General Chicken care Question

[bluebirdsnfur]

I want, want, want, one silkie pullet and one cochin pullet this summer

[teebo]

Originally Posted by bluebirdsnfur

I want, want, want, one silkie pullet and one cochin pullet this summer

i have 2 white silkie pullets right now they were born dec,21.believe it or not i still have them in the house...its too cold to put them out right now,and because of them always seeing me and feeding they have become so tame...they are so cute.i will have to post some pics soon.i will also be getting blues and splashes this spring.

[philodice]

I love chickens! I have rescued hens and it is very rewarding.
I also have made a chicken care book so you can pm me for that if you want. It's mostly copied from mypetchicken.com

[bluebirdsnfur]

Originally Posted by teebo

i have 2 white silkie pullets right now they were born dec,21.believe it or not i still have them in the house...its too cold to put them out right now,and because of them always seeing me and feeding they have become so tame...they are so cute.i will have to post some pics soon.i will also be getting blues and splashes this spring.

Lucky you! I have heard they make great pets. I am hoping , maybe late summer, to get a couple of silkie pullets. I look on backyardchickens.com all the time. I just have to get the coop thing right so I can separate them from our little pij, Flurry.

[ThePigeonKid]

I want to thank everyone again for all of the great advice.

[teebo]

Depends on how many chickens you are getting.during the winter months ,all my hens and roos cuddle together to keep warm,but you don't need to heat the coop,but i know some who do.i have been raising chickens for 5 yrs,and i love it,especially my silkies they are so docile and friendly,but not to good for egg laying,they are good for brooding eggs and make great mommies.i feed layer pellets,cracked corn,grit and oyster shell,and lots of left overs from dinner.they are easy to keep,what i love is during the warmer months i let them out of their run and sit and watch them for hours,its very relaxing.good luck!

[conditionfreak]

I didn't read all of the threads posted here, so forgive me if I repeat what others have said. I will avoid the obvious and tell you some things others might not have metioned.

If you want eggs, I would get "Comets" (maybe called Red Comets). They lay brown eggs at the rate of about 3 eggs every four days. If you want a lot of white eggs, I would get White Leghorns. They lay at the rate of about four eggs every three days. Or more likely 1 egg a day.

You do not need a rooster at all to get eggs and as a matter of fact, they are a hinderance. They will fertilize the eggs and sometimes you will get little embryo's (blod spots) in the eggs if you do not get to them shortly after they are layed.

Leghorns are "flighty" chickens. What I mean by that is they are high strung and prone to panic. What I did was get some Comets, whcih are more calm, to keep with my White Leghorns, to help keeping the Leghorns calm.

You also have to understand the flying capabilities of chickens. They can not fly very well, but they can fly. They will get out of a fenced in area. Even if it is a 6 foot high fence. I covered my fenced in area with wire, but clipping their wings will also work to keep them from flying over the fence. You will need to clip their wings twice a year. Clipping is done by using a pair of scissors and cutting their flight feathers half way. Please do not do this until you are sure what you are doing. I can go in more detail about it (also others here can as well), if you want to go that route. It does not harm the chicken except to limit their flight ability.

One thing to consider is that some chickens are mighty heavy as birds go. If their perches are very high in their roost, the can injure therselves when coming down in the morning after resting on the perches all night. So, if you clip their wings, you have to make the perches no higher than three feet, IMO.

Also be aware, if there are dogs about and your chickens are fenced in away from the dogs, the dogs may go over or under the fence, and will also bite the heads off of your chickens when the chickens stick their heads through the fence to grab a bug or blade of grass or whatever. The chickens WILL do this, no matter how much you feed them. They can not resist a bug or worm. They also have no understanding that they are sticking their heads where the dogs are waiting.

Chickens will eat just about anything. We here at my house, waste nothing. Paper, plastic, glass and tin cans go to the recycle bins. Pop cans get sold at the metal recycling plant. Scrap food either goes to the dogs, goats or chickens.

I sometimes wonder why I pay for trash pickup. We average one small bag of trash a month and they pick it up weekly.

Silkies are an interesting chicken to look at, but a little frail IMO, and you just don't get any eggs to eat, worth mentioning. I am all about the eggs for the table, when it comes to chickens.

Another interesting chicken breed is the "Araucana", also known as the Easter Egg Chicken. They lay various hues of green and blue eggs. They lay about one egg every other day or so, in my experience.


Roosters can attack you, if they are in the mood. But not usually much of a problem. They will also hurt the appearance of your hens when they get on their backs to mate with them. The backs of the hens can sometimes become bare patches, whcih is not good in cold weather.

I have never had any chickens need any warmth, other than protection from the wind in the winters.

Oh. There is no difference between the eggs, as far as color of the shell goes. They are all the same and taste the same. Eggs can be cleaned with a wet rag, but do not soak them. Clean the muck off and let them dry for about twenty minutes on top of a paper towel on your kitchen counter. Then refrigerate them. Try to get them form the coop within 24 hours, although I have got some two days later and had no problems. Any older and I feed them to the dogs (without the shell although some dog owners think the shells are good for the dogs). A raw egg every other day to your dog/s will make them have really healthy and shiney coats. it really does.

Hope this helps.

[conditionfreak]

I would like to add a little something about obtaining chickens. My first chickens came from an egg farm. There was an add in a local newspaper that said "retired egg laying hens for sale". I called and they said that the chickens were less than a year old and that they replace their laying hens on the egg farm every year, because production goes down every year of a laying hens life and they are all about producing as many eggs as they can get for the same amount of feed.

So I go there expecting to see some chickens running around a farm. What it actually was, were several huge buildings containing thousands of small wire cages. In each cage were two white leghorns. One facing one way and the other facing the other way. Side by side. They fit in the cages exactly and could not walk, turn around or even lie down as far as I could tell. Their beaks had been snipped off, making them blunt, so that they could not peck and injure each other. The worker there told me this and told me that they stay like this for the approximately eight months they are used for egg production. He showed me another building where they are very young and do have a little room to move in a big and crowded area as very young chickens. Too young to lay eggs.

I felt so sorry for them that I purchasd all that I could handle (one dozen), at .50 cents each and took them home. I put them in a coop and pen that I had recently built and they acted like they had little concept of how to walk. They appeared to not understand what they could or should do next.

I had to feed them a mash mixture (which is what the egg farm people fed them) because they could not pick up seed with their beaks being short and smashed in. They literally had to smash their faces into the feed mixture, to force the feed into their mouths.

I do not know what happens to the thousands and thousands of birds that are not obtained by others like me, but I assume they are sold for the meat pot or for dog food or some other such type thing.

I raised young ones off of these birds (I purchased a normal leghorn cock) and as I previously stated, the leghorns are diffinitely a high strung breed. Which makes it twice as troubling that they were kept in that type condition for months on end.

The cages were slighty downhill, so that when a bird would lay an egg, the egg would roll out from under an opening and onto a catch trough. Then someone would come by everyday and pick up the eggs from the trough. The cages were all half inch mesh wire, including the bottoms.

I guess my point is, if you want to have some chickens and do a good deed at the same time, try to obtain some from an egg farm. They are cheap, less than a year old, and will make you feel good for doing it. You would have to feed them a mash formula though, or they will starve.

I should mention that they became more normal after just a few days of "freedom". They just looked comical trying to eat what other birds normally eat. They couldn't pick up seed, worms, nor insects. Poor things.

I would have got more over the years, from this place. But I moved several hundred miles away from there several years ago.

I should check and see if there are any around my new location. I hadn't thought of it until this thread. Thanks for reminding me.

[conditionfreak]

Wow. I "talk" too much.