re: Raising Chickens

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Currently geyting 20-25 eggs weekly from 4 hens.

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Man that is pretty cool! We eat about a dozen a week id love to have some chickens laying!

Few questions about all this for you guys. If I had a coup that I kept them all of the time outside...what do yall do in the winter? Just wrap the cage in something on real cold nights? Bring them in? Do nothing?

What about building something that would also house a rabbit (holand lop)? My daughter has one and we have it inside. It does smell some...we clan it but still has the barn smell so it may or may not keep staying inside.

Mark Makers that coop looks really cool too...im going to have to go check out the building process of it.

Cool deal. The one time as a kid that I got that one chicken from the feed store...it quickly turned out to be a rooster and the first crow my dad sent it on its way We had a big gazebo like bird cage outside with an array of birds. I had my rabbit and box turtles on the ground level. We had to wrap it in winter becasue of the birds so I thought id have to with chickens.

Didnt know if the chickens and rabbit would get along or will i end up with a shat covered rabbit.

Mark Makers how is the upkeep so far on yours? You have bedding you have to change out often?

oh yea i know...shat rolls down hill...where the rabbit would be

Just wanted to say how much I appreciated this thread. I decided last week to finally pull the trigger and get some ladies of my own. Thought I'd give an update on my flock's status as well as see if anyone else had updates.

Here's the coop I got off Amazon. If I was making it myself I would have done a few things different with it. I've already built a water system with vertical poultry nipples that makes it so I only need to add water maybe once a week (I'll take pictures later). Still some work to do:



I ended up getting my ladies off craigslist from someone in Denham Springs. She was easy to work with and I really think they are beautiful chickens:





I was able to get 2 Barred Plymoth Rocks and a Rhode Island Red. All about 18-19 weeks old. None are laying yet but they should be getting pretty close.



The Rhode Island Red is super friendly even after only being here at my house for 3 days. I can pick her up no problem. The two Rocks are a little more skeptical and tend to run away when I try and corral them.

I am currently only letting them roam my yard when I'm there. I'm getting a surveillance camera put in my back yard and I plan on letting them free range the back yard during the day but I want to make sure they know their coop is home first.

Hope no one has had any casualties this year. For some reason I didn't fully close the coop last night but luckily nothing got into the coop. Gonna have to make sure to be much more careful moving forward.

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Australorps

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The Australorp is one of my favorite out of the bunch as well.

To get mine used to drinking I tapped on the nipper letting it drip water. They came and looked out of curiosity and actually pecked at my finger realizing water was coming out

I have been letting the 5 chickens out when I'm around and picking them up when I go inside. Today I was cutting grass and I let them out.
Around 10am I noticed only 4 chickens. My daughter is heartbroken and my son doesn't talk to me. Come home MARTHA!

You check craigslist? They have some there pretty often.

Welcome to the chicken world.