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Split from the Weekly Green Tips (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31188) thread by PaleMelanesian.

My compost eats junk mail and kitchen scraps and leaves and grass clippings. I dump things in/on when they come, and dig it out a year later for the garden. Recently, though, the kitchen scraps started a detour through the new chicken coop. The output is much more valuable than the input, in this case. (both edible and compostable output ;))

Recently, though, the kitchen scraps started a detour through the new chicken coop.

Hey Andrew, I have heard much talk about people raising their own chickens lately, so how did that come about for you? and How is it going so far? And is it mostly for eggs or meat?

I had the easy way out. My mother raised the chicks, then handed them to me nearly fully grown. She's off to do some graduate studies and can't be around to watch them. I also inherited the coop.

I had to do a lot of fencing, especially when we were adopted by a puppy about the same time. :rolleyes:

These are egg chickens, but somewhere down the road they will be dinner as well. We're starting small, with only 4 hens. They're each laying an egg a day now.

They're not much work, really. Open the Fort Knox coop in the morning and let them out. Depending on our plans for the day, either into the 5x10 run (wire mesh on top and sides) or out into the 20x200 fenced yard. In the evening, they go in by themselves and I just have to secure the fort. As needed (every 3 days or so) fill the feeder and fill/change the water.

Wow, so it sounds like you are hen-sitting ;)

What do you feed them? Are they messy?

Have you noticed that the eggs taste any different? Eggs are such a staple, it much be good to know that nothing has been added to them or to the hens.

They're mine now - this is a permanent relocation. Mom's just happy they went to someone she knows.

I buy the normal "laying hen" feed at the local feed store. They have a feeder not unlike a birdseed feeder. I just fill it up when it gets low.

They're not terribly messy. There is always a chance of stepping in some "stuff". I have a pair of shoes dedicated to chicken work. I have a board that slides in under the coop, to collect the stuff. Then it goes over the fence to the compost bin 10 feet away. There is an odor, but only within a few feet of the coop.

The eggs - taste about the same to me. I know they're less bad than store eggs, but they're just brown eggs to me.

.....

They're not much work, really. Open the Fort Knox coop in the morning and let them out. Depending on our plans for the day, either into the 5x10 run (wire mesh on top and sides) or out into the 20x200 fenced yard. In the evening, they go in by themselves and I just have to secure the fort. As needed (every 3 days or so) fill the feeder and fill/change the water.

Are you using them to control pests in your garden? I'm not sure if they'd work on fire ants though.

Are you using them to control pests in your garden? I'm not sure if they'd work on fire ants though.

They don't seem to do anything with the ants. :(

I don't let them near the garden. I'm pretty sure they'd eat it all, or at least dig up the beds scratching for underground goodies. I may fence off the garden and let them roam outside it, for some level of pest control.

Oh, and I'm getting 7 more to add to my current 4. A friend is unable to maintain his adequately. New coop construction time!

Andrew,
Maybe you can poulet (http://www.gardengirltv.com/pets_small_livestock_raising_chickens_rabbits_goats.html) off without too much trouble.

And this (http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html) is the scoop on the coop for the poop. :p - Dale

LOL. :p Nice.

Actually, a chicken tractor is a great idea - secure and safe, but movable to wherever you want. They pick the weeds and bugs in that area, then you move them to another spot.

I've read that chickens are ok in the vegetable garden if you don't have any small seedlings currently coming up and you only give them access to the garden for one day before moving them elsewhere (they can come back for a return engagement after the insect populations have built back up in another month or two). They go first after the easily caught insects, only starting on the veggies when they can no longer find anough insects to keep them satisfied. Also banties do less trampling of the vegetation then do the heavier breeds.

Thanks for the bump. I need to give an update.

We now have 9 hens. 4 (-1) and 7 (-1). Those two flew over the fence into the dog's yard, and became playthings. :( I can hardly blame the dog - she's about 5 months old (rowdy), and the birds did go into her space. My solution, for now, is to only free-range the hens in the evening for a couple hours, and to tie up the dog during that time. I also clipped their wings to hopefully prevent any further fence-jumping.

I think the new ones are still stressed from the move. I'm getting 3 eggs a day from my remaining 3, and 2 a day from the other 6.

I'm not building a new coop. The current one is big enough for 9. 11 would have been too many, but that's not a problem any more.

Do you not clip off their flight feathers, Andrew?

