Raising Chickens

Its spoken for.
 
Better eat her pretty soon. She'll eat you out of house and home and be too big to walk in no time. My wife gets eggs from Case to hatch out in her animal science classes and those joker's straight out on the weight. We kept 3 last year thinking they would make ok layers, but all they did was eat. They would literally sit in front of the feeder and eat for half the day.
 
Cornish are meant for one thing and that’s it. Quick eating. They grow really fast and eat everything. Usually they’ll die ~50 days or so because of heart failure where they get so big so fast. I didn’t know that when we got the last group of chicks lol they looked rough.
 
Hatched 8 Mottled Orpington today. Mom got off 6 more eggs so the wife put them inside in the incubator in a sterile lockdown to hopefully hatch the rest. We will try to integrate them if they hatch.
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Well, crap. Lost half our flock to (presumably) coyotes. Anyone wanna guess what I'm doing tonight?
 
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JSJJ388 said:
Well, crap. Lost half our flock to (presumably) coyotes. Anyone wanna guess what I'm doing tonight?
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The same thing I do every night. Listen for my Anatolian shepherds to start howling like wolves, get the AR and the night time looky device and start playing my rabbit call. Got 4 so far this year and the frequency has drastically dropped.
 
skyhighZJ said:
The same thing I do every night. Listen for my Anatolian shepherds to start howling like wolves, get the AR and the night time looky device and start playing my rabbit call. Got 4 so far this year and the frequency has drastically dropped.
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Nothing better to do, so I'm gonna camp out tonight. Don't have an outside dog. But I do have a night time looky device on the AR...
 
And then. These are considered organic chickens so only keep them 7 weeks.
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Drunktaco said:
Cornish are meant for one thing and that’s it. Quick eating. They grow really fast and eat everything. Usually they’ll die ~50 days or so because of heart failure where they get so big so fast. I didn’t know that when we got the last group of chicks lol they looked rough.
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At 12 weeks plus they have very bad leg problems. They will actually break bones easily. Killed several meat chickens that had gangrene in them. A good flick of home raised birds on high protein blends and no forage easily meet weight for me at 10 weeks. I got lazy and had to cull several bad birds at 12 weeks.
And yes....wake, eat, shit, eat more in that order.
Had some who would eat and bypass water...we solved that by offering only water while cleaning or doing checks and maintenance.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
At 12 weeks plus they have very bad leg problems. They will actually break bones easily. Killed several meat chickens that had gangrene in them. A good flick of home raised birds on high protein blends and no forage easily meet weight for me at 10 weeks. I got lazy and had to cull several bad birds at 12 weeks.
And yes....wake, eat, shit, eat more in that order.
Had some who would eat and bypass water...we solved that by offering only water while cleaning or doing checks and maintenance.
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If you want to improve digestion, try soaking the feed. Even better if you let it soak for 3+ days where it starts to ferment.
 
Danger_Ranger said:
And then. These are considered organic chickens so only keep them 7 weeks.
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Gotcha, I didnt think most operations kept them in the same house their whole life.
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Drunktaco said:
lol there’s nothing “free” about free range store chickens, and “organic” means they were allowed to eat each other’s shit.
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Oh, I know. If you really dig into the details of requirements for being able to put certain things on the label, it can be surprising for most.
 
Update:

Since the dog attacks left up with one hen and one rooster, we were going to just winter with that and build our flock come spring. But..... a family friend had a dog attack that was their last straw and decided to get out of chickens. So, we just picked up 5 aracaunas (or Ameracauna? will decide in daylight), a silver laced Wyandotte, a barred rock (maybe Dominique? Tbd), and a yard mix. Pics to come in the AM.

Also finished the run to keep them secure and got some plexiglass to winterize the coop.
 
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I would only block the windows upto where the perches are. They still need to have plenty of air flow in the coop.

The biggest issue to chickens in winter is humidity and moisture. They can handle the temps.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
I would only block the windows upto where the perches are. They still need to have plenty of air flow in the coop.

The biggest issue to chickens in winter is humidity and moisture. They can handle the temps.
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Ok. So our door is going to be drafty i know, but its on the downwind side. Would you leave the top few inches of the windows open? Perches run up to midway up the windows.
 
Heres the new flock.
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Not sure of breed on these two (nearly identical). The have similar coloring to the ameracaunas, but I dont see tufts.

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Our silver laced Wyandotte and the barred rock or Dominique. Thoughts?

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And we have no idea on this one.

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Integration seems to be going ok. Our australorp isn't happy that she's not the only hen, but the pecking and fussing has been minimal.
 
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JSJJ388 said:
Ok. So our door is going to be drafty i know, but its on the downwind side. Would you leave the top few inches of the windows open? Perches run up to midway up the windows.
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Yeah, you want the air the be able to move and draft through the coop.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
Yeah, you want the air the be able to move and draft through the coop.
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Left about 2" at the tops of the windows. Should I open up thw eaves? Seen that done for air flow.
 
JSJJ388 said:
Left about 2" at the tops of the windows. Should I open up thw eaves? Seen that done for air flow.
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That should be enough. You just don't want it sealed up tight.
 
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