Beginners Chicken Keeping

[wattsy]

you need some Lincolnshire Buffs

http://lincolnshirebuff.co.uk/

 

[vizsla]

Looking good red, if you keep to a reasonable amount of hens your garden should stay as good as it looks now but if you have too many they soon rake all the grass up, one idea as they like to have a dust bath is make them one with a little cover from a bush or something to keep it relatively dry, that way they won't dig away every ware trying to make one.
Regards solar power you can get those solar panels that trickle feed into the battery to keep them topped up and I think there quite cheap

 

[British Red]

Do you know anyone close to Boston who supplies them as POL wattsy?

 

[British Red]

Looking good red, if you keep to a reasonable amount of hens your garden should stay as good as it looks now but if you have too many they soon rake all the grass up, one idea as they like to have a dust bath is make them one with a little cover from a bush or something to keep it relatively dry, that way they won't dig away every ware trying to make one.
Regards solar power you can get those solar panels that trickle feed into the battery to keep them topped up and I think there quite cheap

The dust bath idea ia a good one - thank you!

 

[pete79]

I haven't been on here for a while, and I'm pleased to see a chicken thread starting up. Sussex are an ace choice. I own 12 of them. I also have Rhode Island Reds, white chanteclers, and Black Australorps. All are breeds I would recommend. In terms of hardiness, and egg production, the Rhodes Islands come out on top though - it gets cold, cold, cold where I live and they keep coming outside till it hits -15. Just throwing an idea out to you here, why not raise some meaties at the same time as raising your egg layers (assuming you're getting chicks that is). The meaties are ready for slaughter after 8 to 12 weeks (at least the breed I raise is), so your coop never gets too crowded as the meat birds are grown and gone before the egg layers start to gain any significant size. Modern meat birds are kind of a different beast, but they're easy enough to raise. I generally replace a good proportion of my egg flock every year to make sure I have constant high egg production, so I raise a bunch of meat birds alongside the replacement egg layers. I'm doing it right now, I've got 30 meat birds growing with the replacement layers

 

[mrcharly]

I kept chickens for a while. My (ex)wife wanted, muggins ended up looking after them.

110ft rear garden, half given over to veg etc.


I built a chicken coop - no problem.


First problem was that the chickens could fly. Bloody (ex) wife and kids wouldn't let me clip their wings. So they flew up into the trees, flew over the hedge. Scratched up all the veg. Scratched up the neighbours veg.


So I gave over one entire bed permanently. 5ft high enclosure, roofed with liftable panels of chicken wire. Not large enough - they made that into a lunar landscape in days. So every weekend I'd shovel out top 4" or so of dirt, and shovel in dirt from a veg bed.


Within 6 months I had no bindweed or ground elder left in the garden. I'd dug all the roots into the chicken run and the chickens had eaten it and fertilized the soil to boot. The pear tree no longer suffered from mite.

 

[FGYT]

Chicken Nipples get em they are great

 

[FGYT]

Nice looking birds, the local breeder we went to see has offered us some "Blue" (IIRC) hybrids that certainly look similar. We are toying with Sussex as dual purpose that forage well but may add some of these too

Unfrortunatly Sussex like most now arnt really dual purpose any more due to breeding for shows etc the ability to put on weight for meat economically just got lost tho there are a few trying to get it back again
Egg laying birds for eggs
meat birds for the table

we are currently raising some Cream Legbars to replace the chickens the fox had an old pure breed with Good egg laying (not hybrid std but pretty close)

and ive found a scource of Meat chicks delivered day old


this was the Run they had before I took the Electric fence away as they free ranged the fields and wood round the house there where 7 POL Hybrids in the square and they destroyed the grass back to dirt in a couple of months (summer so growing fast)

took 3yrs before the fox decided to bother them and only cause i was late locking up one night

 

[TeeDee]

Within 6 months I had no bindweed or ground elder left in the garden. I'd dug all the roots into the chicken run and the chickens had eaten it and fertilized the soil to boot. The pear tree no longer suffered from mite.

Rotating a Chicken tractor over a Rabbit Tractor works very well apparently . The rabbits eat the unwanted greens to soil level and turns out a nice 'cold' fertilizer , move the Chicken over the same ground and they will dig and scratch the Rabbit pellets in whilst scouring the ground for bugs and larvae whilst also producing a 'hot' manure fertilizer to add to the fertility.

 

[British Red]

All great info guys - thank you

Today I wanted to knock up a box to store the battery, energiser and eventually a trickle charger etc. by the electric fence.

