Chickens for Tick Control

[stackie]

Costco sells a decent chicken coop kit around my parts. They will have them in a couple months.

Buy chickens in march so they can go outside when weather warms up. Also you'll get eggs sooner as the laying will pretty much stop as it gets cold and days get shorter in winter.

If you care at all about any plants in your yard or don't want lots of fertilizer ( chicken poo) by your patio door, build an enclosed run. The chickens are social and they will hang out by the patio door to look in on you. Where they hang out, they poo. Maybe if you have enough property you can put coop far enough away to discourage. But then it's far to go to maintain.

Raccoons can open just about any latch. Ask me how I know. 😢 Fortunately they cannot figure out how to use the key tied to the coop on a long string to open a small master lock. At least not for three years.

After the investment of coop and run I think the cost is lower than store bought eggs. Especially if you consider free range organic eggs. And the homegrown eggs are way tastier with a much higher yolk to white ratio. Mine eat all sorts of table scraps. Farmers market people will give me extra carrot tops for them too! I average 1-2 dozen eggs a week from 3 birds and I only buy $20 organic feed every couple months. So $20 feed plus scraps gets me say 12 dozen organic eggs at a value of 4-8$ a dozen depending on where you buy eggs (Costco on the cheap end farmers market on high end).

I live in city so don't have ticks. I just like good eggs.

Jon

[guido]

Fortunately they cannot figure out how to use the key tied to the coop on a long string to open a small master lock. At least not for three years.

Give them time they will master that too...

[Bob Ross]

Costco sells a decent chicken coop kit around my parts.

Last week I was really surprised to discover that the Ace Hardware store near my parents' house in Tucson AZ not only sells chicken coop kits, they also sell chickens! Near the checkout aisles, so apparently they're an impulse buy?

[Doug Fattic]

I don't know anything about chickens but I do know I can buy about any kind of baby chicks I want at my local Rural King store. They are a kind of farmer's supply store located throughout the midwest that is a kind of a combination of a Lowe's and a TSC and Walmart. They keep many different varieties (including ducks) in the store for sale in what looks like a farm watering trough. They must have several thousand for sale now that it is spring in about 20 of those troughs. They have a video on how to take care of them including building a chicken coop.

We used to do a bike ride in Ukraine as a fund raiser for our project to provide bicycles for pastors. Every morning - no matter whether we were in a big city or small town - I was awakened by a Rooster crowing. Even houses in fairly large cities have a garden with fruit trees and chickens and often a goat. I just got used to animal sounds everywhere I went there.

[Tom]

We used to send away for chicks every spring. 20-30 meat birds and when the layers got old, some new ones. They'd come in the mail in a box with holes in it. The mailman wouldn't deliver it, we'd have to go down to Windsor to get them. It was a big old post office from the days when we built grand public municipal buildings, all high ceilings and marble. The sound of the peeping echoing in those acoustics is still with me.

[Will Neide]

What's a decent number of chickens to start with? I was thinking roughly 6.

[Too Tall]

My neighbors chickens escape everyday and kick the out of my flower beds. It cracks me up.

[cny rider]

You need to figure out the housing situation, that will dictate how many you have room for.
Our family of 5 is kept well supplied with eggs, with a few to share, with 4 solid laying hens.

[Doug Fattic]

Tonight on Jimmy Kimmel live they had a chicken play on a kind of toy piano Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and American the Beautiful. It made some mistakes and got a little distracted but pecked enough so both songs were recognizable. So there are some tasks you can teach your new chickens to do beyond just finding ticks.

[Will Neide]

That should make the summer parties more entertaining!

[j44ke]

What's a decent number of chickens to start with? I was thinking roughly 6.

You need to figure out the housing situation, that will dictate how many you have room for.
Our family of 5 is kept well supplied with eggs, with a few to share, with 4 solid laying hens.

I'd agree with 4 as a good starting number. If you get them as chicks, be aware there may be deaths from any number of things. In that case, 6 gives you a bit more room for error, but if they all survive and are good layers you will be giving away eggs. Or just boil and crush the extra eggs and feed them back to the hens. They are calcium junkies while laying. They will also eat most of your leftovers from dinner and scraps that normally go into the compost heap. Compost heaps are favorites for hens.

