How long does it take for a chick to mature and start laying?
My kids have chicken fever. :-[
I've been promising them chickens for awhile and may not be able to back out this time. My wife pointed out that they are making straight A's, have been doing their chores un-prompted, and are taking full care of our other pets. Why do they have to be so good?
Anyway, a local feed company is giving away chicks. My daughter has done the math and found out that feed is $0.60 a pound, a heat lamp is $6, the feeder is $2, and she is clearing a place in the garage. My other daughter is laying out a coop in the back yard. I think I am doomed. d*
So.. do they lay the first year, or are these just pets and fryers till 2009?
-f-
Fryers, Yum. :) :)
I think they start paying their keep by six months. ???
Where is this place?
Probably about 4 to 6 months.
I have found that a compact florescent lowered to where the chicks can contact it almost works pretty good if only a few chicks -- not nearly as hot hence the lower setting and no fire danger.
Quote from: MountainDon on April 05, 2008, 11:18:59 PM
Fryers, Yum. :) :)
I think they start paying their keep by six months. ???
Where is this place?
Village Mercantile in Corrales... they sell them in the spring, and for Easter. I think they want them gone and also do this to promote feed sale. My kids said that there were about 30 chicks still available. Variety of varieties.
We went through a long talk about how they would not be pets, and that non-productive hens / any roosters would become dinner. They are practical kids and were okay with that, but asked if they could pick one chicken each that would be spared from the axe. Some of our neighbors keep chickens, and we really like fresh eggs over store bought when possible. My youngest kid is 11 and is already a really good cook, with breakfasts and desserts being her specialty. She favors fresh eggs for her cooking; I think it is because of the brighter yellow yolk ;D
-f-
Let us know how it turns out. I might want to get some chickens next spring.
How about the Corrales neighborhood Coyotes?
When production starts they can overwhemlm you with eggs -- probably stop around 4 months per year due to molt-- need Layena or similar laying mash -- we like pellets as they don't waste as much.
7 laying hens can give you around 49 eggs per week -- they don't take the sabbath off. ::)
We have tons of coyotes here. Constantly running up and down the road in front of our house. They seem to ignore rabbits and focus on the other white meat....cats. They will be a problem, but I do have a 5' high no-climb horse fence around the property and will pen in the chickens at night. I am not adverse to setting traps for the coyotes either.
Thought so. We're all built up around here now, but the first 5 years we were right at the end of the developed area. Coyotes, road-runners, rabbits all over the place. Now only a couple rabbits who live in the prickly pear patch.
Back we had ducks for a couple years.
We went for a walk in the Corrales bosque today. Saw turkeys. Domestic? Wild? I know there's both.
NM_Shooter, it depends on the breed, but in our experience, pastured (free-range) chickens will lay several weeks earlier than those kept confined... I've had them start laying as early as 14-16 weeks when allowed to roam and forage, possibly even earlier (though I'm not sure because I've not been the best at keeping records and am just guesstimating.) If they go into a molt, give them some dry cat food along with their chicken scratch because it will help them feather back out faster because of the high protein in the cat food. You can't beat brown leghorns for production and dependability, but buff orpingtons are better mothers. Aracaunas eat like horses and aren't the best at foraging. They all taste good, and so if you are overrun with eggs, you could always cook a few. Like I said, I'm no expert, but that's our experience with them... they're a lot of fun, too.
Don when I first moved to our present location I never saw a rabbit. The foxes were lousy. To the point that I would have 3-4 at once in the evening at dusk. Had a friend that trapped a few and then the Coyotes started moving into the area. Don't know why but the fox population went down hill. Believe it or not the rabbit population did go up. Doesn't make a lot of sense but this past year I have seen more rabbits than I have the last 10-12 years.
Years ago the farmers raised sheep. The farms were kept cleaned on the higher slopes. With the coyotes beginning to populate the area most farmers have gotten rid of the sheep as many of them were loosing 1 a night. The adjoining county in Va paid a bounty on them which has helped some. But the farm land once grazed by sheep is growing up and resorting into unuseable property.
