My hens kept me on my toes last week. I went into the coop last Wednesday and I noticed there was what looked like bloody poop below the roosting bars. I wasn’t entirely sure that once of them didn’t just eat something that made it look like that so I kept an eye on all of them. They all looked and acted fine. The next morning, I noticed the same thing. I wondered if maybe they had Coccidiosis so I…
As I explained in this post about my first coop mistakes, I began to search for a coop once again. I had decided that I wanted a regular coop similar to the barn style Amish type coops and I would attach a run to that. I looked around at various different coops that were made really well but the price point on them was a sticky point. One day I found one advertised that was not nearly as expensive as…
If you’ve been reading along you already know why I didn’t buy a boxed wooden coop. In this post I’ll share why I chose the Large Omelet Eglu Cube as my first coop and my experience with that. While researching coops, I wanted something that was easy to clean and maintain. A coop that was predator proof and large enough to hold my three Buff Orpingtons. I wanted something that would last for years and keep my chickens safe and…
Cute chicks are cheap. Chicken feed is very inexpensive for a few chickens, and it’s easy to think about how having chickens will save you money on buying eggs. I learned very quickly that what was not cheap is having proper housing for chickens. It’s quite costly and it will take years to recoup in the cost in terms of how much you’re saving on eggs. When I left the store, on the day that I brought my first chicks…
Before I got chickens, I had read about chicken math. It’s a strange and unexpected phenomenon that frequently happens to chicken keepers. It goes something like this. First chicken keepers get a few chickens, then they get a few more, they need to expand their coop, maybe get several coops and perhaps even get a completely different species to add to their flock. What happens once afflicted by chicken math is chicken keepers eventually lose their ability to count, certain…
In March of 2019, I decided to get some chickens. I thought it would be fun and having eggs would be nice. I went to the local Tractor Supply to buy a few chicks. Tractor Supply has a minimum of six I bought 6 Buff Orpington Pullets that were less than a week old. I only wanted three chicks so a friend came by and took the other three a couple of weeks later. At that point I was sure…