Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
ALMOST BEEKEEPING - RELATED TOPICS => FARMING & COUNTRY LIFE => Topic started by: catfishbill on January 08, 2009, 03:42:52 pm
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hello everyone,i am wanting to get started with some chickens,but would like some info first.i have a 10x10 dog pen that i will make a coop with.how many birds do you usually start with?can you put the coop in the woods or do they need to be in the open?what breeds are the best to start with for eggs?thanks bill
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I have heard Rhode Island Reds for eggs. They are large eggs and the hens don't get broody and stop laying.
I just turn mine loose during the day.
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Go to the library (or bookstore) and pick up "Storey's Guide to Chickens". By far the best one-stop resource.
You'll need something for them to get out of the rain and somewhere to lay eggs. A 10x10 yard will "comfortably" handle only 5-6 hens if it's stationary. You could add a couple more if you're planning on moving the pen every day or two to provide fresh ground. Put the pen wherever you want, but a bit of sunlight is a good idea.
If it's eggs you want, go for a brown or black sex-link for brown eggs or leghorns or a commercial white egg layer. Rhode-Island Reds, Barred Plymouth Rock, Buff Orphingtons, all make good dual-purpose breeds and are easy to get ahold of.
J-
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Hubbard Isa Browns are the breed that I have had for a few years now. You wont be sorry with these. They lay more than any other bird that I have had and I have had many. They are never broody. They are medium size so eat less but the eggs are so big that they have to hurt. Ex-large brown most of the time. For the first year many will lay 2 eggs aday. My best day with 50 birds was 70 eggs and every day average was somewhere in the high 50's
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thanks for the info,that puts me heading in the right direction.thanks bill
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I, too, am going to start chickens this year! I am planning to start with 3 and wanted Aucuranas but those Isa Brown's sound great!
I just bought an eglu (yeah, the yuppie way to "farm") and can't wait to get those little chicks!
I agree the Storey book is fab. So is the Rodale book Chickens in Your Backyard is good, too.
My big question is about feeding and I can't seem to find a good source/list of acceptable table scraps and/or weeds. I have read that you shouldn't give them potato peels but other than that it seems like they can eat anything?!
I also like the backyard chickens forum that folks here directed me to and recommend that if you haven't checked it out.
- Jess
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My birds get everything except raw potato skins and fish.
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What is wrong with potato skins?
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If you go the backyard chickens forums and do a search there are several pages put together of what is acceptable for chickens to eat and what is not.
You have to be careful when you feed them weeds, only because there have been cases of a chicken choking on them.
They usually only break a piece at a time off when they are out foraging but when you throw them big long pieces sometimes they keep on eating it down and they get these big long pieces stuck in their throats or it causes their crops to get bound up.
Anytime you feed them table food you must give them access to a bowl of grit to help them grind the food up in their crops.
There is also some foods that can cause the eggs to taste funny so you have to be careful of anything to strong.
I tend to keep the girls on their food, which is the Purina Layena crumbles and then let them roam around the yard.
I keep the scraps to the very minimum.I want to make sure they are getting the vitamins and minerals meant for them in the chicken feed.
I do give the yogurt plain or vanilla a couple of days a week to keep their digestive system healthy. Its very good for them.
Chickens also need to have oyster shell available( I mix it in with their food) so they have nice strong egg shells.
The only trouble with those sexlink types, and I do have some and they are great, is that they tend to burn out sooner since they are born with all the stores of eggs they will ever lay and they develop reproductive problems, usually prolapse and getting egg bound.
The usual standard for housing to birds ratio is 4 square feet per bird unless you raise bantams and then you can get away with 3 square feet.
They also all need enough room on the roost/perch, they will all need to roost at night.
They do need room to go out in forage so either a run or a place to free range is needed.
The breeds that were mentioned are nice, I have them all. If you like the colored eggs I suggest a marans breed, the most common and most affordable is the cuckoo marans and they lay a very dark speckled egg.
