A lurker who wants a chicken, or two

The eglu says you can house 2 or 3 hens in it. Maybe that would be 4 bantams....or 5? But there is just one egg laying area, I think. Somebody of skill needs to look at the eglu site and tell me if I could have 4 bantams in it. Yay, I'm so excited!

in size i would think. but in numbers 5or 6 is still 5 or 6. Good luck with your neighbor.

lol.... I am hoping he wont know, or hear them....since my poodle is so 'loud' lol!

if he complains tell him your watching a movie and you have your sound turned up, I think its called barnyard.

lol....or ole mc donald? cant imagine how he can hear anything over the sound of the freeway right behind our house!

there ya go. ohhhhhhhhhhhh freeway i love the country for just that reason, we dont hear police or others of such noise, we dont hear jake brakes, we dont hear the train. I love it. Would NOT trade it for a gazillion dollars. And I can go out to feed the chickens in my night shirt or less, if i wanted to. We wont discuss the outside potty.

I just re-looked at the site for the eglu. Here it says that the eglu will house 4 medium size or 6 bantams

You can click on the pictures on the right side to see close ups of the inside and the clean out tray, etc.

Maybe I could get 3 or 4 bantams to start. Can you house 2 bantams with a "medium size" chicken? Are the ISA browns a "medium" chicken?

http://www.omlet.us/products_services/products_services.php?view=Chickens&about=the%20eglu&rolling_image_id=2

lol! well, heres a pix of my 'back fence' 10 lane highway right behind me :o(
now,how could anyone hear some lil ole chickens clucking?! MY neighbor probably will! ugh!

that is just perrty (yes that is with an okie accent), wow that is a big freeway(we call interstates or hiways) I do not envy you on the freeway I do on the no weeds in your garden.

lol, should have seen that area before we weeded...5' tall weeds.
hoping that by having a 'movable' pen for chickens we will have less weeds down there next year...at least thats how I sold DH on the chicken idea :oD
well, I let him build a fancy coop too! lol

we are off to our local feed store now to see what chicks they have!! yippee!

I actually got my chickens in two batches. The first three I got from a lady who did a large hatchery order. I then had first pick of the Jersey Giants, Blue Andalusians, and Americaunas. This was convenient because it is difficult to order very few chickens from the hatcheries, and I only wanted 3 but of different breeds. I then made the mistake on this site of making an offhand comment about how my coop could potentially hold another chicken or two. The northern California chicken fairy representative (Catscan) jumped right in and convinced me that I had to have one more which is where I got the Marans. Catscan hatched the Marans herself, so she is by far the friendliest of the bunch. The others will let me pet them if I bribe them with treats, but she will quite happily sit in my lap and cuddle. Honestly the only part I would hesitate to do again is introduce a single additional chicken to an existing flock (even though they were all only 2 months old). The Marans whose name is Schnitzel is just fine, but I was a bit traumatized by the difficulty she had in being accepted. She got pecked at by the others for quite a while. But now she is my best chicken friend, and I wouldn't change a thing.

There is no reason why you couldn't put down a wire floor on a tractor coop to protect against predators. I just didn't do it because I wanted my girls to have full grass access.

:o) we bought 2 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Plymouth Rocks :o)
yippee!
They are soooo cute! but I bet with my luck they are all roos!

I think of all the chicken breeds I ordered.. (15) so I could figure out which one I liked the most and wanted to live "forever" with..
I beleive it would have to be the Americaunas. They are overall the most interesting and the most interested in what you are doing.
Their poofy cheeks make them the cutiest things.. kind of like when sylvester eats tweety and trys to talk and a feather comes out his mouth.. well these guys look like they ate the cat and when they look up at you and tilt their little heads.. it looks like they are going to smile and a furball might escape,, or at least a whisker is going to pop out.
If I go out to feed very early.. the Americaunas are the ones to come up behind me and jump and pull on my night shirt.. I always laugh.. so does dh.. he says it looks like a bunch of kindergardners wanting their cookies & milk yankin on my skirt hem.
I have a bunch of breeds that are nice.. a few that are cute, some that entertain me.. but all around the Americaunas have it all... now egg production... haven't got a clue yet.. lol.. they are only.. umm 14 weeks now...?
Oh yea, all the bird I got had to be cold hardy.. so all had single or rose combs, no frostbite, they also had to be able to handle the hot weather.

OH.. something I learned today... even a chicken with a brain this big ( O ) NOPE, he does not know to come in from the rain! I rain the sprinkler to make a nice mudd area... dahhh the just stood there.. a few looked up.. mouth open... OMG// one even finally realized.. IT'S RAINING.. and ran home.. lol byw,, it hasn't rained all this week.. I was just looking for a few worms and trying to give them a cool spot.

