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SallyT
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| Posted: April 11 2008 at 10:12pm | IP Logged
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Somebody with slippery fingers and a really hot sidewalk.
Seriously, this is a fascinating conversation. Friends of ours in the country had chickens until the coyotes got them sometime last year, and they would bring us eggs periodically, which made me want my own chickens. Of course, we live in the burbs . . . how much room do you really need?
Sally
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Michaela
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| Posted: April 11 2008 at 10:37pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
| we live in the burbs . . . how much room do you really need? |
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We do, too.
Since we have a dog that chases the ducks and crows that land in the backyard, we wouldn't have free range of the entire yard. Our backyard is a decent size...not huge, but any of these would work. Backyard Coop, The City Chicken,Backyard Chickens
ETA: I just found the codes for our city and zoning district  took me forever  , but thank goodness for the internet.
We hoped for something small... four or five chickens....codes say we are allowed up to 16 chickens that must be 10 feet from the property line.
I want to wake my DH to tell him my find, but I think he has heard enough about chickens in the past few days.  
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Michaela
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Sarah
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| Posted: April 12 2008 at 2:35pm | IP Logged
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We have our first batch of chicks on order from McMurray Hatchery, coming in June (28 of them). They'll be our first shot at this whoole chicken endeavor. I'm really excited!
Here is my serious question:
Our coop is in our front yard about 60 feet or so (?) from our front door (I'm not good at gauging distance). Anyway, we were going to build a fence around a yard for them, but now I'm considering free-range.
Is poop a serious concern? Will they end up pooping all over where my kids are playing? Will they poop on the front porch? I'm sorry this is kind of .
I would rather have them free-range, but not if I'm cleaning off shoes constantly. My biggest reason for fencing them was their droppings.
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: April 12 2008 at 2:42pm | IP Logged
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With 28 chickens, that's a lot of poop. I guess it depends on how large of property you have--how much the poop will be spread out, kwim? Do I remember correctly that you have acreage?
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chicken lady
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Sarah wrote:
Is poop a serious concern? Will they end up pooping all over where my kids are playing? Will they poop on the front porch? I'm sorry this is kind of .
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It does depend on how much area they have to free range, this has not been a problem for us. You can always give it a try and if it becomes a problem just leave them in the coop.
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Sarah
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| Posted: April 12 2008 at 6:50pm | IP Logged
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We have 3 acres, but the coop is up near the house. We plan on butchering half of these and ending up with about 12 laying hens (Dh has had experience with butchering, luckily).
This will be such an adventure. . .and in the end I suppose I could do my original plan which was rotating chicken "yards" periodically as they became grungy.
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Sarah
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Chicken Lady-
Do you have a rooster? I couldn't find you mentioning that above. If so how's it going? If not have you even had a hen "turn into" a rooster? I just read about that on a chicken forum that occasionaly a dominant hen can take on male characteristics. They said it could also be from an ovarian tumor.
That's kinda weird. 
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 12 2008 at 7:58pm | IP Logged
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Wow, once we get moved, I'm going to check out codes and ordinances. I would LOVE to have fresh eggs -- that would cut down on trips to the grocery store (now if I could just find a cow the size of a beagle . . . ).
Michaela, you have chickens AND ducks in a suburban yard? How decent-sized is "decent-sized?" What size lot are we talking about?
Sally
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: April 12 2008 at 8:34pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
(now if I could just find a cow the size of a beagle . . . ).
Sally |
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It's called a goat!
Ok, maybe not quite beagle sized, but still...
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chicken lady
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Sarah wrote:
Chicken Lady-
Do you have a rooster? . |
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We do have a rooster, though as far as I am concerned he is not long for this world
My dd just received some straight run Silkies in the mail, hopefully they will be all or at least mostly all, pullets...... as roosters drive me nutty!
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chicken lady
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SallyT wrote:
(now if I could just find a cow the size of a beagle . . . ).
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Actually there are mini cows, we hae one, it is a Dexter.
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Michaela
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| Posted: April 14 2008 at 1:14am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
Michaela, you have chickens AND ducks in a suburban yard? How decent-sized is "decent-sized?" What size lot are we talking about? |
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We don't have any, yet. We are still in the research and planning stage. Our lot is one acre.
The ducks aren't ours. These Mallards have recently taken a liking to our yard. They come every day for bird food and bread crumbs that I put on the ground for the birds that visit.
According to code, we are allowed 16 hens, ducks, pigeons, or rabbits.  Three or four, OK. Five would probably be pushing it for me.
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Michaela
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Angel
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chicken lady wrote:
SallyT wrote:
(now if I could just find a cow the size of a beagle . . . ).
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Actually there are mini cows, we hae one, it is a Dexter. |
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The farmer we get our beef from raises Dexters, too. I can vouch for their beef at least. 
--Angela
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Michaela
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Michaela wrote:
SallyT wrote:
Michaela, you have chickens AND ducks in a suburban yard? How decent-sized is "decent-sized?" What size lot are we talking about? |
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We don't have any, yet. We are still in the research and planning stage. Our lot is one acre.