The black copper marans lay the darkest eggs but they are extremely expensive right now.
The blue egg layers are the auracaunas and the ameraucanas but most people have a mutt of the mix called easter eggers and they just don't realize it. They are very hard to tell apart sometimes and if you buy them from a hatchery you will absolutely be getting an easter egger, they advertise the pure breeds but they don't really have them.
The two pure breeds I mentioned should only lay blue eggs, but many times people purchase these and then the hen will lay a green egg or a pink "ish" egg.
Its still possible that you can get one that lays a blue egg as well but I just wanted to make you aware that you could end up with a green or pink egg layer.
The easter eggers are usually much prettier since they have a wide variety of colors compared to the basic pure breeds.
The green eggs are still very pretty and quite large. I have a couple, one lays green eggs and one lays a bluish egg not as robins egg blue as the ameraucanas lay. Mine lay every day and are sweet girls.
Both of these girls were sold to me as "ameraucanas" which they are obviously not by the color of their eggs.
I have golden lakenvelders that lay a white egg every day, smaller than the standared layers but nice and consistent.
I had leghorns and couldn't wait to sell em off, which I did as soon as I could, they were very high strung which I have now heard is their nature.
Well hope some of that helped, good luck with everyone who is just starting out with the chickens.
You will love having them.
We went away for an overnight stay and my 6 year old son was upset because he missed our chickens. You get attached to them .
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What is wrong with potato skins?
The uncooked potato skins have a poisonous alkaloid in it called solanine.
I know that its considered a nightshade plant just like tomatoes, you aren't suppose to eat the stems or leaves on a tomato plant either.
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I have a totally different environment up here, so my advice wont do you any good. I have a couple very helpful links though. The first, hendersons chicken chart, is a quick reference chart to many popular breeds, and has info like heat tolerance, egg laying, temperment...you'll like this site:
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html
and the second is the backyard chicken forum. you'll get more advice than you ever wanted here (and not all of it good), but that is the common man's chicken forum:
www.backyardchickens.com/forum/index.php
also, the coop:
http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi
this is more ..um, scholarly, like the bee-L.
oh wait! Feathersite has a page on every single breed known to man.
http://www.feathersite.com/
(check out the Cemani)
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According to this cooking does nothing to change it.
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/steroid.html
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Hmm, don't know much about it, but its strange since potato skins (loaded with cheese and sourcream bacon, yum now I am hungry) is actually an acceptable dish.
Then there is roasted potatoes that the skin remains on.
According to that article growers or anyone producing a new variety of potato are not allowed to produce potatoes unless the alkaloids remain under the acceptable level of solanine. Exposing them to the sun makes the risk worse as well.
It appeas what they are saying is that you just never should eat them raw or expose them to the sun and not cook any that appear to have the green tint to them.
So cooking them and eating them are safe because growers have to keep them within a level that is safe, again as long as you haven't left them in the sun.
I know that when I was making potatoes on Christmas this year I got a couple in the bag that were clearly green so I threw them away. I don't like to take any chances.
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Potato skins in and of themselves are not poisonous, it's when they're exposed to light and turn green, then they're a problem for all of us, not just chickens. If there's a bit of green on the potato I'll cut it out, if it's green through to the center, I toss it. I grow potatoes every year and the tubers that are near the soil surface can be green, those get replanted to produce a second crop!
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Check out this link. It describes the most of the chickens, goods and bads.
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Avocado is not good for most animals either, skin & pits too. J
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Forgot to mention that I give them all the guts of the pumpkins I carve out because the seeds are a natural dewormer and its a good preventative. They love that stuff.
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Avocado is not good for most animals either, skin & pits too. J
The Alligator pear makes nice compost. You let the seed sprout and in composts quicker, and dies at the 1st frost.
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If you want good layer's of brown eggs and something unique to see-consider turken's (aka naked necks).ugly as sin to some people but very good layer's,hardy,not highstrung and big enough to be table fare.
