Chickens, and things related

[Tororider]

Here are a couple pictures of my new grow out pen. The 6 week olds are enjoying being outside during the day. Now I have to take some pictures of the new brooder I made to keep in the garage where I will keep the 3 week olds.

Here is a pic of the finished product.

Here you can see the door on the end of the pen.

Here is how I I created a top for the pen. It just slides over the top and is quickly removable.

Its nothing special really, used 2x4's that we had from ripping down walls in the barn. But it will get the job done.

 

[Tororider]

And heres the new brooder/grow out pen.

By the size of them you can tell they were getting a bit big for their tupperware brooder.

 

[Tororider]

Well another bummer. The last two nights something got in and ate all the chickens out at my brother in laws. I am going to get over there this week and bury some more fence before taking more chickens over there. We are also going to reset an exterior fence to make it double fenced. I will also re check everything and re evaluate to see if more needs to be done. Bummer eh?

 

[tony123]

dang Toro! Sorry to hear it. Does your brother live on premises? I've been keeping mine close around the house, hoping that it makes it a little more daring for a predator to come around.

Turning out that most days we're getting 6 eggs from our six chickens. It's been said before, but they add up quick. We won't be able to keep up with six a day! But that's the fun part, giving them to friends and neighbors.

 

[Tororider]

Yeah, they live on premises but there is a bit of woods between the coop and run and their house. I am going to try and get over there this week and bury the skirt around the run, we just had some rocks and stuff on it. Bummer, but I am at least glad that the ones I hatched, so at least I have that going for me.

 

[dooleysm]

I'm taking some extra produce to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. I'm thinking about bringing along a couple dozen of my little pullet eggs, just to see if there's any interest in fresh eggs. Hopefully I can find a potential customer or two for my eggs, once the girls start laying full sized eggs. I found a green one yesterday that was noticably bigger than the little tiny ones I've been getting. Still smaller than what you get in the store though. I got a similar sized brown one the day before, so we're on the way.

I'm thinking I'll try to sell 6 for a dollar, and put 2 each of the white, brown, and green eggs in each batch.

 

[Tororider]

Good luck, I would think you would find customers. Do you have roosters? You could sell hatching eggs too. Just a thought. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[dooleysm]

I'm down to 1 rooster. The hen that I posted about earlier in this huge thread, the one that was being singled out and picked on by the roosters, is doing much better now. She comes out and hangs out with the other chickens. For some reason the situation fixed itself when I butchered my way down to 1 rooster (and 13 hens, though I didn't butcher any of them).

My trip to the Kentucky state fair was a big disappointment last week. Turns out that the poultry was only there during the first week of the fair and I was there during the second week. Pigs and sheep had taken their place.

 

[Tororider]

You could still try for hatching eggs, just sell them cheaper than normal until you find out what kind of fertility you are getting, say $6 a dozen. Sorry to hear about the fair. You probably would have just brought a disease home, just trying to make you feel better.

 

[dooleysm]

My chickens are all crossbred and no telling what sort of crossbred chickens they will produce. I don't know if there is a market for eggs from that type of crossbreeding or not? This seems like a bad time to be hatching chicks though with winter coming sooner rather than later.

Speaking of winter, I've been hatching a plan to get electricity out to the coop to plug in a heated waterer for the winter. My cousin claims that his water rarely froze up last year, and when it did it was just a light freeze producing a ring of ice that he could remove. He is prone to exageration though, so I'm not sure I believe him. I can't imagine 14 chickens will produce enough heat to keep water from freezing. I know the water in my dog kennels will freeze solid in the span of 24 hours in the coldest part of winter.

Anyway, here's what I'm thinking. My coop is outside the barn, maybe 15 feet away. I was thinking of putting an outdoor outlet on the barn, right across from the coop. Then I was thinking I could put an outdoor outlet on the coop, connected to a regular outlet inside the coop. Then I could make an extension cord with male connectors on both ends and plug it in to run power from the barn to the coop in the cold parts of winter. Then I could run a heated waterer and/or a heat light.

Thoughts?