They are all clipped now. The old hens were starting to grow out again, and the new ones I hadn't clipped yet. I "was planning" to re-clip them "real soon now". ;)

I had the new ones fenced off inside the coop-attached run for a week when they first got here, planning to clip them before allowing access to the yard. Then one of them new ones slipped through the 6" space at the top of the temporary fence and into the run, which was open for the original hens. From there, she hopped the chain link into the dog's yard. Determined, but dumb.

Not sure if we could keep chickens in our neighborhood due to HOA rules, but that is a great idea. Do you each all the eggs or have you set up shop yet. :D

This reminds me of a great joke:

A man finds a box of eggs with 3 eggs inside and $20 in $1 bills. He asks his wife what the box is for – after some time she finally gives in. The eggs represent each time I was unfaithful to you. The man is very upset, but after yelling and screaming he thinks about it and realized that its only 3 times over many years and makes peace. Then he asks “what are the $1 bills for”? To this the wife replies “every time I had a dozen eggs I would sell them for $1”.

4 a day was more than we would eat. Now, with more, we're selling some. We're just charging feed cost to our friends.

4 a day was more than we would eat. Now, with more, we're selling some. We're just charging feed cost to our friends.

Best to keep it just among friends. The gov't can be funny about selling eggs without getting your flock inspected. The gal I buy eggs from charges $1.50/dozen.

Yesterday we got 7 eggs! It's been 4 or 5 a day lately.

3 original hens, 3 eggs a day.
6 new hens, 1-2 eggs a day. :confused: But this time, 4 of them laid. There's hope! I think they were just stressed from the move.

Tonight we're trading a couple dozen eggs for babysitting and a date night. :woot:

Andrew, I'll have to get in touch with you when the wife retires (laid off when the shuttle ends) and hope she can stay home. She's said that when we can try our hand at a few chickens, so we might need some tips from you. Sounds like they are starting to lay more. kevin

They're now varying between 5 and 7 eggs a day, from 9 hens. It's hard to tell who's laying or not, when you have 8 brown egg layers. The one green/blue egg layer hasn't done a thing yet.

Backyardchickens.com is the equivalent to Cleanmpg only for chickens. I'm still learning all I can from there.

Backyardchickens.com is the equivalent to Cleanmpg only for chickens. I'm still learning all I can from there.

So you are learning how to get the maximum eggs per pound of feed? Because that would be the cleanmpg equivalent ;)

Good luck Andrew and I am still jealous. I would love to be able to try this, but can't in our setting.

Eggs per pound of feed? :p I'm just happy most of them are still alive and some are laying.

Lbs of feed per hundred eggs. Remember, focus on consumption...

How silly of me! Gallons per mile instead of mpg. Of course!

The 9 hens over the weekend gave us 9 eggs, then 6, then 9 again. That's the kind of production I was hoping for.

It also means the green-egg layer is finally in business again. Love the green ones! A box of varying shades of brown eggs, with one green one looking very out of place.

We need a picture of that :)

Be sure to make it a picture with ham.

Ducks and runs!!!

LOL! I'll have to start raising some green pigs now. ;)

:( Lost one yesterday. She was fine in the morning. I got a call in the late afternoon that she was being lethargic. By the time I got home, she was gone. Just laid down and died, it seems.

She was my favorite. We have 1 black, 7 reds, and one tan/gray one. The gray one died. She was the green egg layer.

On the other hand, she was also the least reliable layer. Every 3 days or so, compared to almost daily from the others. This actually helps our "feed conversion ratio".

:( Sorry to hear that Andrew. Do you have a sense for their normal life expectancy? Any idea if she was already "old" when you got her?

They should live for 5+ years, and she was only 1.5 old. Definitely not normal.

They decline in laying productivity as they age, so many aren't allowed to live out a full lifetime. 2-3 years is about the most you can expect for good egg production.

Congenital heart defect.

Could be. It's been a little warm (;)) here lately, which could accelerate any complications.

An Update:

A couple months ago I lost another one when a friend brought his dog over. :mad: He replaced it, but they older hens never accepted the new one and picked her mercilessly. She did just start laying last week, though.

This weekend I answered a craigslist ad and pulled down about 500 feet of fencing to take home. Also a duplex wire-divided mini-coop and feeder and waterer and some travel cages, with two chickens included. Not laying yet, but soon. All this for FREE! (a few hours of labor and $20 of gas to my friend for his truck and trailer)

The outcast is in the duplex, and the new pair in the other half of the duplex. I'll try getting them to be friends and then introducing the trio the the main flock.

They main flock is the garden now, picking through whatever's left after the freeze. Doing a pretty good job of tilling, as well. :D

Some supplemental light from 5 am to 8 pm and they're laying 5-6 eggs a day from 7 hens.