The ducks aren't ours. These Mallards have recently taken a liking to our yard. They come every day for bird food and bread crumbs that I put on the ground for the birds that visit.
According to code, we are allowed 16 hens, ducks, pigeons, or rabbits. Three or four, OK. Five would probably be pushing it for me. |
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So much has happened since this thread!
The (7) chicks we purchased are now laying eggs!
I walked outside to find three eggs in their coop today.
To all the experienced chicken owners....besides washing the egg off, is there something else I'm supposed to do? I vaguely recall rubbing them with veggie oil, but I'm not sure if I read it here on the forums or in one of the many books I read during the research phase six months ago.
Thank you for your help!
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donnalynn
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Michaela wrote:
To all the experienced chicken owners....besides washing the egg off, is there something else I'm supposed to do? I vaguely recall rubbing them with veggie oil, but I'm not sure if I read it here on the forums or in one of the many books I read during the research phase six months ago.
Thank you for your help! |
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We do not wash our eggs until just before we use them - there is a "bloom" around the egg that is a natural protective coating against bacteria - if you wash your eggs you will wash off this protective coating. We usually go through eggs fast enough that we keep them in a basket on the counter.
Our eggs are usually pretty clean looking - if the eggs are getting poopy looking we change the hay in their nests but usually their actual nesting boxes are pretty clean. The only time we've had eggs that look dirty are when they've decided to try to hide them in some weird corner.
When we start getting a bunch we keep track of the eggs in egg cartons making sure the oldest eggs get used first.
Egg shells are porous - so I wouldn't think rubbing anything on them would be a good idea.
We are actually buying eggs right now - all our birds are molting - what a difference in store bought egg yolks!
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Bookswithtea
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Sooo...whose getting chicks for this spring? I'm planning on placing an order for delivery in early April of this year (along with 2 kid goats and 2 Holland Lops). My list of breeds I want is growing so quickly, though, its ridiculous! Is it weird to have 2 of each of 6 different chickens???
I'm hoping for buff orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, Partridge and Barred Rocks, Welsummer, Salmon Faverolle, and....oh shoot, there were more. Oh! A speckled sussex for sure. Mostly I've heard these are all heavy breeds, generally docile and decent layers. Someone told me last night though that her barreds were a flight risk. Any thoughts?
Whatcha planning for Spring?
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Angel
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We're going to do meat chickens this year, but I'm not sure if we're going to go the straight run Wyandotte for meat and eggs route, or buy Cornish for meat alone. My dd wants bantams, and I don't know... our current hens have started producing up to 10 eggs a day which may be all we need. So, although I am tempted to add more breeds, maybe not.
We have Buff Orpingtons and they are docile birds, good for cold winters, but as they're pretty bright yellow they're easy targets if you have a predator (or dog) problem. We like our Dominiques best, because they seem to be smarter and friendlier than the B. Orpingtons and our Golden-Laced Wynadottes (who are very gentle, too, but don't tend to follow you around like the Dominiques do.) I've heard that Barred Rocks can be a bit aggressive, which is why I didn't order any with our first batch.
I think you may want to order a few more of each breed than 2 because if you lose both then you won't have any of that breed. (We lost 4 of our 15 to an accident and a dog. ) But it's been a lot of fun owning different breeds.
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Angela
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Sarah
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We have 2 coops now. One is a layer house and one is a grower house. The plan is to get a flock of heritage breeds every spring and once they come into lay, the previous flock will be about 18 months old and molting. That way we're replacing our flock once a year.
Right now we have 23 hens that are giving us about 10 to 15 eggs a day. Yesterday was our record with 20 eggs!
We have white orpingtons, buff rocks, speckled sussex, black australorp, marans, and partridge rocks.
In may we will be getting, RI Reds, SL wyandottes, GL wyandottes, americauna, dominiques, Delawares, buff orpingtons, and silver gray dorkings.
The young birds are fenced in and the older birds free range.
We'll see how this goes! We are loving chickens!!!
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missionfamily
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WE have ten laying hens now...buff orpingtons, black australops, and dominiques. WE're getting about 6 eggs a day. We'll probably add ten more this spring so our egg crop can rotate...we made the coop out of a large fenced dog pen on our property and split it in half...so we have room for the second batch.
Dh wants to try some meat birds but neither of us have nay idea what we're doing. Our beef comes from our friends who raise cattle and they just bring it to a nearby slaughterhouse and we pick it up and clean and frozen...I wonder if he'd do a batch of chickens for us?
The catalog came the other day...we spent all day looking at it...such chicken dorks here!
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Chari
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I only have a few seconds..........but I thought I would say the first time I bought, I got 3-4 of about 10 different breeds. I had them for five years and they were great......fine.....we LOVED the variety out there!
I am about to put another order in.......and, I think I will add even more variety this time!
Oh, and ALL of mine were heavy breeds and HARDY for the winter.....and hardy they were! And GREAT LAYERS!
Our barred rocks were not aggressive. In fact none of ours were.
Some of our breeds included, but were not limited to: RI Reds, SL wyandottes, americauna, buff orpingtons, black australorps, and partridge rocks.
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