New house guests

So a week earlier than I expected, my new house guests showed up.

 there are 8 of the little noise makers.

2 barred rock females

2 Rhode Island red females

2 light Brahma straight runs

2 silverlight green eggers straight run.

Here's hoping the straight runs aren't all males.

You should do daily updates on this thread for a month. Bird growth is amazing. 

I can do that. 

I *think* the Brahma are the tan ones with white wings showing already. 

I'll find a can or bottle to use for scale with the updates. 

Nice!  I got three buff Brahmas and three Barred Rocks last March.  They grow like crazy!  Been getting eggs all winter.

I can't see the feet on the larger birds.  My Brahmas have feathery feet.

In for the updates.

I (and my sons) would like to have chickens in the back yard, but my wife is terrified of birds.

Are all fowl the same when it comes to determining sex? If so just spread the wings out in the palm of your hand. I can't remember which pattern is male or female that you'll have to Google. 

Sexing chicks generally takes some more effort than that unless they are sex links.

Mike Rowe can explain it to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDdkvW4F-UY

In reply to Johnboyjjb :

Perhaps.  It was ironically a very dirty job I had as a teenager. If the bones folded for want of a better word over they were one sex and if under then the other. It has been almost 30 years admittedly. 

Yea, I'm gonna go with wait an see myself. About 4 weeks it should be easy to check, but I can also post on the backyard chicken forums and they're rather helpful. Think this place with chickens and a steady supply of noobs with questions. I'm not keeping any roosters, yet. 

I moved them inside because it's chilly and I don't have an electric hen yet, that's due to be built tomorrow when the heating pad shows up. Within 5 minutes they all perked up and are having fun running around the crate, eating, and chasing lasers. 

So with the feathered feet theory, the yellow fluff balls are the light Brahma.

I thought we weren't allowed to post pictures of hot chicks on here anymore.

Yeah stay away from roosters even though that was my high school nickname. They are total bastards although mine never attacked my toddler sister when she went for a stroll. Our Jack Russell however berkeley those two went at it. 

After seeing what fully winged chickens can do, break their wings, now.  It will save grief when you learn they can fly well over 8 feet.

In reply to alfadriver :

I actually already looked into clipping their wings so they can't fly away when they're free ranging. Gotta wait a bit, they're only a couple days old. I wish I knew a hatch date to be sure, but look less than 3 days.

I'm really curious how the child will respond when she comes back Monday. I'm really hoping the weekend is enough time to get them used to me and being played with, but I am afraid she might love them to death. 

And of course, now that I have a solid deadline when I need the coop built, we're getting snow all weekend. Hopefully it goes away quick because I can't paint if it's snowing and they will outgrow the dog cage in about 3 weeks. 

Later today I guess it would be, I'll be detailing the build of the electric hen. I'm also trying to charge up a go pro battery. Maybe just let it film them for an hour and speed it up to a 5 minute clip for the youtubes. They're fun, and they chase lasers already which is kinda funny. I can't get over how quiet they are, for now. 

Depending on your predator situation, clipping their wings may or may not be a good idea. What I would suggest is to become their pied piper. 

Can you whistle? Come up with a certain couple note tune and whistle it every time you feed them. It won't take long until they hear that whistle and come running from wherever they are. It will also help if they range some during the day and you need to put them to bed in a coop at night. 

We don’t clip wings and generally ours stay inside the backyard. The fence is only about 4 feet high, but when they’ve gotten out it has been under the fence, not over.  

There will be a period between where they get their flight feathers, and when they are full size that they can fly really well. Once they get to full size/weight they tire and lose altitude quickly when they try to fly, so it is faster for them to run and use the wings for extra thrust

We had a rooster, but gave him away due to complaints from the neighbors about the crowing. His name was Soup, and he was the friendliest of the bunch. As far as I know he’s still friendly and doing well living with friend that live a bit further in the country.

Whistle, a donkey and a border collie.

Also I love the circle of life of chickens. They start as hatchlings under a heat lamp and they end up in a Popeye's under a heat lamp. 

We've had a small flock for years..  Our chicken coop has a fully enclosed run so that they can be "outside" whenever they want, and we open for free ranging when we're home.

I hung a cowbell near the door of the run, since we feed them all of our veggie scraps.  Just ring the cowbell when you toss the scraps (or scratch, or whatever treat) and they'll all coming running.  If you ever need them inside in the middle of the day, just ring it. 

Ours will also follow us around the yard if they see us out and about, no need to specifically train them for that.

When you move them to the coop, just keep them in there until they're fully feathered before you let them out to free range.  That'll be their home and you won't have any trouble with them running away, they'll be home every night to roost.  No need to clip their wings.

They're our favorite pets, we only have to feed & water them once or twice a week and they give us eggs :)   They're also a lot of fun to watch in the yard.

When I had mine indoors, I fashioned some wire mesh lids for their cardboard box condo.

I've never considered curtailing their ability to fly.  If they don't have something to climb up onto, it's doubtful that a chicken could clear a 6-foot fence, which is what my pen is surrounded with.  It also has a screened "roof" but that is more to keep hawks out than chickens in.  When we do let them out of their pen (20' x 40') they pretty much stay nearby and return to the coop at dusk/dark.  Once the birds reach full weight, their "flight" largely consists of a controlled fall, although certainly some are better at it than others.  It's not as if they're going to see some geese flying overhead and take off flying, never to be seen again.  It ain't happenin'.

Once you move the birds outside, your biggest challenge will be keeping them safe from predators.  Everything likes chicken.  In the half-dozen or so years we've kept chickens, we've lost no fewer than four birds to unknown predators that entered our seemingly secure fenced run and tore them up and left  At night, they should be in a secure, enclosed coop.  If part of the coop is screened, use 1/2" hardware cloth.  Don't depend on chicken wire.