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Woops! :shock: Forgot to put the link in. Sorry!
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html
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The Henderson's Chicken Breed Chart is a great place to investigate what chooks you'd like to have. My Pet Chicken has a neat breed selection tool (http://www.mypetchicken.com/breedQuestions.aspx), you enter your criteria and it tells you what chickens fulfill your desires (http://annzoid.com/images/smileys/animroos.gif)
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Reinbeau, thanks for that link. Very interesting!
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Thanks to all for the links and for starting this thread - I have done nothing but sit around and surf "chickens" for two days! Not a bad way to spend a miserable weekend.
- Jess
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Just found this site when trying to figure out what birds Im going to buy.
http://www.chickencrossing.org/basics.php
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Jess, Me too!! My eggs sell out before I even leave the CSA so I need more chix & want some darker egg layers to mix in, Maran or Wellsummer I think & more EE's. The EE's come in so many different colors & patterns, you never know what you will get! They are like bees, MORE MORE MORE!! Speaking of chix...better get out there & clean the coop...UGH! :-P J
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What is CSA? No use abbreviating, someone is going to ask.
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Community Supported Agriculture. A small (11 acres)organically grown farm (Take Root Farm, it's on the web)grows veggies & a bunch of us buy shares each season. Every week we pick up a box of assorted veggies & fruit. In the winter she goes to the organic co-op or market or wherever (Maybe Chef knows?) & gets our stuff. It is fresher than @ the store & for me, the thought of hundreds of people not walking by sneezing or letting their kids w/boogity hands play with my food is priceless. Also, if we are not going to the store all the time, it cuts out all the "impulse" buying of things not good for us. We do get all the U/cut kales, mustard greens, swiss chard, mints & herbs (whatever is still growing) we want & in the summer huge bouquets of flowers. Jen is letting me put some bees there in the spring! The other members are clamoring for honey already so I have a ready made market! J
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Hi Poka!
Yes, I have been looking at Welsummer, too. A farm in MD that I know has them and they look like great layers and friendly chix. (google Whitmore Farms - he's got a nice page on the Welsummer - and he has fainting goats - who raises them anymore!?). I had never heard of the Welsummers before.
I have been doing research on the Easter Eggers, too - it is a bit disappointing that the breed has been so muddied. Again, Whitmore has true Ameraraucanas (or claims to and I kind of trust him) so since I am only going to do 3 chix I am thinking I will do one each Welsummer, Ameraraucana and was thinking Delaware but honestly am now leaning towards the Isa Hubbard mentioned here earlier. Of course I also used the pick your chicken tool and saw Barred Plymouth Rocks would be good for me - I have been in love with them since I met a few at Mount Vernon several years ago.
What do you have now - would you recommend them for backyard chicken-ing?
Honestly, waste is my biggest concern since I won't be able to compost ALL of it and I really am in a suburban/backyard setting so I've got to be proactive about odor. Any advice out there for disposal?
- Jess
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Jess, with only a few chix it isn't so bad. I use deep litter, where you put 3-5" of shavings down & mix (I use a hoe) it in every few days. Add some more shavings every week or so. You can go weeks without clearing it out completely, it sort of starts to break down right in there. I also use stall dry & diatomateous earth for the ammonia (works great in the catbox too). You can compost it to use in the rest of the yard. I have Blk. Sex Links, Danish Leghorns & EE's. They are all very friendly, even the leghorns that are sposed to be flighty. The Sex Links are very pretty. Nothing beats your own eggs, you won't even want to eat an omelet in a restaraunt anymore cause they look anemic! J
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Jessaboo,
Are you doing mail order or will you pick them up. Every place I know of will only ship orders of 25. And Estes Hatchery throws in a couple more for Justin Case.
You know Just in case a couple die.
