Exciting developments on the farm (which really needs a name, soon!) We got our first chickens!
This motley crew is being pieced together from assorted craigslist listings all because a friend (and follower since my Austin Homestead days) gave me two Cuckoo Maran roosters. We ate one and decided to keep the other, and if you’ve ever kept a rooster or any chicken you know they need a friend. And if you’ve ever kept a few hens with a rooster, you know they need more friends because poultry lovin is NOT sweet and needs to be spread around. Ha!
So far we have the Cuckoo boy, 2 red hens a little leghorn cockerel (destined for a pot or Pocket) and have 4 more own the way: two Barnevelder and two barred rock. We’re pretty stoked about the Barnevelders and may have to add some more of those to our chick order. Chickens are close to our hearts as we raised 4 backyard hens back in Austin and treated them like our feathered babies. Pocket was raised with them and i’m pretty convinced she’s part chicken. She definitely has a crush on the little leghorn and i’m hoping she’ll remember to be ‘chill’ around her new friends and not chase them around. She finds them tantalizing when they’re in a cage, but seems to relax once they’re on the same side of wire as she.
Speaking of wire – our new farm comes with a forest full of coyotes, cougars and bear, oh my! So we needed to build a good and sturdy coop to keep our new flock safe. The ultimate plan is to have moveable tractors and broiler pens surrounded by electric fence. i got the fence in the mail and will get it set up asap monday. For now, though we’re using this funny dove coop for chickens. We set up a nice run made with cattle panels reinforced with chicken wire and covered with more fencing. The chicken wire extends down and out and this trench will be filled with concrete to make a dig-proof mote. It’s not quite fort knox, but i’m hopeful it will do the trick.
We’ll be finishing the coop today and will post the final project next weekend, along with my rabbitry that’s ALMOST all done and ready for rabbits instead of just these silly chickens! Now, enough typing – i’ve got fencing to string and concrete to pour!
Have you kept chickens? What sort of predators did you have to deal with and what worked/didn’t work?