Quote from: NM_Shooter on April 06, 2008, 05:42:55 PM
We have tons of coyotes here. Constantly running up and down the road in front of our house. They seem to ignore rabbits and focus on the other white meat....cats. They will be a problem, but I do have a 5' high no-climb horse fence around the property and will pen in the chickens at night. I am not adverse to setting traps for the coyotes either.
I recommend a good, shaggy, bearded collie for the protection of your chickens. ;D When a stray dog or coyote threatened ours, they would all run into the dog house, the dog would flop down in front of the door of the dog house with the cat sitting on his shoulders and the rooster would take his post on top of the dog's house crowing like mad. Grover would growl and show his teeth and generally speaking, that's all it took to keep strays and coyotes at bay. The only time it didn't work was when someone's blue tick hounds came into the yard one day when the chickens were out. I'd brought Grover inside to give him some scraps. All the sudden he started barking like he was in a total panic, and I looked out the window to see one of those hounds with one of our chickens in his mouth, just shaking her to pieces. I let Grover out, and DH ran outside and grabbed a big stick that'd fallen out of the pecan trees and took off chasing the dogs. The hound dropped the hen as soon as Grover cleared the back door, but it was too late to save her. That's the only time we ever lost a chicken to another animal, even though there were too many strays and coyotes to keep track of around there.
I highly suggest getting Sex Links for your chicks. I am partial to this breed :)
We started out with 3 over a year ago. One was murdered about 5 months ago. They are excellent egg producer, gentle with my kids and ding wonders for my garden. NetHog built me a lovely coup. I let them loose to roam the back yard everyday. They are wonderful for spider and bug patrol and weeding. I can also keep them in the coup for a long weekend if we need to go away. No problem. I have even taken my "girls" camping with us on our property. They are funny to watch when they chase bugs. Oh yes...they love the taste of ticks.
Fresh Eggs are very nice too!
QuoteI highly suggest getting Sex Links for your chicks.
OK Stink. I searched Froogle for a pair of these and came up empty, so I took my rooster a little pair of chicken handcuffs and a piece of rope. [crz]
Maybe Sussex?
-f-
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Sex-links/BRKSexLink.html
I bet in your search you said sex link chick.....On the WWW that could be scary!
So above I give you a link.....:P
Oh yes I forgot the the "-".....
We've also had red sex links, and they are good layers and have a pretty calm disposition. That was what the chicken killed by the hounds was... and she was pretty, too.
Hmmm...I'm only finding Rhode Island Reds and Bard Rocks here. I can get pullets for $2.35 each, which seems to me to be a good deal. My epicurean 11 yr. old like brown eggs over white for some unknown reason. Maybe they hide dirt better? :)
-f-
I did a search for you Glenn. I found this one:
ht tp://www.hoes.com/black.html
:-[
[shocked][scared] Too scary, Peter.
A great site to find out about Chickens and there ways is http://www.omlet.co.uk/breeds/breeds.php
The Naked Neck is purdy. :-*
Dunno if the Naked Neck is pretty. It kinda reminded me of a Disney Villain like Cruela De Vil.....
Thumbs up on the website!
Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, MO has a great website, too. If you go into the pictures of the different breeds, they'll tell you a little more about each breed and what is so special about it. If you want the dark brown eggs, get Cuckoo Marans or Dominiques... they both lay dark brown eggs. If you want blue or green, get Aracaunas or Americaunas. Rhode Island Reds are good birds too... I like Cackle Hatchery's "hungry man special" under the bargain deals...
We started with 5 different types for a total of 25. The girls took 6 months plus before they started laying. Their cross-breed offspring started laying much sooner.
We raise bantams, mostly for bug control, with the eggs just being a year-round bonus!
This is my oldest rooster, he will be 5 this summer.
(https://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd127/MaineRhino/Otisfield%20Misc/100_2087.jpg)
Handsome dude! :)
My kids started cutting brush for a run today. I have to admit that they are working hard at this. Now to find a way to exclude coyotes, hawks, owls, cats, etc.