Chicks can catch colds, so you need a heat lamp + thermometer arrangement and a bit of husbandry skills easily gained by searching the Interwebs. Also sometimes they fatten up faster than their legs strengthen and then they get "spraddle legs" where they do the splits and can't get back up on their feet. Helps to put some sort of cheap traction covering on the floor of the nursery (kids swimming pool surrounded by a "hoop" of chicken wire works pretty well for an indoor nursery) like a piece of carpet friction mat. If a chick gets spraddle legs, then you make a little buddy bandage out of that self-clinging bandage wrap to hold their legs about body width apart. Sort of like a teenager in baggy jeans with the waist around their knees. They will stumble around, but at least they will be able to get to food and water. As soon as they seem strong enough, take the band off.

[Mabouya]

We need pictures of the future chicken living situation!

Hopefully it will be at least as nice as one of these:

[j44ke]

Or you could build a chicken "tractor" and let your hens de-thatch and fertilize your yard. Move it at night when the hens are all in the coop. Gets a little crazy otherwise.

[C.Dyer]

Or just boil and crush the extra eggs and feed them back to the hens. They are calcium junkies while laying.

It's been a long time since I've kept chickens, but we used to make sure to keep shells out of our compost scraps. The advice we were going on is that once they've gotten a taste for eggs they'll begin cannibalizing their own before you get a chance to harvest. Old wives' tale?

[Cookietruck]

it can happen, most of our birds would only eat the eggs if they were already broken. we feed the shells back to our birds sometimes, also crushed oyster shells. with productive layers it's pretty important, probably much more important if you are stingy with the laying feed and just let the birds free feed in the yard.hate going to get an egg and find some of the shell weak or missing and that membrane the only thing keeping it all together.

[Too Tall]

Our neighbors have left for vacation and we get to care for their four chickens. They are so easy. My only complaint is these dummies are only laying 1 or 2 eggs a day. Between the four I'd expect better. Hmmm????

They are so docile, as soon as you walk up to them they squat down and expect to be picked up. I think they are infact Buff Orpingtons.

[j44ke]

Our neighbors have left for vacation and we get to care for their four chickens. They are so easy. My only complaint is these dummies are only laying 1 or 2 eggs a day. Between the four I'd expect better. Hmmm????

They are so docile, as soon as you walk up to them they squat down and expect to be picked up. I think they are infact Buff Orpingtons.

That's not too bad for 4 hens. A little slow maybe. The older the hens, the fewer eggs they lay. After about a year in fact, they eat more $$ than they lay $$. So laying farms "retire" hens annually usually. But hens on a steady feed/corn/grain diet in the summer seem to get dopey sometimes - that's just observational not actual science. So in summer, give them melon rinds, chopped up kale, tomatoes, squash whatever they'll eat. Any veggies from the table that would otherwise go into the compost. My sister-in-law's chickens know the compost bucket by sight, and its a bit of a mosh pit until she can dump it all on the ground and get out of the way. There usually is not a speck left.

You can also use a dummy egg. When a hen lays an egg, replace it with a dummy egg. She'll shift into clutch lay mode and try to fill up the nest box. Just keep taking out the real eggs, and once started, she'll keep going at an egg every other day. Again, my sister-in-law has used this in the spring to get everyone started, but one day she heard mayhem in the coop and found a big black snake with the dummy egg half way down its throat. She pulled it out and relocated the snake, but she only uses the dummy egg occasionally now.

[j44ke]

It's been a long time since I've kept chickens, but we used to make sure to keep shells out of our compost scraps. The advice we were going on is that once they've gotten a taste for eggs they'll begin cannibalizing their own before you get a chance to harvest. Old wives' tale?

That never happened with ours, nor my sister-in-law's. She feeds them crushed egg regularly. But then it is mixed in with a bunch of vegetables and other table scraps.

[Too Tall]

Dummy egg, that's brilliant.

[TTX1]

Dummy egg, that's brilliant.

Begs the question, which came first: Dummy egg, or dummy chicken?