Chickens, and things related

[Tororider]

Heres a couple more. You can see how I leave the tupperware during the day to give them a little shelter.

 

[bmac]

Tororider,

The girls look happy.

We are "chicken sitting" for one of my daughter's friends. She's doing the same 4-H project and they went out of town for a few days. She has full size birds (unlike the bantams that my daughter has) that are a day or 2 older than ours. Of course they are twice as big. 18 of these were squished into a tupperware storage bin similar to the one in your photo. I don't know if they have anything bigger at home or not, but I'm thinking not. Dad is putting the finishing touches on his 8'x8' coop so they should be moving outside soon. They seem to be real happy in our brooder.

I started on my outside coop / pen yesterday. Only got a few post holes dug last night. Finished the holes for the coop and the pen this AM and then had to wait for the delivery of the building materials - didn't arrive until 4:30.

So, this evening I started moving material from the drop-off site in my front yard around to the back. Digging the holes and handling the 80 lb bags of Quickrete is killing this old man, not to mention moving the pressure treated wood. After dinner, I cut the 4x4 posts that will serve as the foundation down to size and cut the 2x6 rim joists to length. Tomorrow AM, I'll move my generator, air compressor and miter saw out to the build site and begin construction in earnest.

I feel like I've hijacked this thread enough so I'll probably start a new one with photos of the coop construction.

 

[Soundguy]

Give it some time. You don't always have losses.. but you can. In a situation where you are only growing a few of them.. you can pay more attention. when you have 100 chickens... and some are coming up.. you learn to only count on a percentage of them..

soundguy

I've heard that before. When I got the information about the 4-H chicken project that my daughter wanted to do (the thing that started all of this) the deal was that each kid selected 2 breeds and they received 10 chicks of each breed for a grand total of 20 birds. Well, I'm thinking well lose 25% - 30% early and end up with 13 to 15 of which some will surely die of something. We are now at the 3 week mark and not one stinkin' chick has died. We must be natural chicken folks because it sure isn't due to our wealth of knowledge.

I've been checking into eggs and incubators. The cheap incubators require a lot of work in turning, temp and humidity control. The easy ones are expensive. I may just order 15 poults and see what happens. Can't do that until the coop and pen are built and the chicks are outside. Then, we can get turkey chicks.

The chicks are growing like crazy. Getting real feathers, their feet are feathering up (these are the showy silkie and cochin bantams) and the boys are starting to get some comb development. Quite interesting.

I don't know of anyone who might be interested in wild turkeys to split an order with. Someone mentioned listing the on Craigs List. I bet if I included the word "Free" I'd have a waiting list.

 

[Tororider]

Bmac,
Don't feel like you need to start another thread, unless you want to. Its chicken related so I am good with it. If you start another thread let me know so I can subscribe to that one. Sounds like fun.

 

[tony123]

Toro, I forget? weren't you trying to stay on the "down low" with your neighbors? I think with that big ol' chicken condo in the front yard, your jig is up! Looks good.

We're heading out of town this weekend. My sister in law will be house and chicken sitting. But when we get back, my top priority will be chicken housing. I'm looking forward to it, and am glad to be a few steps behind you and bmac.

I had my girls out in the farm area yesterday. They really enjoyed running around in the garden. I think they are still naive to the fact that my veggies are delecacies. It was great fun to watch them run around out there. They aren't quite as easy to catch anymore though.

 

[Tororider]

Yeah, that whole keeping it on the DL may not be working out so well. My intent was to have trees/fence in before putting the run back there and that clearly isn't happening. Hopefully they are all cool with it, I am allowed to have them, just can't let them be a "nuisance". We will see.

Took the kids out to the farm the other day when it was so nice up here and met some friends with kids the same age. Can't beat country living. The pic is of our friend and his oldest, my wife and our two(the one sitting by the balls, and the one in the tigers hat). They were pushing the all terrain trikes back up the hill so they could ride them back down. Lots of fun.

 

[tony123]

The kids are precious! Those offroad trikes are exactly what we were looking for when we bought the big wheels. I knew they must make something like that....too late now.

I don't see how a handful of chickens could be a nuisance? I think you'll be fine.

 

[Tororider]

We got the trikes at Harbor Freight. Got one last fall, and the wife smartly suggested we get another if we are going to have friends over a lot. I can already see how if we didn't have the two that day would have been more about whose turn it was to ride. They had a lot of fun riding down the "hill". Then they mostly worked together to push them back up the hill. My son did most of the pushing as he wanted to show everyone how strong he is.

 

[dooleysm]

I wish I had something faster than dialup so I could post pictures of my coop going up. My wife, dad, and grandpa worked on it for me last Saturday. I am just getting to the point where I can get around without crutches, so I've had to recruit some help. Thankfully the chickens aren't growing nearly as fast as the ducks did. The chickens are about 2 and a half weeks old now and in the half feather/half fuzz stage. They've got a ways until they're ready to be outside, which is good, because I've got some more work to do. We've got the frame of the coop up and are waiting for the metal siding to be delivered next week. I'm going to build an attached run of maybe 6x16, but I need to move some dirt to level things out first.

Speaking of the ducks, we let them out all day Saturday and they really enjoyed it. We did the same on Sunday, but time got away from me and my wife had to leave for a meeting at 6. She didn't get the ducks rounded up, and I couldn't, so they had to spend the night outside. That didn't turn out so well for 3 of them. When I got home from work on Monday there were only 2 ducks left, and they were smart enough to hang right by the pond. They don't venture very far from the pond now. Hopefully they've learned their lesson.

 

[Tororider]

Bummer about the ducks. I would think that if you got more ducks now, they would learn for the remaining "smart" ducks. It would be interesting to see if they "pass on the knowledge". Sorry about your loss, but glad to hear you are starting to get around better.