Raising Chooks

[GaryD]

Hi Martin,

Three or four.....either way you'll have plenty of eggs around the place.

Here's the photos of my chicken housing.

• Photo 1.....the layers' house......they free range on 1/2 an acre during the day
• Photo 2.......a chicken tractor.....a great idea for flat land but a bugger for our terrain. We use this one to house our most recent layer because the original ones kept flogging her every chance they got.
• Photo 3.....our meat bird hut.....we rear up to 24 meat birds at a time in this little unit. They get to run around in the yard during the day.

Gary

[Miki]

Gary, your chook pens look great! do your egg girls mix with the meat birds at all? or do you keep them separated?

Our Australorp chooks are gorgeous too, its so funny to see them racing to be first in line for the crumbs when the horses get fed. The horses tolerate them nudging them if they get too close (the chooks are usually covered in horse feed in the end as the horses are sloppy eaters).

Their characters are pretty similar (they are sisters) but are all pretty cheeky trying to sneak into the back garden (which is enclosed from them) to check out the feed shed or rose bed (which they are allowed to scratch around in now and again). They are very nosy and tend to follow me around just in case I might have something edible in my pockets.

Our young chicks are growing by the day and have now been given a sheltered corner in the big chook run. The big girls can't get to them but they do get to know each other this way (I hope). Once the big girls are let out in the morning and the duck has laid her egg in the nest (where the chooks all lay their eggs too - thats the favourite spot at the moment) the little ones are let out of their corner and have the whole pen to run around in. I took the opportunity yesterday to clean out the little one's bed and raked it towards the door where I wanted to leave it for the big girls to sort through and before I knew it a few of the babies had settled themselves down to sleep in it - they still are rather cute.

[GaryD]

Hi,

We keep our layers and meat birds separate.......no point having them form meaningful relationships that are predictably short term.

Our former layers were Australorps. They were very attractive birds but we made the mistake of buying what was obviously a show breeder's stock rather than a utility line. The result was what Texan's refer to as "all hat and no cattle"......they looked great but underperformed in the egg laying department.

It's good to see that your chicks are progressing well.

I believe that the ability to breed and rear chickens (and other poultry and game birds) is arguably one of the most useful things that a backyard food producer can do in their own interests.

Gary

[anniefish]

Hi Gary,
I agree about show animals. We have found that the better the show animal the worse they are at doing what they should do - we bought highly bred Anglo Nubian Goats all ended up dying. When we contacted the breeders they always had Vet bills. Also dairy cows, we always found the smallest, boniest, skinniest cow (useless as a show animal) was the best milker. The same happens with most animals - dogs, chooks, birds. How many breeds are now endangered due to being highly bred?

[Martin A1]

I love the line "all hat no cattle" and will be using that one on Monday hehe.

Couldn't agree more on cross breed dogs! Better in manys ways!

[mtnester]

Hi
just a few quick naive Q to save me Googling too long. How high should the fence be for free ranging broiler chooks. I'm thinking chicken tractor for night and fenced orchard area for day foraging. So fence could be quite long thus expensive. Also how to you get them back from orchard into tractor at night.
Does anyone know anything about movable fencing or movable electric fencing to contain free ranging birds and keep out predators.

Regards, MTNester

[GaryD]

Hi MTN,

ust a few quick naive Q to save me Googling too long. How high should the fence be for free ranging broiler chooks. I'm thinking chicken tractor for night and fenced orchard area for day foraging. So fence could be quite long thus expensive. Also how to you get them back from orchard into tractor at night.
Does anyone know anything about movable fencing or movable electric fencing to contain free ranging birds and keep out predators.

Your chicken tractor/orchard idea sounds fine. The fencing around your orchard will need to be strong enough to exclude dogs and with a fine enough mesh to keep the chickens in. A height of 4 feet will be enough to keep the chickens in.....meat birds quickly get to the point where they have trouble waddling along much less jumping over the fence.

Getting the chickens back into the tractor each evening simply requires a bit of scratch grain to be sprinkled inside the tractor. If you shake a takeaway food container full of frozen BSF larvae, they'll cover 100 metres in about five seconds.

Of course, if your chicken tractor is large enough....and your pasture good enough....there's no reason why your meat birds can't be grown out in the chicken tractor.

Gary

[Golem in the Gears]

Hello.. Funny, guess my first post on a Aquaponics forum will be about chooks Anyways, just wanted to share a few pics of my chicken tractor and the new arrivals in the brooder.. these guys are a bit over a week old.. they are red-stars for meat and eggs and a couple buff laced polish simply because I wanted them... there's also a free rare breed chick in there that comes with the order, I'm guessing Golden Laced Wyandotte.. I'll be building raised beds out back next week along with a set of chicken tractors that will fit on top of the raised beds... The plan will be to rotate the tractors once a month to a new bed and use the old bed to grow veggies in, once I harvest from a bed the chooks will be moved back in to till, clean up and re fertilize the soil.

Great forum by the way

Bill

[GaryD]

Welcome to the forum, Bill.

Looks like you're on your way with the chicks. What's a red star?

GaryD

[Golem in the Gears]

Thanks GaryD It's a pleasure to be here.. I'll have to dig up the actual cross used as it has slipped my mind at the moment, but here's the description given by the hatchery...

We have finally found the sex link BROWN EGG LAYER that meets our strict specifications; easy to raise, lays large brown eggs, and has a good feed conversion ratio. A "sex-link" chicken is one, which at time of hatch, can be sexed by its color. RED STAR: These hens will mature with feathers that are reddish brown with flecks of white throughout. The males are all white with nice yellow skin. (They will not retain the same characteristics in future.) At approximately 22 weeks these hens will start to lay and lay they will. We're sure this hardy bird will become a favorite of yours as it lays eggs right through hot or cold weather. No wonder it's called the Red Star.

Bill