I am getting chickens!

ben62670

I know I need to get off my butt. I do have an Igloo style dog house they lay in, but individual boxes would be better. What I do find weird is that the 3 eggs were found in the same pile of leaves "nest" yesterday, and today Ashley found 3 eggs in the Igloo It can't be one super hen pumping out 3 eggs a day

shepx2

The tags for this post are priceless. I can't stop laughing

lightman1

One of Bens chickens is in my house...and she's purdy!

Hillbilly61

Barred rock is a very good breed. One of my favs. Besides having a milder disposition, they produce eggs very well & are very meaty. A great "general purpose" chicken!

I presume your pullets hatched about the same time. They will all start laying within, say a week to ten days of when the first one started. Ben, you definitely want to get them a couple or three nesting boxes going. A big community nest in the doghouse will work too, but some hens might prefer a little more "privacy" and not use one. Just line the nests with some hay or straw.

It seems that some hens have already picked out a nest in a pile of leaves and the dog house. They will keep coming back to the same nest and hens will use the same nest that others use. A couple of things to be aware of nest wise, is that you have to leave them something egg like in a nest. If you keep taking all of the eggs (recommended), they will eventually find another spot to lay.

The pullets will figure out their eggs keep disappearing and those pullets are not laying eggs for YOU, Ben! I've used rounded door knobs as decoy nest eggs. A great decoy is a plastic easter egg filled with sand (if it is empty, the hen will notice it as too light and reject the decoy). As long as they keep finding an "egg" or two in the nest, they will keep coming back.

Another thing about nests, you should elevate them and do so in a manner that something cannot climb up to them. This will keep critters out. If a critter gets a egg meal or simply smells fresh lays, it will be back and back and back.... The same for dogs. Hens do not mind a 3 - 4 ft jump to the nest, provided they have a perch to land on (2 furring strip type boards about 4" apart will do).

You are doing right by feeding your pullets old egg shells. If they are missing the calcium, they will eat egg shells up. An excellent calcium supplement is crushed sea shells. You can buy a 25# bag and it will last a very long time. That and cracked corn will keep them going for a very long time. I've bought laying mix too. It's OK, but was never sure if it actually improved egg production. The extra vitamins, etc in it is certainly good for the pullets.

lightman1

Damn, Lee! You do hail from WVA!
It was a good day in Jolo, BTW.;) I've got some good pics to post.

ben62670

shepx2 wrote: »

The tags for this post are priceless. I can't stop laughing

If I had 5 little peckers my pants would fit like a glove:p

HillBilly

we gotta talk sometime. Thanks so much for the advice. I did a lot of research on the net, but I have learned more from you in a few post than many hours of searching.
Again thanks
Ben

Hillbilly61

Aww, shucks! I'll send you a PM, so as not to bore the rest of CP with details. At one point I had up to 50 chickens. That got to be too many and I slowly culled the flock back to about a dozen (incl. two roosters).

Roosters have the ultimate guy's life. A harem of six to eight low maintenace women who do not mind each other and sex throughout the day, day in and day out. To wit, they are very attentive husbands!

I LOVE RAISING CHICKENS!

ben62670

6 chickens and 5 eggs today:)

megasat16

WOW! You are going to industrialize the eggs industry soon. LOL

Kex

Hillbilly61 wrote: »

Aww, shucks! I'll send you a PM, so as not to bore the rest of CP with details. ...

No, no, no, no, no! I think it is symptomatic of what is great about Club Polk that we can have a "chickens" thread in this audio forum. I do not have chickens, and probably never will (this is L.A., after all, and we already look like Hill Billies on our street with our trusty old truck), but it's fun to read about Ben and his antics with his chickens.

Hillbilly61

Ben, did you get 6 eggs for 6 pullets today?

You might not get that daily count if one of the six pullets is starting to sport tail feathers that kind of bend, while the rest of the of the pullets have arrow straight tail feathers. Another sign is that it is beginning to behave differently to the rest of the pullets than they do to each other..... Chickens are very social creatures.

ben62670

Nope I have 2 lazy chickens. If they don't put out I am going to fry them up:)

Hillbilly61

They might just be late bloomers... kind of like the under developed girl we all graduated high school with and then a few years later you see her and OMG what a babe!!!!

On the other hand, I'll most definitely share with you off line details for butchering chickens. Where I came from, they had to earn their living. The chickens that closest to got away without having to earn their keep were the roosters I'd keep to have the eggs fertile. The selected roosters got to live because their job was to screw!!!! :cool:

... wonder if chicken **** movies would have sold....

Kex

ben62670 wrote: »

Nope I have 2 lazy chickens. If they don't put out I am going to fry them up:)

Now there's a new technique in job motivation!

Manager: "If you don't meet your sales target this year, you will be eaten!"

ben62670

Kex wrote: »

Now there's a new technique in job motivation!

Manager: "If you don't meet your sales target this year, you will be eaten!"

I had a talk with them before I left. Two days after my return they started laying. I am putting zip ties on the egg layers, and crosshairs on the ones that don't:eek:

Hillbilly61

ben62670 wrote: »

Nope I have 2 lazy chickens. If they don't put out I am going to fry them up:)

ben62670 wrote: »

I had a talk with them before I left.

