Like Minnesota Marty said a light may help but they are getting along in years. I don't keep a light on mine. Not to sound all hippy but I think they need the time to rest occasionally.
Nah, not at all. We had a raccoon killing the chickens too. Some were headless, some only parts left. Set a live trap, then took care of him. End of problem, but my wife decided to stop for a while. She's back at it again though. I got sidetracked watching some vids for a while.
We do the same thing. Our eggs never get washed until they are sold. Eggs we use are rarely refrigerated due to the coating UncleJoe talked about and we are still alive also.
Yup, Chicken keeping is addicting. We have 18 hens right now. We enjoy it. We buy our chicks at tractor supply. We've done well. Pretty much give away the eggs we don't use. If it's ok to post, check out "back yard chickens" forums and "the chicken chick". This has been a fun learning experience. we lost six chickens to predation in 3 years. Hawks, coyotes and fox. I built a decent coop and made the chicken run out of 6' tall dog kennel panels and covered the run with more dog kennel panels. It works great. chickens go to bed every night and the pop door gets closed and every morning they get fresh water and the pop door opened. Try putting a few golf balls in your nesting boxes. The chickens will be interested in the balls and mess with them. It might help teach them to lay in the boxes. I can go on and on. lol. Feeding, water, treats chicken football.
polar, After the "Tuesday night massacre" as the wife still calls it we got some dog kennel panels and I built a chicken wire screen over the top and then every night the ladies went inside and I secured the flap door didn't loose one after that. I like the idea with the golf balls. keeping chickens is addicting you are correct.
I joined BYC the first year I had chickens. When I joined back in '07 they had over 10,000 members. The amount of info there is astounding. Anything you could ever want to know about chickens is in there. Do a search for any topic and you'll get scores of pages of results. The problem I had was how fast it moved. If you asked a question it was 3 pages back within a few hours. I found another forum that has plenty of friendly, experienced chickeneers. I haven't been there for a couple years (except to get this link) but I assume it's still a good place to talk with like minded folks. Like polarbear, I'll post it and if it's against the rules one of our nice, friendly, understanding mods can pull it. http://www.chickenforum.com/forum.php
Current member number contest for BYC http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/9...bers-guess-the-day-hour-and-win#post_14586277
I've seen many pictures of wood sheds, how about some chicken coup pics. I need to build one this summer. My wife and I bought an old farmstead a little over a year ago and before I could start loading firewood I have been accumulating in an outbuilding, she turned it into her chicken coup. Oh well, guess it has worked for that too. Any pictures or ideas would be appreciated!
I knew I liked you... The goats are my wife's business, but I LOVE "my girls"! My Buff orpington rooster and my Jersey Giants are pretty cool too!
As for predators... if you have the time and space, get a Great Pyrenees or TWO... nothing will get close to your critters!
That is exactly what we did. Two Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepard cross to protect the alpacas, goats and chickens. Very smart and well mannered dogs.
Crushed oyster shell. Some of our chickens had very fragile shells early on in our chicken adventure. I inquired at BYC and everyone that responded said the same thing. I bought a 50# bag that I'm still using today. You just mix a little with the feed once a month or so.
