Howdy.
Tom here, from Lander, Wyoming. Hope all you nice folks will allow a Badger in the hen house. I promise not to eat anybody's chickens except mine.
We just order our first set of hatching eggs. They should be in Tuesday or Wednesday. We've been reading up a lot on keeping chickens, but I figure it would be good to actually talk with some people who know what they're doing. And I could probably search through the archives and find all the answers to my questions from past threads, but it's a whole lot more fun just to discuss, so that's what I'll do if that's OK with you. For now I'll just tell you what we have in mind and invite your comments. If the primary comment is "Are you crazy?!" then we'll consider changing our plan.
About us: Mrs. Badger and I live on about three and a half acres of nice grass-alfalfa pasture that we want to start using go grow our own food. We're new to chickens, but experienced with small critters (dogs, cats, assorted domestic rodents) and we hunt, so we have no illusions or issues about killing, gutting, etc. I'm not bad at building and pretty good at improvising stuff once I have a good idea of what is needed. We've been out here about five years and we're getting fairly good at growing crops in our difficult climate.
Overall plan: If the eggs don't hatch, we and/or the dog will enjoy a very expensive omelet. If they do, we'll raise them through the summer and see what they're like. If they're easy to get along with, we'll keep a few hens and maybe a rooster through the winter and try getting them to brood us some chicks in the spring. If they're too much of a hassle, we'll put the lot of 'em in the freezer next fall and feast on fresh chicken through the winter. I believe that is what you call a "win-win."
Breed: We ordered gold-laced wyandottes because we hear they're easy to get along with, decent foragers and mothers, decent for meat and eggs, their coloring makes them slightly less vulnerable to predators than white chickens (we get hawks, foxes, and the occasional stray dog around here--I'm a good shot with the .22, but I can't be around all the time), and their feathering and rose combs make them fairly cold-hardy. That last thing is key--it gets pretty darn chilly here in the winter.
We got our eggs off ebay on a semi-impulse buy. We've been talking about it for a long time, and I spotted a good deal yesterday and we decided to get on with it. The quality might not be the greatest, but it's hard to argue with the price, since this is just an experiment for now.
Housing: I'm pretty sure we can borrow an incubator from the school. Once the eggs hatch we'll be keeping them in a large cardboard box in the living room (so they and our extremely gentle dog can get used to each other) with a hanging lightbulb in one corner, some sort of litter on the floor, a water/food container of some sort, shallow enough that they can't drown in it.
Once they outgrow the box, we plan to put them in an enclosure about 75x50 feet, with four strand barbed wire and a couple feet of chicken wire along the bottom. We'll build a three-sided shelter out of scrounged lumber. This will be open on three sides in the summer, with hinged doors along the front so we can close it up in winter, with rafters for roosting, boxes on the wall for nesting. If the gods of the marketplace are with us, they'll be sharing this enclosure with a couple dairy goats, which besides giving us milk, will also help with predator control--goats are pretty hostile toward foxes and dogs, and might even discourage a hawk--and provide some warmth in the winter, since our shelter won't have electricity to it.
Feeding etc: Once they're big enough to be outside, we're hoping to let them out for a few hours a day to forage, when we can be out to supervise them and make sure they don't go swimming in the pond of wander onto the road. Once we get our garden going (next summer) we plan on letting the chickens do come anti-bug patrols for us. But for now it's just the open pasture. If we keep a flock through the winter, we hope to grow our own feed, maybe a millet-buckwheat mix, that will take them through the winter in good shape. I've heard chickens love milk and it's good for them, too, but we don't have the goats yet so I'm not depending on that.
OK, I've rambled on more than enough. That's our basic idea. I have lots of questions about hatching, feeding, imprinting, wintering, shelter, and hatching, but I'll try to shuffle those into the appropriate forums. For now, any comments/advice/reality checks would be greatly appreciated!
Tom
Tom here, from Lander, Wyoming. Hope all you nice folks will allow a Badger in the hen house. I promise not to eat anybody's chickens except mine.
We just order our first set of hatching eggs. They should be in Tuesday or Wednesday. We've been reading up a lot on keeping chickens, but I figure it would be good to actually talk with some people who know what they're doing. And I could probably search through the archives and find all the answers to my questions from past threads, but it's a whole lot more fun just to discuss, so that's what I'll do if that's OK with you. For now I'll just tell you what we have in mind and invite your comments. If the primary comment is "Are you crazy?!" then we'll consider changing our plan.
About us: Mrs. Badger and I live on about three and a half acres of nice grass-alfalfa pasture that we want to start using go grow our own food. We're new to chickens, but experienced with small critters (dogs, cats, assorted domestic rodents) and we hunt, so we have no illusions or issues about killing, gutting, etc. I'm not bad at building and pretty good at improvising stuff once I have a good idea of what is needed. We've been out here about five years and we're getting fairly good at growing crops in our difficult climate.
Overall plan: If the eggs don't hatch, we and/or the dog will enjoy a very expensive omelet. If they do, we'll raise them through the summer and see what they're like. If they're easy to get along with, we'll keep a few hens and maybe a rooster through the winter and try getting them to brood us some chicks in the spring. If they're too much of a hassle, we'll put the lot of 'em in the freezer next fall and feast on fresh chicken through the winter. I believe that is what you call a "win-win."
Breed: We ordered gold-laced wyandottes because we hear they're easy to get along with, decent foragers and mothers, decent for meat and eggs, their coloring makes them slightly less vulnerable to predators than white chickens (we get hawks, foxes, and the occasional stray dog around here--I'm a good shot with the .22, but I can't be around all the time), and their feathering and rose combs make them fairly cold-hardy. That last thing is key--it gets pretty darn chilly here in the winter.
We got our eggs off ebay on a semi-impulse buy. We've been talking about it for a long time, and I spotted a good deal yesterday and we decided to get on with it. The quality might not be the greatest, but it's hard to argue with the price, since this is just an experiment for now.
Housing: I'm pretty sure we can borrow an incubator from the school. Once the eggs hatch we'll be keeping them in a large cardboard box in the living room (so they and our extremely gentle dog can get used to each other) with a hanging lightbulb in one corner, some sort of litter on the floor, a water/food container of some sort, shallow enough that they can't drown in it.
Once they outgrow the box, we plan to put them in an enclosure about 75x50 feet, with four strand barbed wire and a couple feet of chicken wire along the bottom. We'll build a three-sided shelter out of scrounged lumber. This will be open on three sides in the summer, with hinged doors along the front so we can close it up in winter, with rafters for roosting, boxes on the wall for nesting. If the gods of the marketplace are with us, they'll be sharing this enclosure with a couple dairy goats, which besides giving us milk, will also help with predator control--goats are pretty hostile toward foxes and dogs, and might even discourage a hawk--and provide some warmth in the winter, since our shelter won't have electricity to it.
Feeding etc: Once they're big enough to be outside, we're hoping to let them out for a few hours a day to forage, when we can be out to supervise them and make sure they don't go swimming in the pond of wander onto the road. Once we get our garden going (next summer) we plan on letting the chickens do come anti-bug patrols for us. But for now it's just the open pasture. If we keep a flock through the winter, we hope to grow our own feed, maybe a millet-buckwheat mix, that will take them through the winter in good shape. I've heard chickens love milk and it's good for them, too, but we don't have the goats yet so I'm not depending on that.
OK, I've rambled on more than enough. That's our basic idea. I have lots of questions about hatching, feeding, imprinting, wintering, shelter, and hatching, but I'll try to shuffle those into the appropriate forums. For now, any comments/advice/reality checks would be greatly appreciated!
Tom
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