Please bear in mind I am more the agricultural big hammer type than a cabinet maker

Anyway sketched up some plans - no CAD CAM here

Sketch Plans by British Red, on Flickr

Blessed my sliding chop saw when cutting a kit of parts

Kit of Parts by British Red, on Flickr

...and a pillar drill for pre-drilling all the screw holes

Pre Drilled by British Red, on Flickr

The frame went together okay

Frame by British Red, on Flickr

Then used a jigsaw to cut a floor from 6mm exterior ply I had kicking about

Floor by British Red, on Flickr

Then added sides and a back

Back and Sides by British Red, on Flickr

Then a front and a pitched roof

Roof by British Red, on Flickr

This is hinged on the back

Hinge by British Red, on Flickr

and has a bolt on the front to stop it flapping in the wind

Bolt by British Red, on Flickr

Opened up it'll give me space for a big Leisure battery, the energiser for the fence, a trickle charger and a socket.

Open by British Red, on Flickr

I'll need to give it a couple of coats of varnish to fully weatherproof it and cut holes for the wires once its in place, but, whilst not pretty. it'll keep the weather out I think

Red

 

[steve a]

I used to keep Rhode Island Red/ light Sussex good layers and quite hardy, also some Old English Game Cock bantams for fun. Also Red, good to see use the word chicken instead of chickens.

 

[Countryman]

We first started keeping chickens in just a 3.5 foot high electric net enclosure from SCATS. The main coop was a Freecycled 8x6 shed. I bought panels of mesh and a door to make a run. Made a perch and my girls lay in old veg trays.

Over the years we did make a permanent enclosure but this is only like the rest of the paddock fencing. The coops and runs are themselves pretty secure. Additional coops were provided by a friend at The Cats Protection League of all places. They condemned a number of cedar cat runs and these were a marvellous find. The have one and two story accommodation with a completely enclosed and roofed run. They required minimal conversion and have lasted really well.

We keep Light Sussex (mine and main production), Marsh Daisies (Wife) and Marans (D1) my other children have bantams as pets which have been perfect broodies. We have a lone Aylesbury Duck too.

These provide a wonderful variety of sizes and coloured eggs. This time of year we have an egg glut but during the winter 40 chickens just about keep us supplied.

Chickens are like tropical fish though. You could watch them for hours.

Good luck with yours.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[FGYT]

hatched these out this weekend 2 Goslings 2 more to hatch next week

and picked up these Two 12wk old geese yesterday to add to the Chickens and Ducks

So Big eggs and Christmas Dinner sorted

 

[British Red]

Thats a weird looking Gosling that Rowan is holding!

 

[bigbear]

Re your carpentry, it makes me sad that I have so little ability, thats a fine looking box you have made, should do the job nicely. One day, I will have the time, and a shed for drills etc, and will do that, but there will be lots of errors on the way.
(my deep beds are like a dogs hind leg.....)

 

[FGYT]

Re your carpentry, it makes me sad that I have so little ability, thats a fine looking box you have made, should do the job nicely. One day, I will have the time, and a shed for drills etc, and will do that, but there will be lots of errors on the way.
(my deep beds are like a dogs hind leg.....)

I just put my battery on a brick under a bucket with a brick on top the energiser is on the post and water proof

 

[boatman]

Bantams are very good, our two boys practically reared on the small rich eggs. wire enclosure, moveable ark and every so often we would hunt through the hedges to find the latest egg cache from walkabout birds. They never layed again in the same place once the eggs were removed. Sadly the "well-trained" gun dog from down the road killed off our prize cock but two remaining male birds did their best, they were brothers and shared the hens amicably.

We had one hen bantam called Mrs Bantam because she was the broody one being a brilliant mother. One time I forget to shut the chicks up ans there they were roosting on the leaves of grass stems.

A tip, in winter chickens love warm porridge.

 

[British Red]

I just put my battery on a brick under a bucket with a brick on top the energiser is on the post and water proof

But that's the simple way of doing it

The wood was offcuts from projects barring a couple of strips of lath and you know how uptight I am about doing things "right"

 

[wattsy]

Do you know anyone close to Boston who supplies them as POL wattsy?

i've got a friend with some i'll ask where he got them, i think most people get a breeding trio and expand with them as they are quite rare, sad really they lay all year round and make great table birds but farmers couldn't sell them because the Buff Orpington was so popular

 

[British Red]

Thank you, I'm after half a dozen POL to start with - we might start with something easier to source - but would really like to try the local breed