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I confessed to Jessaboo my desire to have chix myself. I too live in heavy suburbia and cant afford to "bee a nusiance." Particularly w/ bees in my backyard. I dont think I could live w/o at least a hive or two in my backyard and wouldnt want to draw attention to me. I will observe her attempts and maybe try next year. Just a few for eggs, bug duties etc. I dont see myslef butchering, but give me time. I love jerked chicken!!! Oh, and absolutely no roosters.
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JM, I like Estes too & am going to order 25 & hope someone else around here wants some! They were 100% on the pullets last time. I don't want to wait for the feedstore to get em..would like to get em fledged out & ready to go to the outside pen early April for eggs between June & July. The EE's seemed to take longer to lay than the Sex Links or Leghorns at least for me. Don't know bout the marans or welsummers :? J
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I got one rooster out of the 27 they sent. He is pretty though.
I got mine July 23. Some started laying the last of November and others started all through December.
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Hey Jerry -
My plan is to pick them up. I know most hatcheries are really not interested in selling one or two (although looking at McMurray he does have pricing for one chick). I would really like chicks, of course, but if I can't get them sexed I am going to have to get pullets. I am in a situation where I don't want to risk even one rooster crow! I also don't want my local post office to see me coming in to pick up live birds - that's just BEGGING for trouble.
I have a friend who is fairly local who gets Easter Eggers every year and has offered me a few from her chicks this spring so if all else fails getting the birds I really want I will go that route. She orders from McMurray and has been happy with their sexing accuracy, too. I think they also send Justin Case one or two more to make up for "unfortunate shipping accidents."
- Jess
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Well all this talk about chickens, I just cleaned the 2 coops and the grower pen today and it took me 2 hours.
Its so cold that some of the shavings were frozen to the floor where the waterer leaked a little and I had to scrape it all off. What fun.
But they all seem very content with their nice new fluffy shavings.
I agree with the easter eggers, at least my experience is that they lay later, I never had any of mine lay until at least 7 months.
The rest all came into lay around 6 months although my cuckoo maran just laid her first egg at 8 months, thinking it could be the cold weather but I don't know.
I have around 50 chickens now. I have a few of those black copper marans that are suppose to lay the chocolate eggs, the darkest of all with the copper and brown spots.
Well, of course they aren't laying yet either, just like the easter eggers, the colored layers like to keep you waiting for those pretty eggs.
I love welsummers, very pretty and good temperment.
Right now I am raising, Black copper marans, cuckoo marans, black sex links, easter eggers, silkies, buff orpingtons, blue orpingtons, rhode island reds, new hampshire reds, barred rocks, giant blue cochins,
speckled sussex,silver laced wyandottes, blue wyandottes,araucanas,frizzles and sizzles.
I think I remembered them all.
If you are worried about raising chickens in suburbia, its really not an issue unless you have roosters.
Just don't get roosters and keep the coop clean and the neighbors will really not care. Especially when you are sharing all those free local eggs.
I have a fenced in yard and I just turn them loose every morning and they go into the coop on their own at night, if you are concerned for their safety you can just build a run, as long as they get access to the outside world they will be happy.
I have one that thinks she is a dog or maybe even a human, I haven't figured it out yet,and she follows me around, and screeches outside my kitchen door to be let in the house.
People will come over to visit and you can hear her screeching and sqwaking outside the door and pecking at the door with her beak, she gets very indignant when you ignore her. It sounds crazy but its true.
If I am not quick enough she slides right in behind me and starts walking around the house like she owns the place.
A couple of times I have come out of a room to find her in the house and i have no idea how she got in, I can only assume that someone else was not quick enough either and they didn't realize they let her in.
If I call the dogs in she comes running in behind them and goes into the pantry with them for a drink of water.
I had no idea chickens had such personalities, they are a riot to watch in action.
You guys will love raising chickens, I wouldn't worry about the 25 minimum order because you will end up wanting more anyway.
The reason I didn't order from a hatchery was because I didn't want 25 chicks and now I have more than that.
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The twenty five minimum is for the chicks body heat during shipping. Little birds like quail the minimum is much higher.
