We have 8 chooks on our 1/4 acre section They are Hyline which is a breed for battery farming, however these were raised by the battery for sale as point of lay hens. They cost $19 each.Ours were 21 weeks when we got them, and they are laying about 7 a day.We have a big chook house, with 4 nesting boxes at 500mm high on one side of the house.We just googled and looked at different houses for sale then hubby built something very similar.
val14,
Nov 6, 1:51pm
#18 and 19 Yes chooks love to eat the meat we eat but worms and snails are rather different to cows and sheep and chooks don't naturally eat their own. They are reliant on us to choose good food for them so they stay healthy. That's the responsibility of taking animals out of their natural environment and farming them. They will eat mouldy bread, too but it's not good for them. Just like it wasn't good for the cows fed ground up meat in their food and why mad cow's disease now exists as a result.
val14,
Nov 6, 1:59pm
nests they say about 4 chooks can share one nest but I like to have extra nests, for more like one for 2-3 chooks. You can spend as much or as little as you like on nests and housing as long as they are warm and dry at night and in the winter. For one lot of my chooks, they have an old pigs shed for their house. I put in perches made of suitable branches, got some old tv boxes for nests and I use hay I have made/collected from long grass around the place. An old lawnmower catcher can also make a good nest
arie404,
Nov 6, 6:30pm
bump for the weekend
jules.,
Nov 7, 11:35pm
How are your chickens growing! Bump.
purplegoanna,
Nov 8, 10:14pm
i have just removed on of my brown shavers and shes gone to jail in my cat cage, shes gone broody over the fake egg and has turned into the most horrendous grumpy cow of a thing.so shes staying put until shes learns manners and tilll her girly bits cool down!.meanwhile my new teen chicks and my other brown shaver are learning to live with one another slowly.itll give the babies a rest from being antagonised by madam muck!
jules.,
Nov 8, 10:21pm
i know how you feel purplegoanna.i had 2 broody girls, i put them both in the cage 1 is STILL clucky, silly thing. back to the cage for her tomorrow :) is it a wire bottom cage so she cant nest and keep warm!
purplegoanna,
Nov 9, 4:04am
not wire no plastic but ive got it on its side so her bottom half is on the grill/gaps + ive raised it up with some wood so theres extra air flow under there, shes on the back of the ute.which is under a lean to but definately not tropical.
jules.,
Nov 9, 10:33pm
see thats some kiwi ingenuity (spelling!). mine were put in the possum trap, hehe. good luck with her. only a couple of days till the opington eggs hatch, it will be 21 days friday :)
koru_designs,
Nov 10, 5:44am
Just a wee update on my chickies.of the 11 eggs, 8 are viable. We candled today & saw the chicks moving round inside the shell - was fascinating to watch (the kids were really taken with it). Two of the unviable eggs never developed (they were 2 of the 3 eggs that came out of the fridge), the other appears to have started to develop, then died of a bacterial infection very early on. Our wee chickies are pure miracles - Esme (the broody) abandoned them after 2 or 3 days setting.they were stone cold for almost 24 hours before I managed to get another hen to look after them (Rosalind - broody par excellence. She wasn't broody when I showed her the eggs but it must have triggered something because she sat on them & has been there ever since. A bird who broods on cue! Who'd have thought!). Just goes to show eggs are a lot hardier than we give them credit for. Hatching day is the middle of next week. Yay!
purplegoanna,
Nov 10, 1:41pm
Ive got on lone chick left in my brooder, its over a month old but i dont have the heart to put it out during the days yet, henny is still in jail.im going to keep her there for 5 days, she spends nights out of harms way in a cage on the back of the ute and her days in a rabbit hutch thats been raised of the ground, i seriously considering taking her down to the inlaws to go with the larger mob as the other one and my younger ones are now getting along swimmingly without her.MIL brought a splash orp rooster up yesterday for a guy i met of here, hes crossing it with some minorcas, hes been told by a wise old chicken farmer this x will hatch hens that will give him super duper large eggs.so hes going to swap me the rooster for a future orpxminorca hen.MIL got a hen that has gone broody so i told her to give a fertile egg to hatch since we've tried every other darn way, then what happens we find another hen has stolen the fertile egg and is sitting on it.so she gives the original broody another one & ello ello next morning yet another hen has stolen it & is sitting so now theres 3 lined up with an egg each!
