New house guests

Long time lurker, finally joined. We have a backyard flock of silkies, you’re at the beginning of a lot of fun stuff. Be careful, a few turn into many over the years. We just hatched 2 about 5 weeks ago to see if we could, that’ll put us at 8 running around the yard.

I started buying my wife chickens 3 years ago. Our Boxer killed the first 4 (2 each year). We didn't realize that she was doing it. We thought the first 2 were owl kill. The second batch is when we realized she had probably had something to do with the first batch. She didn't act aggressive with them, just curious. But when they get excited, her prey drive kicks in. It really takes a special kind of personality for a dog not to be aggressive with chickens. As long as we keep an eye on the dogs, it's fine. I do not trust any of them except our male dog alone with them. For some reason he's more interested in stealing their food and eating their poop.

We have 5, 1 Buff Orpington, 2 Turkens, 1 Light Brahma, 1 Black Australorp. They've been producing eggs steady through the winter, though down from the 4-5 per day we were getting in the summer and fall.

My wife loves them and I get a kick out of them...they follow us around begging for treats. Ours are spoiled, just like our dogs. They're great for getting rid of mosquito larvae, grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, centipedes, slugs (though they only eat those once before they're over it), mice, and even snakes. They'll even harass cats, rabbits and pigeons. The squirrels however LOVE the chickens because they pick up after the chickens. 

Final thought...they're the most expensive eggs you'll ever eat. But it gives you a newfound appreciation for where your food comes from and the kind of care they receive.

they keep growing so fast, you can almost watch it happen

If I ramble or make less sense than normal, please excuse me, I'm pushing 40 hours awake right now. 

Sleepy time last night, I tried to get a closeup on the barred rock on the 2x4, it kinda worked. He was sleeping with his beak on the ball...

BUT, I actually got some stuff done in my sleepless time. 

Floor is attached, as are the walls. Those little 2x4 stubs made a great extra set of hands for holding the sides up while I screwed them on. Much easier than trying to hold, clamp, and drill. 

Then the sky grew dark. At 830 sunday morning, I don't really have anyone available to help, so I made skids from an old pallet and dragged the heavy bitch inside to finish building. Not fun, but it's safe from rain. 

My plan today was to get it paint ready. Well, the floor and 3 walls are up. I'm still thinking about the front wall with the door... And since it was 60 degrees, I just said berk it. 

Red barn paint. $15/gallon, they didn't have any white at HD when I was there. 

Decided I should do the inside too. So that is Kilz primer. I think I'm just going to leave it. The white should be reflective, the wood should be sealed, so I'm good. 

Now, when it all dries, maybe wednesday, I need to turn it on its end and paint the bottom. 

This is going to be a huge pain in the butt when I get the front wall on, especially with what little room I have to work, so the inside of the front wall might not get painted. If I'm smart about it, I'll paint before it goes on, but that kind of logic always eludes me when it's time to use it. 

Feels good to actually have a little progress to show. I estimate about 3 more weeks before they can go out to their coop, which means I have about 5 weeks to get the run together. That's a lot of digging, I need some dry weather. 

Made a decision on the front wall today, and now I feel like an idiot. I'm sorry, I'm to fat and there's too much stuff in the way for a picture so I need to use my words.

To start, I cut some of my 2 foot sections of plywood in half, so they're 1x4'. I put one in each end, leaving me a 4x4' hole in the middle for the door. Might not be big enough to walk in, but definitely accessible. 

I decided that the hole was too big though, and because I know how lazy I can be about things, I decided to prepare for using the deep litter method by adding a foot back to the bottom of the hole. Yes, it would have been much easier and better looking to just cut the square out of a full sheet of plywood, but that sits pricey, so patchwork it is. 

Now is where I feel like an idiot. I bought stainless hinges and hardware from Amazon. They're considerably smaller than expected, so I'm just going to use a lot more of them. I just can't figure out how to mount them so when I attach everything they actually work. I might still have bigger hinges somewhere. I know it's the same principle, but with bigger ones I could fudge quite a bit and still have a working hinge. 

Realized I haven't posted a picture of them in a couple days. Today should be their 2 week birthday. Except for the one silverlight, which looks much older than the rest. It may also be a He after all. 

They eat snacks now and go crazy for meal worms and scrambled egg. They're even more scared of me than before though, which is annoying because I just want to pet them and play with them. 

I'm very surprised that overall they're pretty quiet, and they don't smell at all, but I am looking forward to getting them out to the coop. 