Natalie, Do you give yours an average of 15 hours of light? I hear when the days get shorter they won't lay as much and might even stop until longer days.
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Jerrymac, I have heard that about the light. I have not been supplementing light but alot of my pullets came into lay this winter which surprised the heck out of me. I thought I would be getting zero eggs since we have these short ,dark cold days here in Massachussetts right now but for the most part we are doing well. There has been a couple of days where the egg production will drop off sharply but then all of a sudden they are laying full swing.
I don't know if them being out in the sun all day helps or not. I let them out of their coops early in the morning so they are out in the sun all day.I don't know how else to explain the sudden lows and highs in production.
But then again, I do have a couple of 8 month old birds that have only just started laying and they are laying sporadically, one is a wyandotte, but her sister is laying and the other is the cuckoo maran.
I meant to say that mypetchicken.com ships chickens and they will ship as low as 3 at a time. Although I don't know if that is a great idea I haven't heard anything bad about them.
I had a breeder ship me 10 marans in september and they made it through fine. I don't think too many people get chicks in the mail around here, my mailman seemed very anxious to drop them off and he said everyone at the post office was yelling at him to hurry up and get them out of the post office. They were so nervous.
Just be careful to anyone who orders less than the minimum at the hatcheries or if you don't specify on your order correctly that you do not want packing peanuts.
If you don't know the term, packing peanuts are extra baby roos they have and they use them to keep the pullets warm. Its also a good way for them to unload their roosters but its bad for you if you don't want roosters.
I know someone on one of the chicken forums ended up with 15 roosters this way.
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I have a timer rigged to give light just before sunrise (5am) and then goes off. It then comes on in the evening until 8pm giving 15 hours of light. Out of 27 hens I get anywhere from 19 to 23 eggs per day.
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Do you have any problem with getting the girls to go back into the coop at night with the lights on?
I use to put my floodlights on out back whenever I switched the lampost light on out front.
I found though that the chickens would just start lingering in the yard instead of going inside at dusk.
I could not force them into the coops for anything, so I shut the lights off and then instead of going in the coops they just stood around in the dark.
I had to chase them around for a week after I stopped using the floodlights, it was like their systems were all out of whack.
Those are some pretty good results with the lights, I have heard they work well.
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I do the same as JM, they get 15 hrs of light. I don't have a floodlight in the yard. When it starts to get dark outside they just put themselves to bed. Miss Ginny sleeps with them now too. They do hang out on the ramp by the door of the coop yakking & take a little longer to settle down but they are all inside when it gets fully dark. I have 16 chix & get 10-13 a day. They are very happy this afternoon cause I brought a box full of loose lettuce leaves from the farm. J
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I have 18 that at are laying age and I get around 12-16 eggs a day but don't have light.
The other ones who should have gone into lay around now haven't and I am sure that its the light issue.
The thing is, I am just giving away all these eggs right now. I can't start selling them until spring so I guess it doesn't really matter.
I have heard that chickens*(like humans) are born with all the eggs they are capable of laying and if they lay alot they burn out early, kind of like the sex links burning out after 2 years.
So I guess if they are late laying this winter or slow down it will just mean they will lay eggs longer.
I guess thats one way to look at it huh?
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Some of the girls hang out (in the light of the door) after dark. Cold windy days they are in before sundown. But I usually can herd them in pretty easily. One got shut out one night and greeted me in the morning.
There was this other one got killed. Not sure if she got shut out or if it happened during the day.
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That happened to me once as well, a I can't remember if it was my husband or my son that locked up the coop for the night, but they missed her. She was shut out all night and she was sleeping next to the coop in the morning.
The only reason I know it wasn't me is because I do a head (or tail count depending on which way they are facing me from the roost) when I lock up and they won't do that. They get confused when the hens start moving around and they think they all start to look the same.
For some reason my black copper maran cockerals use to try to hide around the corner from the coop and not go in at night when I wanted to lock up. They were very tough to catch too. Its the first time I ever had roosters do that. The roos are usually the ones that keep circling and nudging the girls to lead them into the coops at night. That is the one thing I like about roos, the nice ones anyway, they know how to treat their ladies and really watch out for them.
