Chickens & Chicken Rearing 🐔 - Eggcelent

[Unarmed Gunman]

Only allowed 4 hens max, and no roosters. So very manageable.

I was embarrassingly old by the time I learned that chicken eggs don't come from chicken sex. I always assumed the rooster had to get the hens pregnant for them to lay eggs. The miracles of birth, and public education.

 

[tygressofaera]

I love chickens I have 12. 6 leghorn, 3 barred rock, 3 olive eggers. All named Abby. Abby, Abbie, Abbey, Abi, etc. And one rooster named Rooster who is a fayoumi. I used to hatch meat birds out of the barred rock/fayoumi but the yield isn’t enough. I’m debating if I want to start a meat bird production, maybe in tractors? I just don’t like the breed selection for meat. Quail are a little bit more efficient when it comes to feed to yield, also. I have about 40 of those… lol.

I like your design and plan. I live in a much, much hotter area, so I want big combs, wattles, and heat adaption in my coop. My coop is just a 3 sided metal shed with windows cut into it. The front is fully hardware cloth. We don’t get very cold here.

Have fun with your flock! They’re very personable animals. Mine greet me whenever I come home from work. When I do yardwork, they follow me everywhere.

 

[Clown]

If you're allowed, get a rooster. Only one, though. He'll be their protector against things like rats and other wildlife, and if you happen to want more chickens in the future then you don't have to worry about buying more.

 

[Boybortion]

The run is coming along also the pickaxe is the best, I’ve used it for taking out stumps and general digging and it’s just great.

Spoiler: Chicken Update

 

[WanderingFarmer]

Things I wish I knew getting started with chickens:
Make sure to go ahead and plan a succession of them. You'll be wanting to add new hens before the current layers stop laying entirely. There will be seasonal variations in egg laying too, so look into grabbing a half gallon or gallon mason jar and learn to water glass your eggs so you'll be able to weather any dry spells easily!

Congrats on getting started with livestock! Be sure to give them plenty of leftovers from your table too, especially veggies and rinds.

 

[VIPPER?]

I was embarrassingly old by the time I learned that chicken eggs don't come from chicken sex. I always assumed the rooster had to get the hens pregnant for them to lay eggs. The miracles of birth, and public education.

It's not even a chicken specific thing. If you've owned any other bird, you'll know that they lay eggs all the time just because and they fucking eat them if they're unfertilized, the weirdos

 

[VIPPER?]

My local Ace Hardware has been selling chicks recently.

what do the Harbor Freight egg smell like

 

[Seethecoper]

Have 8 chickens, 2 per breed, can't remember the breeds (wife picked em out)

Bingus and Beatrice, black with red arrow feathers on their necks and body

Olivia and Queenie, fat green and gold hens, Olivia had wry neck and has a mohawk so she's the standout

Goldie and Waffle, fat yellow hens but waffle might be a bit cuz of short tail feathers

Sunny and Cher, nice gold, red and white hens that are the friendliest of the bunch.

Kinda stressed about Waffle being a dude because tbh after 4 months of taking care of them all I really like them and would hate to have to get rid of any of them. Limit in city is 4 hens and no roosters and 3/4 of my neighbors are ok with them but the old dude next door already said he'd snitch if we got roosters

 

[donksmanSupreme42]

Going to have sensors inside the coop and use home assistant to open and close a vent to make sure the temp/humidity stays optimal. Also still going together go out each day to check on them and have a back up thermometer and hygrometer just to be safe.

We can get down to -40 Celsius for a few weeks a year and want to make sure they’ll be safe and secure.

holy shit man youre gonna have the happiest chikens on the planet

 

[Pretend To Imagine]

I have 10 hens and 2 roosters. I need to get more as my family eats about 8 eggs per day.

 

[Sexy Senior Citizen]

 

[Mister Fister]

 

[mold]

If you're allowed, get a rooster. Only one, though. He'll be their protector against things like rats and other wildlife, and if you happen to want more chickens in the future then you don't have to worry about buying more.

