Keeping chickens

My toddler has had more play dates with our lay-dees than with anyone from nursery. She adores them, can happily natter away for hours to them and apart from the odd peck they seem to enjoy her company too. Vests are yours.

Thank you!

Details by PM.

Next doors dog dug under the fence and attacked one of our chickens today. Think it just pulled a few feathers out, but will have to check when i get home. Got no problem with dogs but this one is a badly trained pain in the arse.

Your vests arrived today - hilarious! I’m tempted to fit them to my two Rhode Rocks just for an instasplash (if I did instagram, and if instasplash is a word) before passing them on to my friend with the industrial estate chooks.

Please PM me with details to cover your costs.

Thank you again!

(I love this place, such great people)

Thank You!

Happy they've gone somewhere they might be used! You're going to have to put some vested chicken content up here to provide some payoff though. Check your pms for deets, sent you a message the other day.

Found and responded! Don’t know why I couldn’t see the message before.

I may well HV up my chooks and post a photo tomorrow…. Be well (and thanks again).

Anyone actually raised their own chicks? Our four, now two bantams are seven years old, still laying eggs, but might get four more shortly, thought about getting some eggs to hatch out with the kids.

pic 2017

1 Attachment

@6pt

The leather treatment I sent you today should hopefully be with you tomorrow.

Rub in with fingertips. If you want a polish finish leave in a warm place overnight (or a few hours in the sun) and then the surface will take normal shoe polish on top.

No - did with ducks a lifetime ago. Very satisfying.

The issue (as I see it) is you can’t choose the sex of your chicks. So you might end up with 4 cocks.

In a moment of serendipity I've just become aware of this thread existance whist listening to the latest Reply All podcast.

Good luck chicken guardians and be on the alert for crypto bros.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/07rJv2FQW79nmdIhkRxxM4

With the excuse of being a five year old boy in a fifty something shell I can only say;

Fnurk

Doesn't @Eeyorecore have chickens?

viz. this thread

Although on a more serious (and less knob joke level);

https://poultrykeeper.com/incubation-brooding/candling-eggs/

This skill was once a highly secret thing that commanded huge (for the times) fees for those in the know.

[edit] Poor link, but candling an egg can determine sex.

On foxes:

My folks had chickens in the garden, in a coop with no door, and never had any problems with foxes.
The 200+ kg angry pig may have had something to do with that, though.
tl;dr you need a giant pig.

Like!

My run has been fox probed at least ten times, all in the first two months or so.

If you don’t have the option of a sturdy mesh floor then dig.

Dig so that you can take at least one thickness of chicken wire a foot down into the earth, then a foot horizontally outwards and then cover back with soil. Reynard will have a few attempts at getting in, and hit wire. After a while they will give up (and teach their cubs that it is a pointless exercise).

As promised! (They weren’t very happy, had to take off after a bit - I guess they would get used to it after some acclimatisation).

Anyway, ladies on duty doing much needed weeding in one of my polytunnels (thanks again to @6pt);

3 Attachments

I do indeed, we're at 7 ladies and two chicks who may soon be pullets. One of the chicks however may be a rooster, so a chick name Susan may soon be a boy named Sue.

Our rooster got huge last fall, watched him stare down a hawk with his brood behind him, I was mighty proud till he started attacking my 2 year old (Jack). He has gone to live on a local permaculture farm with a promise that he will not end up in the stew pot.

• our ladies are good down to about -15c, after that they come in the house.
  
• scraps are a supplement, definitely not a substitute. Oatmeal soaked in bacon grease is a favorite. Brussels, strawberry greens, and peanut butter toast are all favorites.
  
• if you put bricks around any plants they are destroying it will generally help.
  
• hold them as much as possible to aclimatise them to human contact, Elsa has gotten so used to me she will nap with me in the sun.
  

Is it flock down time again?

Monday 7th 😔

Not Ronsons reclamation?

Ah, bummer. For the best I suppose. 😔

One of our chickens has got the shits and is really not itself. From what I’ve read ‘Coccidiosis’ seems a possible cause. Any advice?

Alas no advice, sorry, but for thread bump chick content: to celebrate the end of flockdown (and address the loss of one of our hybrids to a tumour) we added three Pekins to our flock.

1 Attachment

the shits cockadoodlepoos

No advice just bad and innacurate puns, sorry.