cfa,
Nov 10, 3:47pm
Just finding out what people have as flooring in their coops! Sawdust, cardboard, sand! My 10yr old daughter has been buying cut up pieces of cardboard (at $21.50) and we completely clean out the coop every 2 week. Any other recommendations! Also, our chooks sleep in the nesting boxes at night, is this a problem! I would be interested in your feedback - thanks
koru_designs,
Nov 10, 4:56pm
cfa.we use straw. A bale lasts us quite a long time (although that varies on the number of chooks in the coop & how many coops I'm using) & I just put the used litter into the compost heap - it's great for the garden. As a bonus, the chooks like scratching round & eating the seed heads. The bale gets stored in a plastic patio storage chest thing I got from Bunnings & doubles as the place where I put the washing basket when I'm hanging out the washing :) I use cardboard if they're coming inside the house because of the heat (it sometimes gets over 40 degrees here, so they have to come indoors or they'll die from heat stress) - I just lay an old box on the floor to protect it. I used to use sawdust for chicks but last time the sawdust must have had something in it & I got a massive mite population explosion in the coop with the sawdust (never normally have a problem), so I don't use it anymore. Straw works well for us.
koru_designs,
Nov 10, 5:00pm
I reckon they all know when the others are about to go broody & try to get in on the action too. Chooks are so funny.
Good luck with the super duper huge egg layer to be! It'll be interesting to hear how they go.
val14,
Nov 11, 1:57pm
tinart I hope you got to see this
mickle4,
Nov 12, 3:19am
I have 8 chookens (brown shavers) one nesting box and they lay 6 to 8 eggs per day this time of year. They drink 10 litres of water every 2 days - make sure there is plenty of clean water and need a 2 litre container of pellets every day. You really need to buy laying pellets if you want good results, despite what people think the pellets aren't laced with hormones or anything like that it's just a good balanced diet. I do supplement with scraps, they love meat. Give them some fresh greens and snails and you get lovely orange coloured yolks.
goldgurl,
Nov 12, 4:19am
Hmmm this is all very interesting :) just wondering what it costs to keep them.the cost of the pellets etc!
koru_designs,
Nov 12, 5:53am
I buy a special free range organic feed It has a variety of different grains in it as well as a balance of all the vits & minerals layers need.plus it has shell grit (but I also provide extra). I don't feed pellets as well because this mix has all that in it & they seem to prefer the mix I provide them over pellets. I pay $30 for a 30kg bag & it lasts my girls (3 bantams) around 6 months or a bit more (can't remember exactly when I last bought the last bag but I've just replaced it & I know it was earlier in the year). Shell grit costs $3 for a 2kg bag. I also supplement with assorted scraps (incl mealworms - $8 for a large container but you can breed them yourself if you really wanted to) & the chooks free range all day in the backyard. On top of this, I worm regularly (can't remember the price of the Piperazine). Haven't had to treat for mites yet but that's another cost to factor in.
arie404,
Nov 13, 2:27pm
bump for the weekend. I get my chickens in three weeks!
stompy,
Nov 14, 2:25pm
Hey purple I was really suprised to hear your brown shaver went broody I thought they never did.I call this old wire cage jail too I had a light sussex that I used to put in there from time to time but haven't had to with any of the brown girls.great reading.
purplegoanna,
Nov 14, 4:14pm
i thought that too stompy, and she was a nasty broody to but now shes hone to the inlaws, and gone from being the big fish in the small pond to the lil fish in the big pond so to speak! the other BS is fine and is giving my teen LS & BL a chance at normal life, my only concern now is my brown leghorn maybe a boy, its confusing cause it seems to be one of those breeds where the hen has a comb to.
purplegoanna,
Nov 16, 1:58pm
Ive got one wee teenage hen left to go outside, then i can pack away my giant brooder, its quite a cute wee thing, it follows me around then when i stand and bend down it'll jump onto my arm. Im confused as to what its parents are cause its white with grey mottly patches, so the mum wouldve been barred rock and the dad im unsure of.at least its a hen so im not complaining.
stompy,
Nov 17, 8:48pm
Bumpity bump.
koru_designs,
Nov 18, 6:27pm
Awwww.pagan princess that is just beyond cute! Today is our D21. So hopefully we'll start seeing some pipping soon. They might be a couple of days late due to some upsets at the beginning of setting (like the original broody completely refusing to sit on the eggs after a couple of days.thanks gooodness for my precious wee Rosalind, who took up mummy duties at the drop of a hat). But the eggs I've left in the nest are all definitely viable - they've been candled several times (so cute to see them move). So exciting!
the_family_man,
Nov 19, 1:44am
Linda Woodrow's Permaculture book explains a brilliant way to keep chooks and grow veg together.Well worth a read,you can get the book from most libraries.
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