-f-
I really think your kids will enjoy these pets. Mine did!
ditto on what Stink said... ever since we moved back, my kids won't stop bugging me about when we're going to get chickens. They've been so anxious to get back in their 'chicken business', and the older one even has a "business plan" about how she's going to sell eggs and chicks and full grown birds.
A brochure I got from fish and game said to put your chicken wire in a trench about a foot or so underground to keep the coyotes from digging under -- sounds like a good idea to me.
We did that... probably not quite that deep though because the water table was so high you'd hit water at our old place if you dug a whole foot down. :) We only buried it about 7-8", but it seemed enough to discourage the varmits from trying. Something did dig down several inches one time but eventually gave up. We only put the birds in at night and they were pretty much free to roam during the day, but if we had to go out of town, I felt better knowing that they could deal with being in their pen for a few days. We'd always load them up on kitchen/garden scraps if we were going out of town so they wouldn't have to eat only boring old chicken feed... perhaps they were a bit spoiled. We also ran a 1 by 4" "baseboard" around the outside of the pen area along the ground because we figured it would help to discourage the digging animals from pulling the flimsy chicken wire up out of the ground. It did seem to work, and it made the pen look nicer. We had trouble for a little while with snakes eating the eggs, so I got some wooden and chalk eggs and put them in the nests and cured us of our snake trouble... only problem was that they looked so realistic, my husband would bring them into the house with the real eggs if he went out to get them! Gave me a good laugh, anyway. He honestly could not tell the difference, and the funniest thing was the day he was going to make an omelette out of them. ;D
Better than a simple trench with the wire in it is to dig a wider trench outwards from the fence line. The wire fence is then curved down and out. More work, but discourages more digging when they find they then can't go down either.
As I recall my hubby did not like our chickens when we first got them. Who can hate a cute little chick? Well, I figured it out. The chickens saw my hubby and called him what he is......cheap cheap cheap........lol
rofl rofl rofl sometimes the truth is hard to take!
Did Stink show the chicken coop I made her?
Sorry, I mean I made for our chicks.
Pretty sharp looking! Lot fancier than our first one... It was just a moveable pen that was 4' by 8' and made of 1by2s" covered in chicken wire. We put some nesting buckets in it until we could get our permanent coop built. I think I have a picture somewhere.
I have had chickens twice, fist batch each night one would come up missing wehad a new dog so every day he got a beating about the dead chicken. Then whent here was no more chickens left the bear started to get inthe dog food pan well then we knew it was a bear eating the chickens and I felt bad for beating the dog. The second batch of chickens did fine, until the goat broke inthe house one day while I was at work. Well betweent he goat and the chickesn I cane home to a big mess, and they ate all my houseplants too. New rule was established at that point in time, NO CHICKENS, NO GOATS.
;D Tanya, my husband would agree with you about the goats, though I kind of like them in spite of themselves...I think his bias is just because he got so burned out on goat meat while he was in graduate school... my dad would butcher and give us half a goat, and that was all the red meat we had until it ran out. He got sick of goat loaf, and goatsketti, and goat-lash, and goat burgers, and even goat sausage. I met a lady through my mom who made homemade goat cheeses, and I thought they were great, but DH said they tasted "goaty" and would have nothing to with them... city boy! Wouldn't trade the chickens, though. Never had any real trouble with ours. About the worst they ever did was start a nest in our next door neighbor's hollyhocks, but the neighbor appreciated the egg donation and the bug control.
I've been reading up on goats. Also been reading up on making goat cheese. Hopefully I can talk NetHog into my idea of having a goat.
Hope you've got really good fences!!!
I don't recall seeing any pix of Stink in her new chicken pen.
Our little goat was impossible to keep fenced, then she showed the sheep how to get out of the fence and he was impossible too.
Not enough time anymore -- too much trouble.
