Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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1) I don't know. I think most people choose based on appearance but I haven't looked into it. Be sure you get egg laying birds and not meat birds. The meat birds will be full grown to the point where they can barely walk in like 6 weeks and then if you don't butcher them immediately they will just die of heart attacks. I'm not kidding. They taste great though, so if you're interested in that they're fine, but you need to be ready to harvest them as soon as they're grown.
2) You probably want at least 5 or 6 but it sort of depends on how many eggs you can use.
3) You don't need to wrangle them. Once they're used to sleeping in the coop they will go back in there on their own when the sun goes down. There are even solar powered chicken doors you can buy that open at sunrise and close at sunset on their own.

Think about whether you're going to think of them as livestock or pets before you get them. We treat ours like livestock. We get chicks in the spring, butcher the roosters as soon as they're full grown, then keep the hens over one winter and butcher them the following fall and replace with the new batch of chicks. They can live much longer than that, but the egg laying production will drop off a lot and you probably won't want to eat them.
 
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lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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I do the same thing Brutul does all around. 5 or 6 is a lot if it is just you and the wife, what are you going to do with 30 eggs a week? You can have as few as two with no issues.

And as far as what kind to get if you're looking for eggs? You can't go wrong with Rhode Island Reds. They lay really well, are good back yard chickens, and actually have some meat on them so when their laying time is done you can make some good soup with them. If you're just interested in the eggs get a hybrid, they'll lay every day for nearly a year.
 
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Rime

Rime

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Before you put birds in the coup, make sure to go around it and ensure that it is secure. Last thing you want is to have to clean up a mess made by a raccoon, fox, or some sort of weasel.

When I redid mine, I dug four inches below it the topsoil and put chicken wire down into the ground, then did a double layer for the first three feet above the ground.
 
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lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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Good advice. Another method I did is to stack two railroad ties - you can find them cheap on craigslist. I screwed them together and buried them leaving only about 2 inches above ground. Then I stapled the chicken wire to the top of the railroad ties. So you end up with about 10 inches below ground and a solid base to put everything else on. Works like a charm.
 
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Locnar

Locnar

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Just don't get fancy chickens that have feathers on their feet or are all puffy/fluffy.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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... said:
(i was going to post a chicken thread but found this so i'm bumping this!)

I'm buying a new house and it has a decent sized chicken coup already built and ready to go. I didn't look in it to understand everything about it, but I think I'll get some chickens to go in there. Partially because the wife loves eggs, and because I like spergy survivalist shit.

1. what breed of chickens should i get?
2. how many? I know it's limited by the coup size, but is there a bare minimum i should have for them to feel like they have plenty of homies?
3. Do i let them roam the property and just wrangle them at night? part of my interest in having chickens is to let them eat bugs.

Thank you in advance for all chicken related advice.
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If you want to keep your chickens, I suggest giving up on the free range thing. Our average loss was 3 a week til my wife finally agreed we needed to keep them inside 24-7

Hell, even in a coop we've lost 12 in one night to coons.

Not my new coop though, nobodies getting into this thing. At 2 feet off the ground , we've had no problems since the upgrade.
 
Rime

Rime

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I have a repurposed 'dog run' that I welded a wire cap on and put on wheels. I pull it out to an area with a yard tractor, then set it down and crank the wheels up to the sides so it is relatively 'flush' with the ground. Put the chickens in it during the day for a week or so, then move it to the next area. They seem to enjoy it, supplements their regular feed with plenty of wild. Absolutely would not leave them out overnight in it, though.

Chickens have almost no defenses left in them, so leaving them in an unsecured area for any amount of time is going to result in losses due to predators.

You can let them roam your yard, but that is best if you also have a couple of dogs who spend their time out there with them. A good dog on the porch/in the yard will deter most predators, save the desperate or the super crafty. I have three GSDs who roam about the yard when I am outside, they do well to keep any bears/coyotes/foxes/coons at bay during the day.

