Our New Chickens

[rpcrowe]

Well chickens are almost pets to us which is why I posted in this section They wait by the gate of our chicken area when they see us walking across the yard.

Since the recent major increases in food prices, especially eggs, we have decided to grow more of our own produce and to increase the number of hens we have.

Last year, we had great success with raised container planting. This method saves water, cuts down on weeding and allows us to more easily to protect our produce from varmints like rabbits. This year we purchased two additional metal raised beds. I did the math and it was more economical to purchase these metal beds rather than buying wood and constructing the beds. The local price of wood for construction purposes has gone up astronomically in our area.

Judy also purchased eight new hens and she asked me to build a pen to house the chicks. After I assembled one raised container, I realized that it was the perfect size to house our new chicks and to keep them safe. This bed is approximately six feet long and two feet wide.



The new chicks are doing quite well in their new area. We have it situated in our hobby room at the present time and will transition it to our covered patio when the weather gets a bit warmer and the chicks grow bigger and sturdier. Eventually, we will move it down to our fenced in chicken area. Then finally when they are full size, we will integrate the new batch of hens into our present flock. Then we will turn the planter back to its original purpose,



The food and water should be self explanatory but, the square black device is a heating element which takes the place of the dangerous heat lamp. When the chicks scurry beneath it, it substitutes for the warmth a hen provides her babies. We can adjust its height as the chicks increase in size.

I'm building a metal mesh cover to keep the chicks from flying out and to later protect them from varmints. I'm also fabricating a chicken gym which will be used a perch in later life. We we move the pen outdoors, I plan to make a cover for one end,

We presently have six hens, of which three are past laying stage. We don't kill them, we just allow them to live out their lives happily. Judy just bought eight additional chicks. With eleven laying hens, we will have enough eggs for ourselves, our daughter and another family or two. Our fenced in chicken area is quite large (we have two chicken houses located there) and gives them much of the freedom of free range chickens but keeps them safe. We also dispose of some of our left over food by feeding it to the chickens. We have a list of foods that are good or those which should not be fed to chickens. We grind up the egg shells and recycle them in the chicken food. That helps the shells of the eggs that they are laying.

The chicks are cross bred and are Wellbars and Cream Legbars. They are sex determinate and you can tell the difference between hens and roosters from birth. The different sexes are different colors. No mistaking roosters with hens. It is expected that each new hen will produce approximately 200 eggs per year. The eggs from the Legbars are light blue in color. That's neat! We could even sell a few dozen at a time - home grown eggs are going for over six dollars per dozen in our area.

No, we don't plan on getting pigs or goats or other animals we'd have to slaughter for food

[Chataignier]

Excellent ! We keep a few chickens as well and average almost 5 eggs per week per bird. They are fed kitchen scraps and bought in granular feed. Plus we have a neighbour who consistently buys far more bread than he eats and passes us three of four loaves of stale bread per week. I suggested that he buy less, but happily the supply continues.

We recently did a calculation of feed costs and egg production and found we were not doing very well. Closer examination revealed that our birds were eating around 3x what you would expect. So where was it going ? Rats perhaps ? No signs of them... Other birds perhaps ? I did a trial putting their feed inside the "closed" part of their area where we lock them up for the night against foxes. This has just a small door, the right size for a chicken. Instant change, food consumption down by half and no change in egg production. I conclude that we have been feeding a flock of pigeons or similar that lack the confidence to go into a closed house. We also wondered about rodents, a possible cause of waste despite our cats being regular visitors in the chicken run, so we did another trial taking any left over food away at night. Another significant reduction in feed consumption.

As for goats and pigs - been there, done that ! At my former home where we had almost 30 acres, we kept dairy goats for a few years and one or two pigs per year. However, the idea of taking a frightened animal away in a truck to a slaughter house where it will hear the screams while waiting it's turn is abhorrent to me. Our system was simple and effective : a bucket of favourite food, rifle in the ear and bang. No stress. I had to learn butchery though, but that's another story.

[rpcrowe]

I also had problems with varmints (rats?, squirrels?) eating the chicken food, But these feeders seem to have solved the problem.

https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Poult...NsaWNrPXRydWU=

I inserted these ports into a plastic bucket and suspended the bucket by a chain from the roof of my chicken coop. The ports are at a height convenient to the chickens. It seems that these ports have solved our rodent problem. It did not take the chickens long to learn to eat from the suspended bucket. Now that we have increased the size of our flock, I will need to hang an additional feeder.

Our chickens have free run of our fenced chicken area during the day and spend their nights in their chicken coop with a locked door. This keeps them safe.

My chicken area is fenced against coyotes. Actually it is double fenced because it is within my fenced property and has its own fence. I have incorporated coyote rollers on our perimeter fence. These would make it hard for any coyote to climb into my property.

I also have a great Pyrenees dog who actively patrols my property to keep the coyotes out. I don't have large packs of coyotes in my area but, do often see a single animal cruising the area. I have no worries about a pack of coyotes overwhelming my great Pyrenees. If a coyote is stupid and agile enough to climb the perimeter fence - the dog would finish it before another could climb the fence. She is an indoor/outdoor dog and the first thing that she does when I let her out (day of night) is to patrol the perimeter of the property.



I like this breed of dog because, although they are ferocious against coyotes, she just loves kids and my small dogs.



My new next door neighbor plans to make a chicken area which will butt up against the fence of my chicken run. That will be additional safety - especially since he has three large dogs.

My chicken area has an enormous oak tree in the middle. Its branches help protect the chickens from hawks. I also have several structures that I built from PVC pipe with metal mesh on top. These also afford some additional protection. In over six years, I have lost only one chicken and that was before I fabricated the mesh protectors.

Our new Legbar breed of chickens are said to be quite adept at escaping hawks if there are some protected areas nearby which they will have in the chicken area. Both the Wellbar and Legbar breeds appear to have been created in Great Britain.

[Chataignier]

Those feeders look brilliant, I will give them a try. Thanks for the tip.

Love the dog too.

[rpcrowe]

Here is the mesh cover that I fabricated for the chicken pen. I made it in a rectangular shape because: 1. it was easier and 2. I plan to use this for other purposes...


Since the wire mesh was resting directly on the electric wire for the warming element. I cut a few squares out of the mesh so that the mesh didn't damage the wire and electrocute anyone.

[rpcrowe]

In a couple of weeks, my wife will begin training the chickens to come to her. This very important for getting the hens back into their coop in the evening.

She hand feeds them scrambled eggs - which they love. The eggs are also nourishing for the chicks but, raw eggs should never be fed to them because we do not want the hens to eat the eggs that they lay.

[pschlute]

As a kid we had aviary birds and chickens. No eggs taste as good as fresh laid ones.

[rpcrowe]

I plan to use the mesh frame which now covers the chick pen for growing greens for my adult chickens after the chicks are mature enough not to need the pen. We have a grass seed combination that is specialized for chickens. However the adult chickens will decimate any growing grass by scratching down to its roots. Covering the seeded area with the mesh screen will allow the chickens to eat the grass but not to eat it down so far as to kill it.

The chicks are growing - it's time to snap a few more pictures. In a month or so, they will be mature enough to be outside. The weather here in Southern California is quite moderate. We have two chicken coops in our chicken area and we transition the chicks outside with a wire fence around the second pen. That way the larger chickens don't harass the smaller chickens but, the new and older chickens can get used to each other by interacting through the fence. Chickens can be nasty creatures if left to their own devices.