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Newbie question about a coop: Looking at getting 3-4 chickens from one of my wife's co-workers who is heavily into them and has volunteered to raise them from chicks until they can take care of themselves for us. Wife grew up rural and had chickens around, but they just kind of free-ranged and lived in a barn with laying boxes, not in a dedicated coop. I grew up suburban and know nothing. We now live in a semi-rural area in the Great Lakes so will have to contend with cold(ish) winters, and some predators. All of that is a very long way of asking: Is this a good first-timer backyard coop? https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/producers-pride-mini-defender-coop-mdc001?cm_vc=-10005 We're planning to let them free range, so I don't think we need a ton of enclosed space. Edit: Am also looking at this one, but don't love that it's raw wood that has to be painted/polyed: https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/petmate-superior-construction-chicken-coop-70401d?cm_vc=-10005 stealie72 fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 31, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 16:23
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Newbie here: Picked up some chicks from tractor supply on advice of an experienced friend that there were some good chicks there. My daughter noticed that one if them has what looks like an infected belly and poop that looks kind of wormy. This doesn't look like any of the pictures in "common diseases that chicks get" so does anyone know what it might be? Right now we have her segregated out from the other chicks and have sanitized everything the other chicks are touching.
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Sep 8, 2020 20:53
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I got home and cleaned her off and have a much better shot now. Not sure if it is any more helpful though. She is cheeping up a storm and not lethargic, it just looks like she's got something not right in her abdomen.
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Sep 8, 2020 21:29
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Awesome. Thanks to both of you. Not the way I hoped to be introduced to the thread but here we are...
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Sep 8, 2020 22:09
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Hi again backyard chicken thread. Happy to report that a washing and some iodine helped my little chick immensely. Onto my next project: building a coop. I've got some highly rated plans for a combo enclosure and coop. I live at the edge of civilization and there are lots of predators in my woods, so its going to be a pretty solid lockup, but I'm also in the great lakes so I need to think about winter. I'm planning to build the coop with foam insulation sandwiched between inner and outer walls to keep the girls warm in winter and cool in summer, but i also need a heat source for them for the winter. Is there a thread approved chicken space heater? I'm going to end up with about 10 birds (nothing like jumping into the deep end) so the coop is going to be about 36 square feet. This is a favorite on Amazon, but I would love someone else's opinion: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LX9K1JI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_idVwFb545XTTB
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Sep 11, 2020 04:37
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That Works posted:Does this hold true for New England winters? I know they can and do get through them just fine but don't want them to be miserable either when we get hit with a polar vortex and its -5F outside for 24-48h at a time.
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Sep 11, 2020 14:22
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Hi thread. Posted a couple weeks back with a sick chick, who got washed and iodined for a few days and is now thriving. Currently finishing up building the coop so the now-6-week-old chicks can at least spend their days in it until they're big enough to actually live in it, Just planning to not put in the ramp to the hen house until they're ready and give them a little shelter in the corner. They're about the size of a junior nerf football at this point and rapidly outgrowing their coffin-sized pen. My kids took them out to play on the lawn over the weekend and they did a great job. One of them even caught her first worm. But what I'm learning is the thread title should be "Backyard Chicken Keeping: There's Poop Everywhere!"
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Sep 30, 2020 13:06
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spookygonk posted:Here you go, and there's photos too! Whelp, guess I'll be poking at feces to check health... RoboRodent posted:You're welcome.
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Sep 30, 2020 18:29
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My little chicks are growing up super fast (a little behind Joburgs, at 8-9 weeks old), and I've almost got their coop/run finished, but have a quick question about food and water: I've seen that keeping food and/or water inside the coop is a point of contention, but I'm thinking that I'll hang their food under their coop in the run (there's 3 feet between the coop and the ground), and water stays inside the coop so it's always available to them. Is this wise, or should I be doing something else?
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Oct 9, 2020 16:38
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My teenagers are spending their first night in their new coop tonight after having outgrown their coffin-sized enclosure on the porch. Im nervous like a new dad and have already gone out to check on them twice, freaking them the gently caress out the first time because I didn't sneak up on them.
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Oct 12, 2020 02:32
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Nth-ing condolences for Rickie. She looks adorable. Stupid Newbie Question: Is there an authoritative book on backyard chicken keeping? There's obviously a lot of great online resources (this thread included) and I've learned a lot, but I don't know enough to do the required collection of 5 different opinions and weighing out which one is correct. I'm looking for The Official Facts by the chair of the poultry sciences department at Purdue or something that where I can just flip to with a question and get a strong answer. I had a similar book when i was learning how to raise bees and it was REALLY helpful to just be able to look something up and get a good answer.
