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 I’m so excited – one of the Buckeyes has gone broody!!! Raising the Buckeyes was a great experience (see Raising Day-Old Chicks), but I was hoping the Buckeyes would retain their instinct to go broody, and raise their own young – I’d rather they perpetuate the flock (why should I do the work if they’ll do it naturally?). So, when one hen showed [...] Continue reading Building A Broody Box  Spring finally seems to be here, so in the first semi-dry weekend, we cleaned and inspected the year-old chicken coop. We use the “deep-litter” method for managing coop sanitation, which basically means putting down a 4” layer of pine shavings (the “litter”) mixed with a little diatomaceous earth, adding more pine shavings as the ratio [...] Continue reading Semi-Annual Chicken Coop Cleaning & Evaluation  Ok, this post may be a bit “deep” (sorry for the pun), but I’ve been researching chicken litter management. For the past couple of years, our chickens were either housed in an Eglu (with a pull-out shelf for dropping removal), or in a barn stall, where we could shovel dirt and bedding in and out [...] Continue reading Deep Litter & Healthy Chickens?  After the new coop arrived, Randy wondered whether we should “paint the inside” to protect the wood, and make it harder for chicken parasites to hide-out. Not knowing the answer but thinking it sounded reasonable, I asked on the Backyard Chicken forum, and the response was unanimously in favor of painting. Everyone noted how much easier to clean, better-looking, and [...] Continue reading New Chicken Coop Protection  On Friday, June 11, our new chicken coop was delivered. It has some nice features: it’s elevated, has eight nest boxes accessible from the outside, three operable windows, a built-in roosting area, chicken hatch that can be opened from the human door, and back ventilation hatch. It’s 8′ x 10′, and they even used dimesional shingles on it [...] Continue reading New Chicken Coop (with surprise)  We kept our chickens in a 10’ x 10’ stall in the barn; but, since we’ve ordered 25 day-old chicks and are planning to give the stall to some Dwarf Nigerian goats, new chicken housing is in order. There are so many options it’s hard to choose what to buy or build, but there are [...] Continue reading Chicken Housing Basics  Randy did a terrific job building a new nesting box for the hens, and Spice had to check it out. New Nesting Box and Spice We put it in the corner of the chicken’s pen and added golf balls to give them the right idea. Installed Nest Box with Golf Balls The Golden Buff hens got the message right away, they love the [...] Continue reading New Chicken Nesting Box |
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