I want a rooster so bad

it pisses me off so much that my neighbors can have car alarms and leafblowers and blare their stupid boomer rock but no rooster for me

 

[Seethecoper]

Have 8 chickens, 2 per breed, can't remember the breeds (wife picked em out)

Bingus and Beatrice, black with red arrow feathers on their necks and body

Olivia and Queenie, fat green and gold hens, Olivia had wry neck and has a mohawk so she's the standout

Goldie and Waffle, fat yellow hens but waffle might be a bit cuz of short tail feathers

Sunny and Cher, nice gold, red and white hens that are the friendliest of the bunch.

Kinda stressed about Waffle being a dude because tbh after 4 months of taking care of them all I really like them and would hate to have to get rid of any of them. Limit in city is 4 hens and no roosters and 3/4 of my neighbors are ok with them but the old dude next door already said he'd snitch if we got roosters

I have asked my wife. Here are their breeds:
Bingus and Beatrice are barnevelders, Olivia and Queenie are olive eggers( she says they're mutts), BLONDIE and Waffle are buff orpingtons, and Sunny and Cher are gold stars.

 

[LemonParty]

Duck Master Race checking in!

 

[Boybortion]

It’s Coop o’clock do you know where your hens are?

The outside is almost done it’s like 90% insulated now so I have the ink bird sensors turned on to start monitoring the humidity and temp. I’ve also connected them to home assistant. If the temp or humidity gets too high the bathroom fan turns on and vents the excess moisture or cycles the airflow to lower the temp.

Also in winter it will trigger a coop safe heater if it gets too cold.

I also decided to connect it to my garages power via a shielded cable. I found a cheap 4 circuit panel so I have 1 for external power, 1 for my inkbird sensors, 1 for cameras, and 1 for a ceiling light and a outlet for their water in the winter.

I’ve really enjoyed this build. It’s helped a lot with the mid 30s corporate depression. Monkey brain. Use hands, learn skills, tools make me feel good

 

[Internet-Based Lobotomy]

It’s Coop o’clock do you know where your hens are?

The outside is almost done it’s like 90% insulated now so I have the ink bird sensors turned on to start monitoring the humidity and temp. I’ve also connected them to home assistant. If the temp or humidity gets too high the bathroom fan turns on and vents the excess moisture or cycles the airflow to lower the temp.

Also in winter it will trigger a coop safe heater if it gets too cold.

I also decided to connect it to my garages power via a shielded cable. I found a cheap 4 circuit panel so I have 1 for external power, 1 for my inkbird sensors, 1 for cameras, and 1 for a ceiling light and a outlet for their water in the winter.

Man those are some pampered chickens, especially with the heater. Most people around me just have a nice wooden box the chickens roost in and call it a day and we get cold harsh winters and plenty of snowfall. Ducks just sleep outside in those conditions somehow and if the ice is broken will take a nice freezing bath. Incredibly resilient creatures to just not bother going in the box they have during the winter. Good that you took into consideration humidity, that's the real killer during the winter since they can get frostbite if their coop is wet, but you're running heat anyways so that won't be too much of an issue anyways. Good work all in all.

 

[WarJams]

Man alive, I've gotten more bad eggs from the ladies this season than every other year put together. What a uniquely horrible smell.

 

[Boybortion]

I’m hoping to get my first eggs around August/November. Do you know what might be causing the bad eggs?

 

[Althalus]

If you get a rooster, make sure you invest extra heavily in fencing and protection for the coop.

My parents live in the country, they got maybe 10 hens in 2020, kept them about a year, then added an adult rooster to the flock. Within a few weeks, the coop was broken into and the chickens and rooster massacred by a large animal, probably a black bear. Around 2024 they got 9 new chicks which all grew into hens except for one which I guess was misidentified because it grew into a rooster. Within a few weeks of the rooster reaching maturity, a fox jumped the fence and took the rooster and all hens except for two.

After the second time, it occured to them that, because there were no attacks until the roosters matured and started crowing, the constant crowing of the adult roosters probably attracted predator animals from some distance. So if you must have a rooster, either silence it somehow or make sure the coop is predator-proof.