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Oct 12, 2020 19:26
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My teenagers enjoying their new run/coop
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Oct 14, 2020 20:17
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Edit: forgot to say glad she's ok There's a ton of hawks where I live and on no-poo poo day 1 that the girls were out in the new coop I caught one of them sitting in front of the wire looking at them twice. Got an owl decoy that day and it hasn't been back since, but my plans to let them wander the yard during the day have been dashed. Am going to have to make a medium security area for them to explore. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Oct 18, 2020 |
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Oct 18, 2020 14:17
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Ok, newbie question: I've been putting my waterer in the henhouse when I close it up for the night. Do I need to do that?
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Nov 14, 2020 00:25
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spookygonk posted:Not for long! 1 50/lb bag of dog food eaten by 1 35 lb dog= 2-3 months of food 1 50/lb bag of crumble eaten by 12 chickens that MAYBE weigh 30lbs collectively= 1 month of food
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Dec 15, 2020 22:54
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I'm also a newbie and asked the same question about 4 months ago. I ended up with a cozy coop panel: https://www.cozyproducts.com/products/cozy-coop To set this up, my coop is about 100 cubic feet (5x6x3.5) and is built with studs supporting a plywood inner wall/floor and a sheathing "siding" outer wall/floor with r13 fiberglass sandwiched in between, and r8 foam on the top. The doors are outer and inner wood with the foam sandwiched in. When its all buttoned up, the chickens plus the heater keep the coop anywhere from 15 to 20 degrees above ambient on high, and about 10 above ambient on low. This week it got to 15 overnight and my girls were cozy at above freezing. To pimp the power of insulation, my coop has a cheap vinyl home window in it, and when I leave that cracked an inch (so like 22 square inch opening) for ventillation, like most nights, all of the above figures drop by about half.
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Dec 28, 2020 22:06
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Had a chicken try to pick pocket me today. Was standing with my back to their ramp watching them eat a new treat and getting my boot laced pecked at, and one of them snuck up the ramp and tried to get my apparently tasty looking wallet out of my back pocket. Also, a few got brave and finally came out into the snow.
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Jan 25, 2021 01:23
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Was not expecting my girls to start laying in the dead of winter, but I got a nice surprise when I opened up their nest box.
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Jan 31, 2021 19:15
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Quoting myself from a couple pages ago re heat (mind you, I've had chickens for 5 months now)stealie72 posted:I'm also a newbie and asked the same question about 4 months ago. I ended up with a cozy coop panel: https://www.cozyproducts.com/products/cozy-coop Also, to add to that, since then I've been messing around with an infrared thermometer, and chickens are hella insulated. When I point it at my shaggy dog, he's always about 10-15 degrees above the ambient temp on the outside of his coat. When I point it at the chickens, their outer feathers are maybe 5 degrees above ambient. They're not losing much heat at all through those down coats of theirs.
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Feb 12, 2021 15:57
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Imagined posted:Obviously it's new to me, but according to my wife you can eat them at that age, they'll just have a different/stronger flavor or tougher texture than the kind you might be used to from the grocery store, and you might want to cook them in a different type of meal than, say, fried chicken or something. You'd want something long and slow, like soup. Backyard Chicken Keeping: PYF Coq au Vin Recipes
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Feb 12, 2021 20:18
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MrUnderbridge posted:I know spending $1200 on chicken housing seems a lot...
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Feb 28, 2021 02:10
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Pioneer42 posted:Owl statues have worked wonders keeping woodpeckers away from the house. They are the real deal. But got the owl the day I looked outside and saw a hawk sitting on the ground in front of my coop looking at our girls (two days after they went into it) and haven't seen one in the months since.
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Mar 3, 2021 21:14
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Enfys posted:lol I have a neighbour with an owl statue and all the crows and jackdaws love hanging out on his roof. A family of magpies lives in the nearby trees and like sitting on the statue itself and chittering
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Mar 3, 2021 23:04
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Alterian posted:I'm using leftover puppy pads for my chicks. It defiantly makes the daily cleanup easier. I still replace the water a few times a day because they love to poo poo in it.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:17
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Not sure if this belongs in here or DIY, but: I'm looking to build an add-on yard to my existing coop. Current coop's yard is built with 2x4s and 1/4 inch hardware cloth that extends and is buried as an apron, so I want to add something that looks the same and butt it up against the back of the current coop. I'm not planning to put a roof on the add-on, just use hardware cloth over the top. Is there any reason to not save some money and weight and use 2x3s instead of 2x4s since the structure wont' be carrying the weight of a roof and a house, it will just be a 12x12 chicken jail that keeps critters out?
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Mar 24, 2021 14:37
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For my coop add on, are the chickens going to care if its 3 feet tall vs 6 feet tall? Looking at the price of hardware cloth for a 12x12x7 cube and wondering if I can get away with the same square footage but only 3 feet high as a kind of skirt around their current coop. Do chickens need vertical space, or just horizontal? Nevermind, wife and daughters have declared that any extra space needs to be big enough for them to be in with the chickens. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Mar 27, 2021 |
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Mar 27, 2021 16:11
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Pricing out egg containers, even by the pallet, led me down a spiral of quick math trying to figure out how in the hell I can buy eggs for $1.80 at the grocery store and the answers are going to have me try being vegetarian again, because holy poo poo.