Ali & Sandy both Americaunas,14 weeks

Oh how cute.. oneanjl
how will you ever sleep tonight.. it is really hard to take your eyes off them isn't it?

huh, sleep? they are sleeping with me! dh is gonna sleep in their box! lol! he keeps calling them dinner! ugh!
wouldnt they be nice and warm right here next to me under my down comforter? tee hee

wow boy am i late on this thread but i will say it anyway welcome Claire and have a great time on the forum

Hi there!

I just cannot resist showing this photo to all, like Claire, who worry about their chicken coop!
Here is the Ethiopian solution!

Potagere

oh my.. what is that crested thing on the lower (ground) left... what a character.. I want one!

And I love the coop... well cept maybe in the winter.. might get a wee bit chilly on thier rears.. they might want to tuck em in at 20* lol


edited to say, I also just noticed.. they better get a carpenter in.. the door off the coop fell off.. LMBO.

This message was edited Jul 18, 2008 6:19 AM

cool chickens and are they nesting boxes on that shelf thing there how do they get up there

hey lucky... don't your chickens over there come with wings?

well ha ha i guess its just my chickens that are to fat to jump that high (or to lazy) because my fence isnt even that high but ther is barb wire on the outside so anything trying to get in will get spiked but not if they are trying to get out so it is safe for the chickens

I blew the original up and I don't see any crest on that rather ordinary young chicken on the ground, just its tail! Unless you meant the crest on that big orange thing in front of it? That's the fuel to heat the coops in the winter! Who needs a door, anyway?

lol how cold dose it get in your neck of the woods anyway

When it gets that cold, those chickens go in the stew pot! Or move indoors!

oh so very cold in other words

In the absence of central heating, that's what is called "indirect, under-bed" heating!

wats that

Well, the 4-H poultry show is at 8 am on the first day of the State Fair (Aug 7).
The FFA and open poultry show is at 9 am on the third day of the fair (Aug 9).

I might have to attend both to see all the options and get a chicken or 2. I will look into the Americaunas. They sound friendly.

Does anybody have an ISA Brown?

Potagere - thanks for the very creative chicken housing idea! I will have to keep that version in mind! However, I think that the chickens might be cold in there in the winter, and thus might prefer the eglu...

Claire

yep i have isa browns here is a pic

What, you chicken to keep poultry under the bed, Claire? How do you ever expect to get your dose of bird flu?

Frans, what looks like a crest on the chicken on the ground is a rock behind it. And, what looks like the door that fell off is apparently where one of the walls came off the second little house to the right.

Portagere, what kind of predators do they have in Ethiopia besides the human kind?

GG

Well, Potagere, I think my greyhound (levrier in French, right?) would have something to say about a chicken under the bed, and would probably consider it to be a midnight snack!

Luckycharm - your ISA browns are lovely. Are they good layers?

Well, let's see, GG. If you don't count crocodiles (and I do, because these things get huge there!), there are lions, 2 kinds of wolves, the African hunting dog, some monkeys and baboons I'd call predators, at least 2 kinds of wild pig I'd rather not meet up with, numerous eagles and hawks, and the giant molerat, which I think will kill chickens. I probably missed some. Oh, and of course, there's Claire's greyhound! No, wait, it's in Iowa. Isn't it?

Have a look at these beauties.

Just beautiful. You can keep them crocks.

Wow, I'm glad I don't have any of those in my backyard.

When we had all the floods in Iowa, they did find an alligator in the flood waters in Cedar Rapids somewhere. I think it might have been an escaped "pet" because they cannot possibly survive the winters up here.

I do believe those crocs would have a meal out of my greyhound.

I have now compiled a list of breeds of chickens to look into at the fair, based on the Omelet site and some of the useful information everyone has given. What fun! I am particularly interested in the Americaunas, the ISA browns, the Faverolle, the Frizzle, the gingernut ranger, the Polish, and the speckledy, and maybe the Marans.

Claire

That puppy is a beauty. good luck with your chickens, looks like you did you research.

Africa is BEAUTIFUL!

Just a snack, Claire!
But all those chickens! You'll have to build Urbandale's largest non-commercial chicken condominium!

I'm late to this hen party but I thought I'd throw my $.25 in. C, I live east of you along pretty much the same *weather line*. I have 25 hens and one tired rooster. Current flock is amercaunas, cuckoo marans and a few mutts. My rooster is amercauna. Since you want so few (and no rooster) perhaps you could set up housing for them in your garage. I had predator issues in my barn originally but now we are secure (raccoons were the worst).

I don't spend too much time (my schedule is busy like yours) but I will say that hauling water twice a day to the barn in below zero temps/windchill can be a challenge. If I did it over again I might put a well in the barn. The only other time consuming chore is cleaning the coop. Weekly in the summer but using the deep litter method in the winter (that first spring clean out is a doozy). I should add that I have 3 goats now too.....

I always wanted country life and dreamed of having some chickens. Nothing better than picking eggs every day...nothing like finding a beautiful pale blue egg waiting for me after a long work day.

Good luck to you!

Catherine

Yes, Patchouli, But the children are even more so! (As they are everywhere!) My young friend Dadi with the soccer ball his mother made for him.