Notes from the wilderness!!!

[Mopar1973Man]

I've got plenty of yard for a mobile chicken coup like in the video. Just how do you keep them warm as we get plenty of snow. Then the whole mobile chicken coup is worthless in the winter being its hard to scratch for food if the ground is frozen. I've always wanted to have chickens here but how to protect them and how deal with winter cold and feed.

[Me78569]

Chickens are actually pretty tough, I don't worry about them until it gets down below 0, then I just flip on the bulb in their coop and they stay happy.  A single light inside of a cinder block with water on top does the rest.

 

My mother has chickens in north minnesota, they do pretty good, but they have a winter coop and a mobile coop for the summer.

53 minutes ago, CSM said:

I take it you dont rent.

Nope I own my piece of dirt, well the bank owns it and I pay them.

[CSM]

3 minutes ago, Me78569 said:

Nope I own my piece of dirt, well the bank owns it and I pay them.

I dont think we will have chickens on our rental... But we will have mountain lions!  My wife wants chickens.

Edited March 4, 2016 by CSM

[Me78569]

yea those 2 dont go together.  

 

Where are you renting?

[Cowboy]

pretty much every year we butcher the extra roosters, run around like idiots catching the easy ones and then plucking off the others in the head with a .22.

Like Nick said, chickens are resilient little buggers, just make sure to have dirt floor coop that is semi air tight.  Those two things go a long ways against the cold, and the dirt floor helps hugely with the heat as well.  

Now the guinea are just insane, they stay outside and take care of them selves year in and year out.  Only time we'll throw them some feed is if there's snow on the ground.

[01cummins4ever]

I'lll share some pics of my girls, this was before thier first winter, now they are 3 years now, they are buff orimgtpn and are very adaptive to cold weather, I do what Me does and give them a little light when the temps go below 0. 

They are also free ranging chickens. I open the gate in the morning and close it at night when they are on the roost.

even with all the critters around here in the mountains I've never lost any.  Even though my retriever looks like he is waiting for dinner they get along well

[dripley]

If I had tried this at my house all I would have had was a chicken grave yard. My wife and kids would have named all of them and had a close personal relationship each and everyone. I would have had gather up the dead, put them in a box and gave them a proper burial with headstone. Maybe even a nice picket fence. I guess we are a little too city.

[Hawkez]

I've never had a problem with the cold nor do I add light to keep them warm.  Once they are fully feathered I figure they ought to be able to keep themselves warm.  I've only lost 1 chick to a neighbor's cat.  I've been really lucky that way.  In the winter, I have an LED light that comes on with a timer in the morning to try to stimulate them into laying more...not sure if it has worked.  Our birds free range for most of the day.  I have my coop gate set to open at 11:00am each day and then at night we go out and close it.

The geese are a different story.  They are weed eating machines!  They need very little from me, although right now they are breeding and laying eggs so the males are slightly aggressive.  But that just makes it funny to watch the youngest boy run away from him.

I built my opener with a trunk latch that I bought at a junk yard, some scrap metal and a screen door spring.  Everyday it opens on its own.

[Wild and Free]

Same here, they have a barn with straw in it and that's it, 20-30 below doesn't seem to phase the chickens, ducks or Guineas. They free roam and have run of the entire farm yard freely, no heat sources at all just straw and wind break in the form of a barn. We just sprinkle feed out for them in the winter and throw out all of our food scraps from fruits vegies and other odds and ends and they vacuum it up. Very self sufficient critters especially the guineas very strange birds there and annoying and noisy as heck.

[Hawkez]

Here are a few update pictures.  Our geese are laying lots of eggs, but they have yet to get broody and sit on the eggs.  We have given many of the fertile eggs away to people that want to incubate them for home or classroom activities.    Also, we picked up 4 piglets the other day.  The kids will raise these to show at the county fair in August. 

[Wild and Free]

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

 

Bacon and eggs.

More like bacon bits at this point yet.

[Me78569]

I really think we spend WAY to much time trying to GMO crops..... 

 

RATHER we should be trying to GMO pigs, splice in the DNA from a salamander that allows legs and stuff to grow back.   Imagine the war free world we would have if you could walk out to the barn and use a razor to shave off some bacon from a pig each morning.......

 

Back to reality , I need to have a heart to heart with our chickens and re-explain the "lay or die" slogan I painted in their coop.  Production has been down for a week or so.

[Hawkez]

Our egg production has shot through the roof the last couple of weeks.  We are now getting 25-26 eggs a day.  A month ago we were getting 6-9.  I've had that talk with the chickens.  I've put automatic lights in my coop to try keep them laying over the winter, but I don't think that it did a whole lot.

[hex0rz]

Ugh.. this reminds of a time we butchered 120 meat chickens a few years ago. I think it was 6 of us 10-12 hours straight that day. All I did  mostly was cut throats. Filled a 5 gallon bucket halfway with coag. blood. I was so disgusted with everything afterwards I did not eat the chicken for quite a while.

But I once again have plans to do it again, just not at that scale, once we get things going more as we settle in, with our house.

[Hawkez]

I got home last night and went out to check on the goose and her eggs and this is what I found.

By the end of the night she had three of them that had hatched.

[Me78569]

Very cool.

[CSM]

Wow.  That is a tame goose to not be hissing and biting.  What kind?

[Me78569]

haha I was thinking the same thing.  Every goose I have ever been chased by was mean.

[Mopar1973Man]

39 minutes ago, Me78569 said:

Very cool.

 

Awesome... Neat to see animal husbandry...

[Hawkez]

1 hour ago, CSM said:

Wow.  That is a tame goose to not be hissing and biting.  What kind?

That one is an American Buff.  They are a pretty calm breed, except for the breeding season.  Her boy friend will come after you and my sons are pretty afraid of him.  She is really calm with me, but doesn't like anyone else in there with her.  But since she started laying I have been going in there and checking/candling her eggs. 

It amazes me how these animals instinctively know how to incubate their eggs and care for their young.  I can sit out there for hours watching the animals that I have and I am amazed at their personalities and abilities.  To me, it is all proof of a loving God and I thank Him each day for His creations.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Hawkez