Major's Chicken Journal.

[Major_in_MS]

The current iteration of my chicken keeping journey began on March 29 of this year (2019) when I pulled into Tractor Supply to get a wheelbarrow and they had there "Chick Days" in full swing. I took home six RIR chicks (female) and two bantams (straight run). I brooded these chicks in an old parakeet cage in my living room, much to the chagrin of my wife.

By April 27 I had finished building the coop that I also bought at Tractor Supply and moved them outside. That little birdcage was getting crowded!

At first I tried to let them free range in my yard everyday, but soon they were spending as much time in my neighbors backyard as they did in mine. So, until I can fence in my backyard, I bought a 8'x8' poultry pen and attached it to the coop.

On Thursday I will begin building my permanent coop/run. No, I don't expect that flimsy box store coop to last very long, but I will repaint it and keep it for a quarantine/grow out/time out coop to use as needed. I am impressed with the coop/run built by @adirondak5 so I will be building one based on his design with a few changes to make it better fit my needs. I'll have to hurry to get this new coop ready because I have placed an order with Meyer Hatchery and I'll have 15 more pullets pretty soon.

I ordered one of the Brinsea Ecoglow brooders and will brood these chicks in my garage in a large 110 gallon rubber stock tank. Hopefully that will make DW happy.

To be continued.....

 

[adirondak5]

Nice ! Thanks for the mention . I'll be following along . Excited to see what you come up with .

 

[Major_in_MS]

Wow, I forgot about starting this thread. I was going through my old posts looking for some information and I came across it so I decided to continue with it.

So, the chicks from Meyer Hatchery that I mentioned in the first post arrived and of course I procrastinated on the building of my new coop so I set up an old dog pen in the garage and that's where they lived until spring. I then moved them into the backyard. My neighbor had an old dog pen in his backyard that he was going to throw away so he gave it to me and I attached the two dog pens together and lay some 2x4s across the top and then put a heavy tarp over that and attached it to the dog pens with zip ties. I added some nest boxes and an enclosure with roosts made of pallets and the chickens happily lived there all summer.

Sadly, this tale came to an end when the local raccoons discovered my chickens and they decided the tarp was not going to stop them from having a chicken dinner. Over the course of a few days they killed all of my chickens. I took apart the dog pen coop and decided not to buy any chickens until I had a good predator proof coop built. Well, it was about this time that the price of lumber shot through the roof due to covid. So no coop was built.

Fast forward to February 2023. I decided instead of building a coop I would just go ahead and buy the big coop from Tractor Supply. It has an attached 10x10 run and I surrounded it with cinderblocks to discourage digging under.

(this is not my actual coop, it's the picture from their website)

I liked this coop so much that I bought a second one a couple of months later.

On February 23, 2023 my chicks arrived.

So currently I have three coops.

The first coop contains all the eight month old chickens from the February chick order. I waited until the last minute to place this order so I had to settle for what was left.

Coop One:

• 1 blue orpington cockerel
• 2 blue orpington pullets
• 1 partridge cochin cockerel
• 1 partridge cochin pullet
• 1 black cochin pullet
• 1 splash cochin pullet
• 2 white cochin pullets
• 1 blue marans pullet
• 1 splash marans pullet
• 1 golden cuckoo marans pullet

Coop Two:

• 1 blue copper marans cockerel
• 14 gold laced wyandottes

The blue copper marans cockerel could not get along with his coop-mates so he had to be separated. At first I had him in the second coop with the marans pullets, but then I ordered the 14 GLWs and when they came out of the brooder I moved the marans pullets into coop one and put younger birds in with him.

Coop Three: Cockerel Coop. (fry pan bargain)

• 3 marans cockerels
• 1 Welsummer cockerel
• 3 RIR cockerels
• 2 SLW cockerels

Last night I ordered my fourth coop, it is supposed to arrive on Friday. This morning I picked up another box of chicks at the post office and they are in the brooder now.

Well, that brings me up to date.

 

[chrissynemetz]

I'm so sorry about your first flock.

 

[Major_in_MS]

Here are four brief (30 second) videos captured by the Blink camera that I put inside the incubator during my November 30, 2023 hatch. Enjoy!

These eggs were collected from:
Coop One:

• 1 blue orpington cockerel
• 2 blue orpington pullets
• 1 partridge cochin cockerel
• 1 partridge cochin pullet
• 1 black cochin pullet
• 1 splash cochin pullet
• 2 white cochin pullets
• 1 blue marans pullet
• 1 splash marans pullet
• 1 golden cuckoo marans pullet

 

[chanceosunshine]

Adorable. Curious from the get go! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Major_in_MS]

In December I set up two more coops and moved some cockerels around. I still don't have things just the way I want them, but hopefully by March I'll have everything situated.