I also picked up big gate hinges today, but with the wind it's too cold to work outside. 

I decided to redo the front wall after all. I think it was worth it.

 here it is installed. Still needs the outside painted.

I also got the roost bar installed. 

So now all that's left is getting the roof on and then hardware cloth on all the openings, and the nest boxes.

Hardware cloth needs to wait until the roof is on, and roof needs to wait until I have another set of hand available unfortunately.

I'm one paycheck away from buying the adjustable drywall hoist from harbor freight and turning it into the adjustable arms I want. So sick of needing to redneck stuff because I'm short handed. This child needs to grow up to a useful size already dammit. 

Any smell is entirely from the poop.  Clean that up and no real smell.

 roof secured, so it became mobile ish

 Not exactly where I wanted it, but it works.

I have another picture but it's not letting me upload. Doesn't matter, I've painted it since I took the shot. ahh there we go

Gonna put another coat of paint on it tomorrow, then work on the hardware cloth, door handle, and locks throughout the week.

Most of the group posed for a picture. These things are crazy growers.

A week later, and we're at about 90% coloration. I need to get the coop finished very soon because they're starting to outgrow the dog cage. 

Going through 2 quarts of water and food per day a well. I've had to put cardboard block strips across the top of the cage because I had a couple escapes. Turned the light down to 100 watts and they're much happier. I've also started turning it off at night. They complain until the rest of the lights are off then go right to sleep, so that's nice. 

So cute. I had better not show my 4 year old these pics or she'll want some of her own.

Oh, one note I was going to make:  When we first put ours outside, they freaked out at night, and made a bunch of noise.  Turns out that leaving the heating light on when they were inside made them afraid of the dark!  Sounds like yours have been getting some darkness, so you should be OK.

I can already tell that those little guys want to go find bugs in the lawn. 

Oh look, they're at the ugly chicken part of development :) 

We're currently down to 11 chickens, we just lost our black Australorp two weeks ago :(   She was old, but she was the one who hatched the last batch for us when she was broody.    Our new ones are laying, though, so we're currently getting about 8 eggs a day!  

Anyone need some eggs?

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

Yes please!  Lol

Note to the audience, its really berkeleyin funny to hear rico cuss these dudes out when they escape. Which they do often usually in the middle of racing. 

so they decided that they should dump their water over night. Dicks. So I got to redo everything this morning. Probably should have built this platform a few weeks ago, I'm hoping it's harder to knock the jars off of. I may need to Velcro or something the containers down.

Dculberson: do it man, they're fun. The child isn't quite as obsessed with them since they don't follow her orders, but she'll sit there and watch them for a while every day. 

RevRico said:

 so they decided that they should dump their water over night. Dicks. So I got to redo everything this morning. Probably should have built this platform a few weeks ago, I'm hoping it's harder to knock the jars off of.

Good luck with that! 

As they get bigger, they'll only get more and more boisterous.  And that extra mass means they're going to move stuff around.  The Velcro idea is a good one.

And yes, DCulberson needs to step up and get his kid some baby chickens!

paranoid_android said:

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

Yes please!  Lol

Stop by next time you're in CT :)

it was moving day today. They're going to stay in their pretty much full time until I get their run done.

Now I need to go make my jack go back down so I can go buy the E36 M3 to build the run

they're starting to get more adventurous, which is good. I've seen as many as 5 looking around outside now. We'll see what this week brings, hopefully I can get the run built around the broken truck.

Huh, forgot to update this thread, my bad, but the missing updates are in my garage thread.

I processed some more wood today and was too lazy to spread the chips, luckily they've figured out what to do.

They seem to still be growing overnight, I swear they're bigger every morning. They're learning too. I usually go out around 730 to put them to bed, and the brahmas especially all come running to me before they even hear the worms shaking. They still won't go I until after 8, such it's fine, because we're at an agreement. Sundown is a fine curfew. 

The annoying rooster next door came over twice. My chickens are scared to death of him, for now. I'm hoping to make him go away before they become friendly. 

They really like hanging out under the pine trees. I always find them under the hemlock or the old Christmas trees chilling on a low branch or digging up bugs. I'm surprised at how little of the supplied food and water they're consuming now that they free range. 

I need to start building nesting boxes

A group shot from earlier today. They're slowly coming around to the child and myself. One barred rock actually ate out of harleighs hand the other day.

They'll come up and follow us around, but petting them is pretty much a no no.

They growed up!