Motion lights, urine sprays (think these are mostly 'debunked', but lots of the old timers still swear by them, so why not), and good coup security will help minimize losses.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Aldarion said:
If you want to keep your chickens, I suggest giving up on the free range thing. Our average loss was 3 a week til my wife finally agreed we needed to keep them inside 24-7

Hell, even in a coop we've lost 12 in one night to coons.

Not my new coop though, nobodies getting into this thing. At 2 feet off the ground , we've had no problems since the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Coons killed them during the day? Never seen that. Ours are always free range in the day time and shut in at night and I can't recall ever losing one to predators during the day. Having a dog in the yard is helpful as well.
 
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Kiroy

Kiroy

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BrutulTM said:
Coons killed them during the day? Never seen that. Ours are always free range in the day time and shut in at night and I can't recall ever losing one to predators during the day. Having a dog in the yard is helpful as well.
Click to expand...

this is the way most folks do it in my area, bonus points rigging up an auto timed door opener / closer on the coop
 
Locnar

Locnar

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during the day it will be bobcats and birds of prey, and night it will be everything. Got to lock them up at night. If you make it a pleasant routine its not bad, especially if you are retired and can be home all the time. Pour your coffee and go let your chickens out.

One thing I don't miss about not having chickens now is the bird shit everywhere. But these days I keep a dedicated set of shoes outside the door for tramping around the property so maybe it would not be as annoying now.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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BrutulTM said:
Coons killed them during the day? Never seen that. Ours are always free range in the day time and shut in at night and I can't recall ever losing one to predators during the day. Having a dog in the yard is helpful as well.
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No, I was unclear, the coons got into the coop at night and killed like a dozen of them. We have a lot of predators around though, I am sure this varies from one location to the next. We've seen lots of big hawks and eagles hunting in our fields, a bobcat walked through our front yard a couple years ago, and my neighbor has a family of coyotes living on his property.

It is true that we didnt have a dog at the time. My dog is an idiot and would eat the chickens or at least chase them to death, so now he's just another reason we don't free range.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Coons are pretty good killers. We had a mother coon and 5 babies get into the coop once and they ate 28 nearly full grown chickens. We got down there the next morning and all that was left was a bunch of blood and feathers and the odd foot or something but there wasn't one carcass left. They ate the bones and everything. It was kind of amazing. They made the mistake of coming back for more a few nights later and got treed by the dogs which was the only way we figured out what happened.
 
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Borzak

Borzak

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Leg trap with cheap sardines out of a can, it makes great bait. But you have to shoot them first thing in the morning or they will chew their leg off to get out of it eventually.
 
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Cool infoes. My coup is built. It's half in a small shed with a concrete floor (nest boxes are there) and half on dirt. total li ke 6 x 15 The owner of the property had that coup full of chickens. And then three other coups that were like cheap hogwire cubes with plastic nests in the middle. each coup was full of sillier looking chickens than the last . The final set was widely fluffy and puffy and had almost pastel eggs. No idea why coons didn't eat them. Maybe a dog is on duty.
 
Locnar

Locnar

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Killing raccoons will be a never ending job, please focus on just making the night coop secure. You will constantly get new raccoons moving in, and fast. Please trust me on that one. I regret the amount of raccoons i've killed before realizing this.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Trapping and killing racoons with my son after they killed our chickens was some good quality time. But yeah, raccoons are never ending. Had to secure the coop to end the problems.

The season we lost so many chickens, I saw a pack of 5 raccoons (mom and mostly grown cubs), I shit you not, running across my field in broad daylight. I was like shit, if I see 5 at once in the daytime how many are out at night?
 
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lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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I believe I've killed nearly 200 raccoons since I moved to this property. I don't seem to have a problem any more. Give it a few years, and I'll kill a few dozen more.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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lurkingdirk said:
I hope you shot those sunsabitches out of the trees.
Click to expand...

Sure did. It wasn't quite as impressive a massacre as the one in the chicken house but none of them got to eat chicken again.
 
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