I'm in the process of converting an old non-roadworthy 2 horse trailer into a mobile chicken coop to use in the sheep pastures. Our new guardian dog came from a farm crawling with poultry, so he is used to guarding chickens as well as livestock and will keep the predators at bay. Right now we are planning to get favorelles. They are a dual use chicken that was used to supply the Paris egg/meat market and were bred to lay well through the short winter days when many chicken breeds slow down on their egg production. Hopefully this will help reduce the "too many eggs in May, not enough eggs in Dec" problem you get with many chicken breeds when not using supplemental light to fool the chickens into thinking it is still summer.

I like favorelles. They're some of the prettiest birds around.

Ours are mainly Production Reds and they're living up to the name. I don't know what effect the extra light does or doesn't have, since I haven't done a winter without.

6 Prod Reds
1 Black Star (she's the biggest and the boss)
2 Black Stars, new young ones
1 Hamburg (maybe?) that was picked on. She's kind of agoraphobic now.

+4 chickens, to a total of 14 now. :D I built a new bigger coop over break and it's ready now. Found a craigslist ad for grown and laying hens so I don't have to raise the chicks. $10 each, or roughly what the feed would cost to grow them myself.

2 barred rocks
2 buff orpingtons (but one looks awfully ameraucana-ish)

Instance #537 why I want a hatch/wagon. I had to take the Ody to fit the travel cage. 25-30 mpg (no gauge) vs 60+ in my civic.

eggs are good for you.. ever tried a classic spanish potato tortilla?.. good cold or hot.. potatoes, onions, eggs, oilve oil and salt/pepper.

Not exactly, I haven't. The combination sounds amazing, though - kind of like eggs and hash browns mixed together.

Drought. Dead trees.
Cold front. Rain, then wind.
Dead tree falls down...

on the chicken coop! :eek: :ccry: Amazingly, only one expired. The coop is a mess and the birds are badly upset. They'll stop laying for a few days from the stress.

RIP.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/redsm.jpg

That stinks, Andrew! I guess you're lucky that it was only one, because that sounds like a bad storm. Was your home okay? Good luck on the reconstruction.

And for fun and thankfulness that things are ok, here are some other pictures.

This is Oreo. Notice her beard. :p She's an Ameraucana cross who lays blue eggs.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/oreo3sm.jpg

Here are some eggs. The blue one is Oreo's. The deceased red hen laid the brown egg.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/blue_white_brn_eggs_sm.jpg

Thanks, Rob.

The house is fine. I knew this tree was dead, and was planning on taking it down later this year. It's leaning away from the coop so I thought it would be fine. Instead, it dropped a main branch (10" diameter) in the opposite direction. The

It is amazing that I only lost one. The branch hit directly above the roost where most of them sleep, smashing it to the floor. Maybe something startled them first and they scattered. I'm thankful.

I'm sorry to hear this, Andrew. :( Glad there wasn't more damage!

Ditto... had a run-in with a large falling limb about a month ago, freaked me out for sure.

Glad it wasn't worse, and everyone else is alright!

Really sorry to hear about the chicken Andrew, will you get another, don't want Oreo gettiing lonely?

There were 19 in my flock, so now there are 18. Oreo won't be lonely. Red was one of the older hens and Oreo is a young one. The groups didn't mingle that much anyway. I think they're racist. :p They stay in groups based on age and color.

I didn't know we had a chicken thread. I have raised a couple flocks for meat and kept small flocks for eggs also.

We started a flock this spring, but lost them all when a neighbors dogs got loose. I saw the neighbor looking for the dogs and headed into my yard, so I went out to investigate. Found five dead birds and one of his dogs with fresh blood.

He paid me $60 for all six birds, which was plenty fair. He made the offer based on having just looked at a Craigslist listing for laying hens. My birds were about ten weeks from laying, and I know I didn't have $10 into each of them yet. The sixth bird returned later but was gouged to her lungs.

His dogs are always in a fenced yard, but slipped out when his son's friend opened the door.

I lost my two year old flock to a raccoon last year when I forgot to shut the coop. The raccoon came back for seconds the next night but all she found was a conabar trap.

I'm starting to think chicken are not for me.

Kirk

Yes, you have to be ready. Everything out there likes Chicken Dinner!

I popped a raccoon out of a tree across the yard last month. I didn't wait for it to visit any closer.

In 2-1/2 years I've lost:
2 that visited my dog.
1 that a friend's dog got.
1 from illness.
1 became dinner. She was eating eggs.
1 just vanished. I suspect a fox.
1 from a tree branch.

