re: Backyard chickens for beginners

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We had chickens for a while but they would come up on the back porch and shite. 3 acres to roam and they spent most of their day on the back porch looking in the back door with that creepy sideways look.

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I’ve got 2 australorps that do this every chance they get.

Ended up having to clip their wings because they kept getting out of the run and shite all over my patio furniture.

A four strand electric fence around ours has helped, have a video of a fox trying to get in , got zapped and took off

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What do you feed instead?

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If I buy from Tractor Supply I get the Purina instead of the Dumor or Producers Pride, but I try to get the Nutrena from a local feed store.

I supplement with scratch grains when I let them roam as well as oyster shells for calcium.

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When I feed the cheap tractor supply food, the egg production slows way down.

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Same here. Tried to save a few bucks. Just switched back to purina layena pellets.
We’ll see.
I’ve always kept my sacks of feed in metal garbage cans. No rodents.

My wife was the one who pushed to get chickens. Turns out I was the one who liked them more. We started with 6 Easter Egger pullets and ended up with 5 pullets and a cockerel. Lost our first when she tried to have her first egg and her insides came out. It was pretty harrowing with my wife flipping out and literally crying over a chicken. That was 4 years ago. We have had dogs, foxes, Opossums, Hawks and even a King Snake all attack our flock. We went from completely free ranging to putting up a fence around about an acre to protect them at least from the dogs and fox.

When the time changes, it ends up closing the auto door early and trapping them all outside which usually results in a kill. I'm a slow learner on that. Also have a couple who just refuse to sleep in the coop. Possums usually end up with them. I had a high of 20 chickens and now am around 10. I have an incubator that will hatch 9, but usually one will go broody and I'll let her raise what she's sitting on to break her. Half inch hardware cloth like everyone says. Big black snakes love the eggs, always seems like every Summer we get a couple that I have to relocate.

Hardware cloth is expensive. You don't need to do the entire run in hardware cloth, chicken wire is fine for that. Anything on the coop where they sleep needs to be hardware cloth. Everywhere. Every nook needs to be covered or something will get in.

Do not use chicken wire for anything on the coop. I've had raccoons reach through chicken wire and pull a chickens head through and kill it.

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Build with hardware cloth. Keeps out snakes

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Mine come in during the day through the chicken door to get the eggs. One even got lazy and tried to live under/behind the nesting box.

Cha Ching…..