Coop One:​
11 months old: Hatch Date 2/21/2023 1 blue orpington cockerel 2 blue orpington pullets 1 partridge cochin cockerel 1 partridge cochin pullet 1 black cochin pullet 1 splash cochin pullet 2 white cochin pullets 1 blue marans pullet 1 splash marans pullet 1 golden cuckoo marans pullet

Coop Two:​	SLW Breeder Coop​
35 weeks old: Hatch Date 5/22/2023 2 SLW cockerels 22 weeks old: Hatch Date 9/14/2023 14 GLW pullets

Coop Three:	Cockerel Coop​
35 weeks old: Hatch Date 5/22/2023 3 marans cockerels 1 Welsummer cockerel 3 New Hampshire Red cockerels

Coop Four:​	Grower Coop​
11 months old: Hatch Date 2/21/2023 1 Blue Copper Marans Cockerel 12 weeks old: Hatch Date 10/30/2023 1 Black Jersey Giant Cockerel 1 GLW Cockerel 1 RIR Cockerel 8 Black Jersey Giant pullets 2 Speckled Sussex pullets 1 RIR pullet 1 Lavender Ameraucana pullet

Coop Five:​	Brooder Coop​
Chicks from my Nov 30 hatch CornishX chicks Dec 11 hatch

By March I hope to have the 7 cockerels in coop three and all the cornishX butchered and in the freezer.

My plans for this summer will be to:

• Hatch out a flock of SLW from coop two and put them with the GLW cockerel that is currently in coop four. This flock will give me sex linked chicks with GLW female and SLW split to gold male chicks.
• Sell my Cochins, or move them to there own coop, and keep a pure (BBS) Orpington flock in coop one and hatch some orpington eggs.
• Put the Marans in a coop together and hatch some Marans eggs.

 

[Happy hen lover]

I just read this thread . I'm so glad to see how it's progressing, and that you did an update. You have chicken fever for sure! . Hope wife is still happy. I'd love pic of all these coop set ups.
p. s. Sorry about racoons!
Glad it didn't scare you off, what do you do with Xtra eggs just curious.

 

[Major_in_MS]

what do you do with Xtra eggs just curious.

Thanks for reading! I do try my best to keep my wife, @SherriMC, happy. You know what they say, "Happy wife, happy life." The chickens however, especially the cockerels/cocks, do NOT help with keeping her happy. I'm the chicken person in this family, definitely not Sherri.

I don't use supplemental lighting in my coops so my chickens stopped laying completely in mid December. Within the past week a few of my birds have started laying again.

Last summer between the wife and I, our four grown children that still live at home, and our German Shepherd "Karma" we managed to eat all the eggs in a timely manner. However, we will soon be getting many more eggs than we can eat.

In 2013 when chicken math took over and I had many more chickens than I needed, the eggs started piling up.

That's when I put up some pickled eggs. This was 12 dozen pickled eggs and my sons went through them pretty fast.

Back in November I was talking to the store manager at a nearby Tractor Supply and he told me that last summer he sold more chicks than ever before and that they could not keep up with the demand for chickens. So this summer I'm planning on getting my cabinet incubator and hatcher out of storage and putting an ad in the Market Bulletin and sell some SLW chicks. I may even keep the Cochins and hatch all their eggs to sell also if I find there is a market for them.

 

[Major_in_MS]

Yesterday I processed some of my birds. I started with the three 8 month old Marans cockerels from the bachelor coop. Here is a picture of the first two.

These long legged skinny chickens kept getting hung up in the plucker and I ended up having to put them in one at a time to get them to spin around and get plucked.

After those three, I moved on to the Cornish Cross that are 7 weeks old. I learned a lesson after the first two of the Cornish Cross.

I learned that you don't scald these young chickens the same way you scald the old ones.
Those old ones had to stay in the scald water for almost two minutes to loosen up the wing and tail feathers. So I left those first two Cornish Cross in the scald water for the same amount of time and this was the result.

They were seriously torn up. The other six Cornish Cross that I processed after these two only needed about 30 seconds of scald time and I got a perfect pluck without all the torn skin and dislocated joints. I was a bit worried that my Yardbird plucker was going to tear up the next two and I would end up hand plucking. I was quite relieved to find out that my over scald was the culprit. Oh, and these fat, round chickens rolled around in the plucker beautifully with two birds at a time.