Poultry Keeping General Discussion #2

we have a dog and chooks. and the dog gets locked up when the chooks are out and if the days boof gets free range the chooks are locked up - i have to peg down the run again so he cant get into it and make it boof-proof. he is getting better at not chaceing them - and comming back when he see's them. its a game to him but he is gettng better, slowly.

we where getting one egg every few days but not now (how we dont get more with 12 chooks dont know - even after locking them up for a week!!)

Mottly crew are going well. getting bigger and loving their chick pattot thingys. and apple. they love apple. i they wont be out side for a few months yet - but they are cute. we've got most of them named - monkey, jackie, sparrow, bully and the 5th i havent named yet. monkey is the tamest out of al them. she's a cutie.

I'm also worried about barking ... the puppies (well, dogs ... they're 7 and 8!) bark and bark at possums - though are much better now than when we first moved here - and I'm worried that either the neighbours will go bezerk, or the dogs will scare the chickens to death with their barking ...

And then the digging in thing - but they don't dig all that much, so as long as the fence goes a little ways under the around, we should be ok with that one ...

How has the barking thing gone for other people?

We don't have dogs but our free range chooks have decimated our garden and my veges despite the garden being fenced off. I wish we could have gotten a chook tractor but the cost of freight made them ridiculous.

We have 2 dogs. One's a real barker. He barked at the chooks for a day or two and soon got used to them. He doesnt bark at them now. I tie the dogs up when the chooks are out. Just in case. It is a natural instinct for them to kill something like a chook so I remove the temptation! We live on a huge block, about an acre so we don't notice that the chooks cause any garden damage. I do have the veggie garden fenced off though. (that was because a horse ate my pawpaw tree though!!) we love put chooks the girls collect the eggs everyday and spend hours chasing the chooks around trying to pick them up. :-)

Eta: our dog is a bit of a digger but not too bad. Our coop is not dug into the ground we just put logs and stones around the base and we've not had any problems yet.

Just wondering if anyone has brought or used one of the cheaper eBay incubators? I'm considering buying one but not sure if it's a waste of money. I have a trio of buff orpingtons which I desperately want to breed from to increase our numbers plus I have 4 other crossbreed for eggs to eat.

Our coop is dug into the ground thank God as foxes here are a problem. We only recently got a rooster and our dog goes nuts when he crows. Poor dog obviously had no idea what it is as the hens have never worried him.

Our Gemma chicken is back to her normal self and laying every day again! Bigger eggs than before too. She wants to be picked up whenever I see her and seems so happy. She still has a very slight limp, but other than that, no signs of her brush with death.

It is slightly ridiculous how delighted I am to pat her and talk to her, but there was some fairly intensive chicken nursing involved. ;)

Just curious to know who's hens are laying this time of the year and who's aren't? Mine aren't which I expect this time of year. Hopefully it's only another 5-6weels before they start again.

whoot we having been getting an egg a day finally from our chooks since wednesday last week and today there were 2 eggs!!
First eggs we have gotten!!!
and they taste soooo yummy and creamy mmmmmm

so excited that we are finally getting eggs lol
love love love this chicken thing!!!

Mine are in Central Australia and yes it's pretty cold there. They aren't as regular as every day, most days though, but we only get say 6 weeks of really cold.

So happy to be back on the chicken thing again! We've had ours for about 3 weeks now, and they have been out and wandering the back yard for 2 weeks. They are very used to being handled and are so very funny and cheeky. No eggs yet, they are younger anyway, but loving having them again.

For those whose hens aren't laying because of the cold, I remember what my grandfather used to do - cook up a batch of chicken feed which consisted of potato peels and something else (possibly oats?) all mushed up - feed it to them warm. Apparently this helps to keep egg production up due to the warmth in their bellies, have heard it from a couple of other people now. I will have to do some googling and find out about it and what goes in it, but the chooks used to LOVE it. Might be worth a shot.

Our silkies have stopped and we weren't getting many from the Isa's for about 2 weeks but now we are getting 2-3 eggs every 2-3 days.
I''m thinking about enclosing half of the shed to keep them a little warmer as it's basically completely open, so it's a matter of either catching DP with some time off (:rofl:) or figuring out how to get the tin up myself :p

Yay Kel! The hen we've had since point of lay is laying six days out of seven, as per usual. The hen we got from the neighbours is on strike. So I'm not sure about the diet thing, since they both eat the same stuff. If anything, the second hen gets more as she's more dominant.

They do love oats though! I'm hoping that longer with us and on our diet the second hen will step up to the plate and provide more eggs. She was laying until it got cold.

Hahah we have just two to start with, one is definitely more bossy and hogs the food - even if we throw a heap of stuff to them, whatever the other hen runs off with, the bossy one drops what she's got and chases that one! Speaking of which I better go let them out for the day :) How many does everyone have? I guess you've all been over this a few times already, maybe we can collate some info at the start of the thread, like number of chooks, breed etc? :)

How old are chickens when they first start laying eggs?

One of our girls passed away in the weekend. :( She had been limping for a while, but looked otherwise healthy, so I didn't think that anything was really wrong, but last week she started getting worse. She was booked to go to the vet tomorrow, but didn't make it...

So now we have one left. Do chickens get lonely? Wondering if we should get another one...

Have a question too - the girls seem a little snuffly like they have colds but seem healthy otherwise. They kinda cough/sneeze... any tips?

Starfish I would get a 2nd again for company and warmth in this cold weather. Kellie I have 7 chooks at the moment. 3 are buff orpingtons there really large chooks then I have 3 chicks that are austrolorpes (I spelt that wrong) but 2appear to be roosters so I'll have to get rid of those cause I can't have 3 roosters living together and then one old silkie cross Isa brown who goes clunky all the time so I'm hoping she will hatch some of the pure buff Orpington eggs out. I'll eat the bantum eggs and keep the big ones to use to run into chicks. The buff orpingtons are hard to come by so I'm hoping to sell a few also. Just need to build a 2nd pen. We are on 70acres so have plenty of room and free wheat. That brings me to what does everyone feed there chooks? Mine get bread daily and a few scraps, wheat and a laying pellet but pay day I'm going to buy some meat meal for them. Kelly I'd be keen to know the remedy for making them lay again faster. It's freezing here we are in central west NSW and it has been in the minuses overnight almost every night with heavy frosts

Seems to be something common our fathers and grandfathers knew :) Here's a link I found, seems to be lots of different ways to make it.

http://successwithpoultry.blogspot.c...en-layers.html

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Winter Mash - Homemade Chicken Layers Feed
A recent query from keeping chickens newsletter subscriber Staci : "Thanks for the newsletter. I have enjoyed it very much. I did a little searching through it, but have not seen mention of 'winter mashes'. A friends' mother told me she remembers that her father used to feed his hens a mash of some sort to keep them laying through the winter. If you have any recipes for such a thing (the mash), I would love to see them."

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