I hope you did not use the phrase "put out" when you had your talk with those gals. If not careful, you could be looking at a sexual harassment charge. :eek:

ben62670

I don't let my girls talk to outsiders, or watch Oprah so I am safe till someone tells them about PITA;)

ben62670

Well I got 5 eggs from 6 pullets today. I also had an old dead fridge side by side that is now laying on it's side for the chickens to get up into. The fridge is about 2 foot off the ground, is nice and clean, and easy to clean. If anything it will be good shelter from the weather. I am hoping that they will want to lay in there. Very happy overall. I got my first egg 5 days ago and now I am getting 5 a day;) There is nothing like fresh eggs. I tried the expensive store eggs and these are just so much richer.
Ben

Hillbilly61

Ben, those girls are going to keep laying right where they've been laying unless you break up those nests. Make that fridge real inviting by thowing in some hay, etc.

ben62670

OK I may just put that igloo dog house on top of the fridge for now? Maybe I shouldn't mess with success?

Edit: BTW One of the hens was trying to hatch that Easter egg:)

Hillbilly61

ben62670 wrote: »

OK I may just put that igloo dog house on top of the fridge for now? Maybe I shouldn't mess with success?

Edit: BTW One of the hens was trying to hatch that Easter egg:)

Hmm, good question. While those hens are not the sharpest tool in the animal shed, they'll notice that the dog house got moved. If they decide that something is too amiss about where they are laying, that's it. They will pack right up and find a new place to lay. It's a major PIA when the hens relocate a nest.

One time I cleaned the boxes and sanitized them with diluted chlorox, but didn't rinse the chlorox water out enough. About half my hens moved their nests to the woods behind my house. :eek: I never did find all of the nests (egg count didn't come close to matching the hen count). 'Only got them laying back in their designated nests by keeping them shut in for about a week. (Their designated nests were in the chicken coop).

Try gradually moving the dog house, say over 5 or six days, to it's new location on top of the fridge. That ought to work.

ben62670

Well I did move the dog house so I can see it in from a window in the house. I may just leave it where it sits. For 3 days I have gotten 5 eggs, and they did just start laying. The fridge is kinda hidden where it is, and I don't want to mess up the yard with a door less dead fridge in view. I also read if you don't have a rooster one of the hens may go butch on ya, and not lay.

Hillbilly61

Not into that "white trash" look, eh?

Call me a homophobe if you want, I kept a STRAIGHT flock. Butch hens weird out the other hens by constantly hitting on them ... causing them to become off in their egg laying too.

Here is a tried and true solution to such situations!

ben62670

That looks good. I may bust out the Axe. Just kidding. I am liking them now that they are producing over 30 eggs a week:)
BTW I just had 3 eggs over easy and going for 2 more:) The shells are a little thin, and the membrane inside the shell is very strong. I don't know if it is because they are so fresh, or just because they are the first eggs. The eggs are bigger than mediums, but may be slightly small for large.

Hillbilly61

Get 'em that seashell (sometimes called oyster shell) mix & throw a handful into or around their feed once a week. That will thicken up the shells. The eggs will get fragile if they don't get enough calcium too long ... to the point that the eggs will start cracking during the laying process.

About egg size, getting smaller ones is most likely a noob phase for those pullets. You will get large and occasional jumbos as their biology gets fine tuned for egg production. The same could be related to the membrane thickness too. Inside the chicken, the egg forms essentially as a giant membraned lined cell. The shell forms last. I've butchered hens and have recovered nearly full sized eggs without shells (just membranes). We ate 'em!

ben62670

Yeah I have been supplementing them with ground eggs shells for now till I run out of this feed. I will go back to the "laying" feed with the ground oyster shells in it;) Not too concerned about the shell thickness for now. They are just thinner than store eggs. The yolks are much richer than the store eggs too. Very very happy with my ladies. I stopped calling them **** when they started laying;)

I wanna get some rabbits next. I hate eating store bought food. Mini garden is going in this week too:)

Hillbilly61

ben62670 wrote: »

Very very happy with my ladies. I stopped calling them **** when they started laying;)
QUOTE]

Funny how a man's attitude changes about a group of females, when, using your words Ben, they start putting out!

ben62670 wrote: »

I wanna get some rabbits next.

Rabbits suck. If you are serious about supplementing the fridge, think HOG!

ben62670

Why do rabbits suck? It's like picking Tomatoes.
Well today I go out and collect some eggs. I put the lid back down on the house and start to walk away. A damn 5 foot long skinny blackish gray snake goes down the fence line. It looked kinda like a black racer. Black racers are very fast and aggressive, but not poisonous.

sucks2beme

A dead fridge for the chickens? Sorry, JUST A LITTLE TOO REDNECK FOR ME!
But hey, whatever works. A little woodworking would yield a much better solution.
We used to have a galvanized version of this in the henhouse.
http://www.flemingoutdoors.com/conventional-laying-nests.html

ben62670

It actually looks decent. The exposed side are clean paint, and the front is completely off, and the shelves are removed. I'll shoot a pic later. Oh yeah easy to clean;)