No Time said:

We don’t clip wings and generally ours stay inside the backyard. The fence is only about 4 feet high, but when they’ve gotten out it has been under the fence, not over.  

There will be a period between where they get their flight feathers, and when they are full size that they can fly really well. Once they get to full size/weight they tire and lose altitude quickly when they try to fly, so it is faster for them to run and use the wings for extra thrust

We had a rooster, but gave him away due to complaints from the neighbors about the crowing. His name was Soup, and he was the friendliest of the bunch. As far as I know he’s still friendly and doing well living with friend that live a bit further in the country.

 

The reason I brought it up is that my neighbors had a fully enclosed pen with a fence that should have been high enough.  Yet they still got out and roamed all over the neighborhood.  And because of that, they no longer have chickens.  The rules here is that they are required to stay in your backyard, so either they lost their permit, or they got tired of constantly having to go out and get them.

They were super nice birds- and would always come hang out with me when I was outside.  But they also did wonders eating the food I was growing, too.  And i know some of the neighbors got really mad about them- more than once police were here chasing them down.

That being said, every single thing I've read about chicken poop is that you must integrate that into your compost,  Really great stuff.

I said "looking into" not "gonna clip them". With 2 acres of my own, an abandoned house next door, and 15 acres of woods behind the house that aren't technically mine, I have a massive predator problem, and they're gonna need all the help they can get staying alive. I'm basically gonna have to lose some birds to flight before I clip them, hoping food training or I like that cow bell idea too. 

Since the chickens are turning into their own thread, I'm going to copy some stuff over here because I don't know how to link to specific posts in other threads here. 

Here's a tinkercad of the coop. 4 foot by 6 foot, sloping roof, 7 square feet of ventilation around the top. I'm going to use the front of the coop as an end of the run, so I can open the door directly into it. I'm going to use construction sand as bedding in the coup. It's supposed to help in humid and wet climates. It also dries out the poop enough that you can use a cat litter scoop once a week or so, and then drop it in the compost pile where the chickens can then work it into everything

I had originally wanted a sloped roof run like this, but for ease of construstion, I'm going to build essentially a hoophouse style green house. SImilar to this. Because of my absolute and undying hatred for snakes, I'm lining the entire bottom of the run, as well as the bottom 4 feet of the sides with 1/4" hardware cloth, then the top in 1/2". I'm only going to wrap part of the top in plastic until I find cheap corrugated roofing panels somewhere. Then wood chips. 6 to 8 inches of wood chips across the entire run. Luckily I'm having a chainsaw party soon, so I'll pull out the tree eater and make my own chips. 

I'm also going to mount a game cam and a motion activated light somewhere. 

I stayed up all night with the birds, in part to see what they were up too and make sure the dog didn't get any dumb ideas, but also because I don't trust the clamp light fixture with a 150 watt bulb in it to not catch my house on fire unattended. Most of them would go to sleep around the light, but one little Barred Rock would see this and not stand for it and wake everyone up, just so it could sleep alone. 

Already through our first quart mason jar of food too. 

You will not lose birds to flight in the sense that, if they escape, they will soon seek to rejoin the flock.  Escapees will encourage other birds to do the same.  At nightfall, they will unerringly return "home."

If they escape your protective enclosure, then yes, you may lose them to predators.

Yeah, clamp light with a nice hot fire starter bulb did nothing for my peace of mind either.   Wrapped an old T-shirt around the heating pad and placed that over an arch of semi-rigid plastic to make a cave of sorts.  They would pile in there at night.  Not an elegant solution but it worked.  Occasionally, one would get trapped in the fabric and you'd have to rescue them. 

They're crazy cute with their "peep peep peep" and kids just adore them.  Better not to let kids handle the birds beyond a touch for the first couple weeks, as it could stress the little ones.  Birds, that is.

1988RedT2 said:

You will not lose birds to flight in the sense that, if they escape, they will soon seek to rejoin the flock.  Escapees will encourage other birds to do the same.  At nightfall, they will unerringly return "home."

If they escape your protective enclosure, then yes, you may lose them to predators.

Pretty much this.  We had many chickens the entirety of my formative years.  None ever ran/flew away.  Some would disapear for a period of time to sit on a well hiddden nest.  The only actual loses were due to predators.  A chicken coop is more about keeping predators out than keeping chickens in in my experience.  It needs to be tough if you have racoons around.  They will tear open flimsy fencing and will also reach through holes to grab.  The most vexing problem is death from above.  Hawks of all sorts LOVE chicken.  I've seen small hawks kill chickens that are pretty much the same size they are.

RevRico said:

Because of my absolute and undying hatred for snakes

Ive got good news for you, my chickens love to kill snakes. They kill the E36 M3 out of em.

gearheadmb said:

RevRico said:

Because of my absolute and undying hatred for snakes

Ive got good news for you, my chickens love to kill snakes. They kill the E36 M3 out of em.

Yup.  While snakes of any size do not present much of a threat to adult chickens, adult chickens will aggressively pursue and eat pretty much any snake small enough to swallow.  In my experience, up to a foot in length, at least.

Everything came together to make an electric hen type thing. Heating pad that was supposed to not be automatic off so now I have to modify, press n seal, some stiff metal, and a towel.

Put the metal in at the thinnest point to act as a frame

Then the heating pad

wrap the towel up around it, then press n seal the ends, followed by the middle. This stops the chicks from pecing the towel apart, and makes it easy to clean.

I put it in at a slope, so it got tighter at one side so they can pick their warmth. They're completely ignoring it and all cuddling up in the corner by the pellet stove now.