Chickens, and things related

dooleysm · Dec 21, 2008

My cousin had 3 hens he was going to give me to butcher because he thought they done laying. He put a light in his coop on my suggestion, and sure enough, they started laying again after a couple weeks. My mother in law lost out, because those hens were going to be her Christmas gift. She is always talking about how they used to butcher 'heavy hens' and she loved the taste of them for soup.

My cousin also had a nice Barred Rock rooster he wanted to get rid of. He's got a bigger red rooster that bullies the barred rock around and he just spent all his time in the corner of the coop. I brought it home and put it in our coop last night. It was complete pandamonium for at least a half hour. EVERYONE was fighting as they settled on a new pecking order. Roosters were fighting, hens were fighting, young roosters that I'd never heard crow before started crowing. Feathers were really flying. I haven't been out yet this morning to let them out. It'll be interesting to see how they worked things out.

Tororider · Jan 7, 2009

Well the light has worked for me too. After months without eggs, a couple weeks after adding the light I am getting regular eggs. Woohoo

Tororider · Jan 13, 2009

I am loving the light. I think I am getting more eggs now than I do in the middle of the summer. I may think about keeping the light in there in the summer. I think my problem is the only window I have in there is under an overhang and on the north side, so it really doesn't add a ton of light. I wish I would have added this sooner.

dooleysm · Jan 14, 2009

Yeah, it's definitely a good thing. Especially the CFL that I am using that costs next to nothing. It's a no brainer.

tony123 · Jan 16, 2009

We got down to 14 last night, which is very unusual for South Carolina. I put a light out for the girls for the first time last night. I had fingers crossed that it would be enough to keep them warm. They popped out this morning like any other, so apparently god knew what he was doing with all those feathers. Or it was my light bulb.

Tororider · Jan 16, 2009

It was down to about -10 here last night. I haven't been out to check on the girls, but they were fine the night before when it was a couple degrees in the negative so I am guessing they are fine. It is too cold for me, my goodness.

dooleysm · Jan 16, 2009

Mine have a light, but it's a CFL so no heat. They are in an uninsulated, but fairly wind tight coop. They were fine yesterday when I checked on them. I did have 2 frozen eggs though, so they got to eat them. They were out and about yesterday when I got home, so the cold isn't affecting them nearly as much as me. 14 was our high yesterday. It was 5 when I left for work yesterday morning, 1 this morning.

4720 OWNER · Jan 19, 2009

Stop it you guys. Just got done with a cold snap and it went to -35F. Chickens did just fine with a cfl and a small heating pad under the waterer. No uncracked eggs (no 'setters') but then the dog coat looks real good. Have heard that if feed eggs back to chickens they will learn to eat the good ones as well. They do get the shells back, but ground up so like the calcium feed.

Glad every one is doing well. Good luck is part of good preparation.

dooleysm · Jan 26, 2009

I've been feeding the shells back to my chickens since day one and haven't had any problem with them eating the freshly laid eggs. They do enjoy eating the shells, which I've watched them do on many occassions.

But in other news, my little bantam hen has gone broody again, so I think I'm gonna give her another batch of 4 or 5 big eggs to set on. They should hatch out about the time the feed stores are getting their day old chicks and be ready to lay sometime this summer. The previous 4 she raised are still doing well and growing nicely. I like the idea of a self sustaining flock.

bmac · Apr 25, 2009

Man, it's been a loooong time since I've been around here. I hate to bring back such an old thread, but I've got a little update.

Once we got the birds in the coop, I pretty much was burned out on that project. I never really finished the coop as I planned and never built a pen. A couple of weeks ago, I had some vacation time, so I got back to work on the pen. Ended up being more time consuming than I thought. I waited until today to take photos (believe it or not, I still have a few items on my list to complete).

So, heres a picture of the pen.