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May 8, 2021 14:02
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Alterian posted:What size hardware cloth is recommended? Is 1" enough or should I spring for 1/2"? I would like to note that I am pretty sure I saw a mink in my yard and this is meant to be secure enough that if I go out of town overnight I don't need to close the coop door. This is one of the reasons I went with the metal frame. It'll be easier for me to dig a trench to set it down in. I did my main coop in 1/2 inch, and did their new run in 1/4 inch. The 1/4 inch is SO MUCH easier to work with, but it's also not as strong as the 1/2, so I ended up having to put in a lot more poultry staples to spread any load out.
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May 17, 2021 14:48
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Neddy Seagoon posted:That one's clearly the good nestbox, unlike the other identical ones.
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Jul 29, 2021 12:18
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gently caress yeah. Good job, rooster and goat.
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Sep 17, 2021 01:30
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"What the gently caress are *you* looking at"
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Oct 6, 2021 23:45
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Do any of you use webcams in your coops/runs? We just put up plastic on 3 of 4 sides of our coop and run as a windbreak, and now we can't really see our girls. I'd love something that I could just stick up in the corner of the run that we can see on our computer/phone. Preferably something self-contained, and a bonus if it's solar/battery because the one extension cord that runs out to the coop is already splitting off to run their water de-icer and their heating panel. Pretty much looking for set it and forget it.
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Nov 18, 2021 21:49
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Mozi posted:I'm trying to find a thing that should exist but I don't know if it does - I had some changes done to my coop, basically I have a flap in the back that empties into the run so I can easily clean it out. I have a small rake I had been using to clean it out but now what I want is more of a squeege-type thing with no gaps so I can get everything, but I don't want an actual squeege of course. More like a rake that's designed to be used horizontally, that has a flat smooth thing on the end instead of tines. Does that make any sense?
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Nov 25, 2021 04:17
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Sometimes the girls get oatmeal on cold mornings. Edit: I tried to take a good picture, but this terrible one captures how much they're moving around better. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Dec 9, 2021 |
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Dec 9, 2021 13:56
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Yooper posted:They looked at us like we were idiots. It then froze solid and they tried to eat it.
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Dec 9, 2021 19:05
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I use one of these to keep water from icing: https://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Chicken-Supplies/Perfect-Bucket-Heater-De-Icer-p2402.aspx It will keep the 2 gallon nipple waterer thawed down to below zero, but it will only keep the 5 gallon bucket thawed into the 20s. I got it because its only 80 watts and I run that and a heating panel (on a thermal plug that only goes on when the coop is under 35) off of a 200 foot extension cord, so I can't have high draw things. Also, an automatic door with a solar charger and a dawn/dusk open/close is life changing. Well worth the $200 to not have to worry about it.
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Feb 20, 2022 16:55
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my cat is norris posted:If you have a completely enclosed run attached to your coop, do you prefer something at walk-in height or are you okay with something smaller? I ended up building a two-stage coop, the first was a 12x6 enclosure with a 6.5 foot high roof with the chickens' house built 3 feet off the ground and taking up the "back" 4x6 portion of the enclosure. Then the next year I attached a 12x12 run with just a hardware cloth top to the front of that, so I walk through the run to get to the original coop area. I end up raking out the run and putting down new straw every 6 weeks or so (except in winter), so I can't imagine having to do that stooped over. Edit: Though I have had thoughts about putting a "skirt" around the back of the enclosure to give them a little more room, and I'd make that about 36 inches high with a hinged top so I could get in to clean, but 
stealie72 fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Mar 22, 2022 |
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Mar 22, 2022 13:59
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Alterian posted:I swear on the chicken boards on reddit 1/3rd are people asing "hen or rooster?!?!", another 1/3rd are people with egg bound or avian flu and not recognising it, and the other 1/3rd are dead chicken pics from various reasons. I wish I was kidding.
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Apr 7, 2022 11:17
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Speaking of heat sources, I'm curious what those of you in northern climes do to keep water from freezing during the winter. I've used one of these low-wattage puck de-icers for the past two winters. It was super effective for a 2 gallon bucket, but less so for my 5 gallon bucket, which would freeze up pretty solid any time it got below 20 for more than a few hours overnight. I like it because it's only 60 watts, but I think I need to up my wattage. However I can't go whole hog because I'm running the de-icer and a cozy coop panel (200 watts) off about 150 feet of 16/3 outdoor extension cord, so ideally I'd stay under 600 watts total. This one has generally great reviews as far as "keeps water wet" but also does not seem to last super long. Anyone have a better solution? I don't want to bring water into the coop because that seems to be an invitation for wet/frozen/dead chickens. I'd also like to keep using the 5 gallon bucket if possible just to lessen the amount of water I've got to deal with in the winter.
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Nov 7, 2022 17:14
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Yooper posted:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002QXN1EQ
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Nov 8, 2022 14:55
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