Urban Tulsa's Chicken Journey...

[Urban Tulsa]

Hello All,

This is my first post, however, I have been pouring over the threads on BYC for a little over a week now.

First off, a little background;

I am living in a fairly eclectic neighborhood in urban Tulsa.

My wife has been dead set against chickens, as she is a vet tech. and deals with animals all the time.

She tells me that's the last thing she needs to do is take care of chickens, on top of raising our two kids.

But, life had other plans in mind.

Enter Momma Red...



This little girl came to our family on Tuesday, March 19th, as my son and I were working in our back yard garden.

I noticed some animal in the alley "strutting around", and said to my son "There's a chicken in the alley!"

So, my son who is 3 says "Let's catch him up daddy".

Not being one to disappoint my son, I grabbed the closest thing I could find (which happened to be a tomato cage) and proceeded to catch her.

To my surprise she just came running up to me as if to say, "Thank God you're here, I'm lost and scared."

We brought her in the yard, and started making provisions so that she would be comfortable.

I set up a pin with my left over tomato cage wire and used a dog kennel I had laying around to make her a little place to scratch around.

It was at this point, my wife comes out and sees this chicken and asks "Where on earth did that come from?", so I told her how the chicken came to be in our yard.

Assertively, my wife says to me "You don't know the first thing about chickens." but seeing how happy it made our son, she stated "This is your crazy idea, you take care of it."

Rather than argue I simply agreed, and began my journey to find out all I could about raising chickens, which led my to BYC.

After some initial reading I realized that my pin and the cardboard box with some straw in it was far short of what Momma Red would require to be comfortable.

I made her a temporary little nest box, to buy me some time to design and build a coop, which I am in the process of constructing.

I also realized that she would be lonely with out a friend, so, I tell my wife we have to get her a friend to keep her company.

I'll let you imagine her reaction.

After some coaxing I got her to agree to let me get Momma a friend (insert my devious snicker here).

I decided to take my son to Atwood's and get a few pullet's so we could learn this whole chicken thing together.

We made our purchase and headed home.

I used the information I got off of BYC to set up a brooder, and used materials we already had around the house from past pets (read lizards & parrots).

Enter our new peep's...



Now remember, it took a whole lot of convincing to get my wife to let me get Momma "a friend", so imagine her reaction to me bringing home not 1, but 5 more birds!

After several hours of not talking to me, as I was out in the yard working on improvements to Momma's pin, I come into our utility room to find her and my son playing with the peeps.

I asked her if she had a change of heart, and she tried to play it off as "showing our son the proper way to hold them", that gave me a little chuckle.

She then tells me that I had better get to work on a coop because "these birds are not going to be staying in MY house".

Which brings me to today.

I have come to the realization that I have but 4 to 6 weeks till these little girls are ready to join Momma, and I have alot of work to do.

Any comments or questions are always welcome, and thanks in advance for all the help I'm sure you'll provide.

-JD-

 

[Kassaundra]

Wow that is a serious and quick case of chicken math!!!!! lol lol lol


Oh and

from a neighbor to the south (Henryetta) and

Make sure your coop and/or run are preditor proof, sometimes people who live in the "city" forget they have many of the same preditor issues as the country (racoons, skunks, coyotes, dogs, cats etc...)

 

[Urban Tulsa]

Kassaundra,

Thanks for the advice.

The pen I have now is only temporary and will be building a fully secure coop with in the next couple of weekends(if not sooner), and I plan on letting them free range the yard during the day, with supervision from the family dog, who has already taken a liking to the bird.

Stop back by and check my progress as I continue my journey.

Thanks again, -JD-

 

[Kassaundra]

Kassaundra,

Thanks for the advice.

The pen I have now is only temporary and will be building a fully secure coop with in the next couple of weekends(if not sooner), and I plan on letting them free range the yard during the day, with supervision from the family dog, who has already taken a liking to the bird.

Stop back by and check my progress as I continue my journey.

Thanks again, -JD-

Sure thing, the only other advise I can think of is the NEED of plenty of ventilation cannot be overstated in our intense summer. We do not have cold enough weather to harm a healthy adult chicken, however our summers can and do kill, when we have over night temps over 90 for weeks at a time if there isn't enough way to move air through the coop they can be killed. I will go find pics of my coop to show you how I handled the need for ventilation just for ideas. My coop is probably not pretty enough for an urban environment, I used mostly repurposed/upcycled items.

 

[Kassaundra]

The east and west walls are hardware cloth wire and can be completely opened in summer, and closed in winter, but the ventilation at the top is open all year round.


North wall is solid and door has glass window


See the shudder at the time this was taken it was the only one in place there are 4 shudders now that can be opened or shut, when they are open they allow for free air movement and add shade and rain protection.


These south side doors have wire in place of the windows, I can put box fans in (there is a ledge specially for that) if needed, in the winter I just hang a heavy towel over the wire, it still allows air movement but not direct wind. If you are mechanically inclined, we love our automatic electric chicken doors, my husband has them on timers so even when we can't be there to let them out in the early am, or pm they can get in and out. Not as important if you have a preditor proof run, but we do not they run the back yard all day every day.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

Ditto to ventilation. Here's one of my setups. I have a solid panel that covers each screened part in the winter. Ventilation along the roofline is year round. That's important, too. Keeping extra moisture out of the coop by having air circulation is healthier for your chickens and will help prevent frozen combs in the winter. This coop is actually designed as a split coop, each side now has it's own run so I can have two breeds but they share the coop, with chicken wire installed in the center. Each side has 4 nest boxes, and we build a feeder system on one side, too. There is an access door on the front (shown) and on the back where we collect eggs.

If you ever have trouble with neighborhood dogs getting into your yard I would put 4"x2" welded wire OVER the chicken wire. Chicken wire keeps chickens in, not predators out.

I'm in Tulsa, too, on the east side. We are outside city limits so there are no restrictions on our chickens here. Good luck with your coop build!!

 

[Urban Tulsa]

WOW, I didn't realize that ventilation was such a big issue!

I am now second guessing my design and am going to make some modifications.

I will post some picks of the coop as I complete various stages of the build.

Thanks again for the much needed info!

 

[stars4lila]

free duck
this sounds horrible. we have to ducks and four chickens. i love my ducks but one of them is picking on my chickens. they were fine for several months together. but my rooster got hurt and is disabled now. ever since then my duck tries to pin him down and has started picking on the other chickens as well. i have tried to secluding them but we can tell it is affecting the ducks quality of life. we have decided to try to find the duck a new home. any takers?