

[Yander]

As the price of everything creeps up, i dont' want to rely on costco's $5 chicken. There were times where costco wasn't carrying them in the past 2 years. Shows how unreliable our system can be. This is why I'm doing chickens. I dont' want to rely on a system that is not reliable. I'm planning to do meat birds as well next year, just want to get everything set up and producing eggs for now.

Completely understand that, that's why I have chickens for eggs but I haven't ruled out meat chickens yet