Wow, just discovered this thread. Still haven't read all of it but I will. We just got chickens ourselves this year. We have a golden Ameracauna, a gold-laced Wyandotte and an Iowa Blue (rare breed, but the store had one so we said why not?)

J.J., the Ameracauna, just started laying last month, and the eggs are the same beautiful blue-green color as Andrew's Oreo is laying. If the weather is warm-ish we get an egg a day. On cooler days (right now this means 40s at night, 50s during the day) we get one every second or third day. The eggs started pretty small but now they're at least as big as "Medium" eggs from the store. No eggs from the other two girls yet (both will lay brown eggs) ... but no surprise given it's their first year, and J.J. was notably more mature when we got her than the other two birds.

We probably wouldn't have gotten into the chicken-and-egg business for a couple more years, but last year we went on an "urban chicken coops" tour around town, entered the raffle, and WON a chicken coop! It's small (just 2x4') but very nicely designed and big enough for 3 chickens to spend the night in. I've also built an attached run so they have more room to forage during the day.

For food, we're now giving them a "layer" feed plus plenty of fruit and vegetable scraps. I also go around the yard frequently and pick them a "salad" of dandelion greens, mallow (a very persistent weed around here), and clover. I'm amazed how much they'll eat sometimes.

We've tried to predator-proof the coop. We're in a close-in semi-urban neighborhood (what was called "suburban" 100 years ago when it was built) with plenty of possums, raccoons and housecats around. So far no evidence of curious predators actually coming around other than the cats, which are pretty limited in their ability to infiltrate a chicken run.

And I'll echo what herm said about tortillas espanolas. Contrary to the peppers-and-onions image most of us have of "Spanish Omelette," in Spain the term refers to an omelette made by mixing eggs with potatoes that have been pan fried in olive oil, and is as much the national dish as paella is. Absolutely delicious, and we had them all over Spain.

Oooh! I do love the look of those Gold Laced birds.

You should consider giving them some extra light in the winter. They're fine without any heat, but the short days will slow or stop the egg laying. 12-14 hours is optimal. I had just set up my timer light (6-7 am, 7-8 pm) before it got smashed.

Oh, good to know. I'd only thought of installing a light to keep the temperature from getting too cold. Didn't realize the light itself made a difference in egg laying. And of course our winter days are even shorter than yours.

I was going to put the "heat" lamp on a thermostat so it isn't run except as needed -- average winter lows are in the 30s here, but cold snaps in the teens and low 20s are possible. Maybe I'll still do that, and also have a CF bulb on a timer so they still get light on days when it isn't cold out.

Over at backyardchickens.com (highly recommended) there are members in Alaska and Alberta who don't provide heat for their chickens. They can handle it - they just fluff up and have a built-in down jacket. The comb is a weak point that can get frostbite, but I doubt that at the temperatures you see. Your winter is longer than mine, but not much colder.

Wow, that would be nice not to have to warm the coop in winter. A heat lamp sucks down a LOT of juice. We're already at just 10-11kWh/day, so any significant heating of the coop will be noticeable.

What's your take on bulb protection? Our backyard chicken book recommends using a heavy-duty lampholder with a grille/screen to protect the bulb against crashes from birds flying around in the coop. Overkill? Will a $6 clamp lamp (actually $0, since I already have one) do the job?

That lamp will do just fine, as long as you secure it well. I would use wire and/or screws or hooks, not just the clamp. The birds may bump it and knock it down. Consider where it would land if they did.

I assume you'd use an efficient bulb and nothing hot, so you've already minimized the risk of fire. That's a danger with heat lamps and dry dusty bedding.

Yes, I would at least wrap nails around the clamp so it can't come down.

My neighbours have chickens and the main predator by far is the fox in urban areas of UK.
I love free range eggs!

You would have the danger of mercury contamination around your coop if you break a fluorescent bulb, not a good thing. The dog incidents brought back a memory of me sewing up a chick that got torn up by a dog.. and she survived the 9 year old surgeon!.

Chickens are a lot of fun, always active and noisy. One of the earliest post mentions dumping junk mail in the compost pile, do you have issues with plastic and glossy paper?, I'm sure the inks are vegetable based and safe.

I only put black and non-glossy paper in the compost. The other stuff may be ok, but I'm not sure.

I spent the weekend and got the coop mostly rebuilt. Still needs paint* and some wire replaced on the attached run. At least the coop is secure at night now.

Some parts I didn't paint a year ago, I found the exposed caulking was crumbling from sun exposure after only 10 months. Amazing!

its biodegradable caulking, everyone benefits.. really.