Get her to send you one... it was pretty cool... but she had obviously figured out how to escape by the time the picture was taken. ;)
Some animals are smarter than others. ::)
Stinkerbell, post the picture please :-*
Glenn hatched a couple roosters - one a buff orpington rooster - he loved to try & attack Glenn ::) Glenn would just scoop him up on the top of his boot & send him flying - actually, the rooster chased everyone around... our other rooster was real nice. We let our chickens & ducks free range until we started missing one or 2 every morning.... >:( Then Glenn had to build a pen for them - we still had bears, coyotes, skunks, possums, raccoons get in there... :(
Goats are fun, really characters, but you have to have the time for them & any plants, gardens need to be totally sealed off from them or they will eat them right up. Poor little "Cupcake", otherwise known as the "Inspector" lost her life to a mountain lion, we think... :(
Before you get started-- I didn't actually hatch the roosters. I used an incubator. I couldn't sit still for that long. [crz]
Here's some coop pictures:
(http://wehavea.name/Photo.ashx/full-e337c1beac694ec992e648c12df21926.jpg)
No, we didn't leave the coop in the front yard, I just built it there. We had lots of neighbors checking in and making comments. The white hatch you can see to the right gives access to the nesting box without having to go inside.
(http://wehavea.name/Photo.ashx/full-b68d57eb28e1424ba9ec86ad68349225.jpg)
Inside doors closed.
(http://wehavea.name/Photo.ashx/full-1d21b2d5d65e4bedbfcf251a69aec740.jpg)
Inside doors open.
(http://wehavea.name/Photo.ashx/full-e36625b580ca46b0a5de8879ba1a6234.jpg)
Another view.
Very classy chicken pen, Hog. i'm sure your chickens are proud to call it home. Good Job. :)
We wanted something that would make the neighbors go "that's cool" rather than "ewww, why do we have to put up with that" :)
Do you have a problem with roosters in town or just eliminate them? In the cities in Mexico you can hear them just before daylight, but they don't go over so well up here it seems.
We were in a town of 400 before when we had chickens (and roosters)... the only comments we ever heard about them were from an elderly neighbor across the street who said she just loved to hear them crow because it reminded her of when her husband was still alive and they lived on their farm. Our other neighbors never complained if they had a problem with them, but then most of the town was comprised of retired farmers and county workers who got up early anyway. We thought about trying to have chickens in Wisconsin, and I know some neighbors less than a mile from us did have them, but our immediate neighbors were grossed out at the thought of us eating eggs from chickens! (I don't know where they think grocery store eggs come from!) And they also insinuated that there would be trouble with the neighborhood association that we never asked to join but received and annual bill from none the less.
My brother had chickens for awhile - he lives out in the country on an almond farm... anyway, he got tired of the roosters crowing, so he used them for target practice from the balcony off their bedroom :-\
One of the nurses I worked with had chickens in their backyard in Fresno - no one complained that I know of. One day we had a promotion for our Fitness program at the hospital. He brought in the chicken wearing a diaper & we took it around to the different departments in the hospital (the infection control nurse was with us ;D ) encouraging them "not to be chicken, take the 'Director's' challenge." The director of the hospital is a fitness nut - anyway, we would measure how fit he was on cardio, grip strength, flexibility & one other thing (can't remember ???)... then staff would compete & could win movie tickets if they beat him in anything... BTW, Glenn had the strongest grip at the hospital... We went into the director's office & took a picture of the chicken standing on his desk with the sign "Director" in front of it... :D the director wasn't there that day (he did see the pictures later, though).
Another time we had a going away party for one of the staff - he brought one of his chickens (with the diaper on) into the restaurant. The chicken kept crowing - the restaurant was noisy, so it was difficult to really separate it from all the cackling by the people - but it was funny - the waitress finally caught on but didn't say anything...
QuoteAnd they also insinuated that there would be trouble with the neighborhood association that we never asked to join but received and annual bill from none the less.
I hate it when groups of snotty people get together and form little mobs.
I have to stay away from groups like that as I would be inclined to get even.
Quote from: glenn kangiser on April 13, 2008, 01:00:58 PM
Do you have a problem with roosters in town or just eliminate them? In the cities in Mexico you can hear them just before daylight, but they don't go over so well up here it seems.
The local law doesn't allow for keeping of roosters. Since we had sex-links, we had no problems.
I assumed that might be the reason you had them. We had some sex-links before also -- at one time or another in the past anyway.