Except for this one lout I had, if a hawk started circling he would be the first one cowering in the hen house while they other rooster would be rounding up the girls and protecting them.
Anyway, this had been going on for months until about 2 or 3 weeks ago and now they finally go in.
Its weird because I have never had issues with any of them going in at night until I started using the floodlights.
They all seem past it now though so I just have to go out and lock the doors again.
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These aren't flood lights. Just a couple of those curly energy efficient lights inside the coop. I don't know the names of all the different breeds. I have a couple that have a copper colored head and a darker body. Really short comb and puffy looking cheeks. The odd thing is they are the only two that roost on the wires for the lights. None of the others do it.
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Yup, I know the lights you are talking about. I bet it doesn't add much to your electric bill either. It doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference there.
I have two coops right now and I want to build one large one this spring and I would love to have electricity run out there.
Its just a convenience to not have to go out with a flashlight at night to refill the waters and lock up and all that.
I could run a hanging light to the house with an extension cord in a pinch though. I did that once when we were building new nestboxes and some other stuff in the coop one night.
Puffy cheeks huh? I wonder if its an easter egger, does it lay colored eggs?
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I got the assorted rainbow layers from Estes and these do lay blue eggs. I'll try to remember to get a picture tomorrow.
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Awesome, I love pictures. The auracanas and ameraucanas are pure breds and both lay blue eggs, eastereggers which are a mix of those two or one of the parents is one of those 2 breeds then they are an easteregger which can lay blue, green or a pinkish egg.
If you take one of any of those eastereggers and breed it with a very dark egg layer like a marans you get an olive egger. A real olive green egg. People are very excited about that on the chicken forum I am on. Apparently its the newest color combination. I have both so I may breed my marans roo to my easter egger and see if I can't get one of those olive eggers.
Eastereggers can come in alot of variety, so many different colors and patterns. The purebreeds usually all look the same like most other breeds.
Thats what I think is so cool about easter eggers, they are unique.
I have tried to get ameraucanas a couple of times and both breeders told me for sure thats what they were but then when they started laying they were green eggs.
I think its really hard for people to tell them apart sometimes, but I would love to get some blue egg layers.I am hoping for some this spring.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Jerry-mac/chicks005.jpg)
The holes behind the chicken is where the chickens have been dust bathing. I keep expecting to see a China man's head pop up one of these days.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Jerry-mac/chicks006.jpg)
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Jerrymac,thanks for the pictures, she has beautiful coloring. I am surprised how much she looks just like one of mine, amelia my easter egger. I was told she was an ameraucana but she lays green eggs. Does yours lay blue? They are so pretty, I love the puffy cheeks on them.
I love the personality on this breed.
Have you seen some of the auracanas that look like they have a handlebar mustache shooting off the side of their face? Their are called tufts, now those are kind of strange looking.Some are born with tufts and some aren't. They are tough to hatch because they carry a lethal gene related to the tufts, a guy on the byc forum sells the eggs but he gives you 40 at a time because they are so hard to hatch you are lucky to get 5 or 6 out of that many. I might try to hatch them one more time, I would rather buy pullets though.I get sick of the brooder in the house.
Here is a link to what the tufts look like.
http://www.araucana.net/images/ACA_Images/Araucana_Alan_Stanford_Article.pdf
So true about those holes, I have a young shrub, just planted this fall and they have almost uprooted it they dig so much around the base of it to lay in.
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Haven't seen the tufts.
I think these I have are at the very bottom of the pecking order. I had to chase that one all over the place to get a picture because when they are not hiding they are trying to stay away from the others. They are always running away. They run in, grab a piece of scrap food, and run for a hiding place.
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JM, Ihave one that looks like that too! Also what I found out was a blue wheaten. Yep, they are hard on plants & can sure dig holes..J