Quote from: glenn kangiser on April 13, 2008, 11:19:26 PM
QuoteAnd they also insinuated that there would be trouble with the neighborhood association that we never asked to join but received and annual bill from none the less.
I hate it when groups of snotty people get together and form little mobs.
I have to stay away from groups like that as I would be inclined to get even.
One of the neighbors acted offended when I first mentioned putting up a fence (an idea we later abandoned because the permits and stupid fees were over $500 before we ever put in a single post) and I seriously thought about making a fence out of sheet metal and old car hoods. Where's the devious little devil smiley when you need one?
HT have you ever considered "multi-flora rose". I would gladly send them to you if you wanted. What a thorn in my side. They smell good one time of the year but after that they are terrible. First introduced in the US from asia(somewhere) to use a fence row. It is to the point now they take everything over and are hard to eradicate. Once filled out they will hold back about anything.
Ah, but this was when we were living in Wisconsin. No permanent plantings allowed here, and I think the weedy roses would be considered a permanent planting.
Okay....
Here is a question for all of you afflicted with chicken fever:
I am building a run / coop in my yard, and want to enclose the top of the run. We have issues with cats as well as with owls and hawks.
How large of a run to keep them comfortable for 6 hens, or for 12 hens?
Do they socialize pretty well in terms of roosting at night, or do they want some seperation?
Thanks,
Frank
Frank,
I'm no expert, but this is what I have found...
My coop is 8 x 16, with their area being 8 x 8. There is a 4' storage/entrance on one end, and a screened-in porch on the other. Inside they have a few perches to choose from, but usually divide into 2 groups. They usually huddle close together. I have 3 roosters now. It took a while to weed out the bullies, but life is good now.
They also have a 16 x 12 courtyard attached to their coop. They can go in and out at any time. Put their food & water inside to keep unwanted critters away. The courtyard is surrounded by chicken wire with 2' wide hardware cloth (wire) closest to the ground.
Roosters will help with the cats and hawks, or at least alert the others. My bantams go wild when a hawk is near! The roosters will also fight a dog or cat (small one). They usually won't win, but they will protect the hens, at least temporarily.
Our setup has had up to 30 chickens (tight squeeze), but now we have 15.
HT you are right about the "permanent". I was looking at the spreadability that it has. Within a short period of time you would have it half way across OK.
Shooter, especially if it gets cool at nights, you'll want them to kind of be able to huddle together for warmth. In the summer, you can leave the windows open in the coop to help circulate the air. Our permanent chicken coop was about 4' by5', and about 2' off the ground to give them more room (as well as ventilation and shade) in the outside pen. The outside pen was about 5' by 15', and tall enough that I could (barely) stand up inside to work and to clean. Granted, they were outside in the yard most of the time during the day. We had two big branches inside the coop for roosting, and two nesting boxes. I think the most chickens we ever had in there was about ten, but I would not have had that many if they weren't free ranging during the day.
There is a photo of our chicken house here: http://homegrowntomatoes.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
It is in the "Garden" album. These pictures are at least 3-4 years old, because they were taken when I was pregnant with dd #2, who is now 3.5. If I had it to do over again, I'd make the coop bigger, and would have probably made a bigger pen, too... my dad has a nice setup for his chickens. He used a little 8' by 10' storage shed and he framed a little wall about 4' inside the walk-through door and covered it in chicken wire and made another walk-through screen door to the chickens' space. He keeps all his feed in the little room, and then the other half belongs to the chickens. Makes feeding everyone an easy chore. Then he has two "chicken doors", one to a big pen and one to the outside world. Instead of putting chicken wire on top of the big pen, he used that mesh shade fabric (the stuff they use sometimes to filter the light in greenhouses.) It seems to work well, and gives the chickens at least one place outside that they can go when it is just too hot.
NetHog, forgot to tell you thanks for posting the pic of your chicken coop - looks nice!
HG, you chicken coop looks nice, too! Hey, you never posted any updates pix of your remodel job before you moved :(
I know... I'm terrible. I just downloaded them from the camera about three days ago!!! I'll try to get around to it!