what kind of chickens?

[rainbowgardener]

So, I peeked at them before I let them out this morning. It being a much warmer night (58 degrees already at 8 AM), they were all lined up along the roosting bars, which I gather is where they should be. So I just trust them to do the right thing?

[applestar]

Haha you need a chicken-cam

[digitS']

... So I just trust them to do the right thing?

The appropriate term for chicken thinking is "bird-brained."

It's good that you have so much area under a roof. They will make use of that for shade and shelter from the rain. Chickens are tropical and subtropical birds. Because they have been long domesticated, breeds have developed that are suitable for temperate climates. I estimated that feed consumed increased 50% during the winter months so there is that cost to having them in the cold but temperatures around 24°f are not a problem for adult birds.

It's interesting how chickens in Southeast Asia sleep on the ground, in wood piles, nooks and crannies of buildings, etc. I don't know how we came to expect them to roost overnight, although it sure helps with clean up ... Anyway, they can very happily claim a nestbox and you must be vigilant in discouraging this.

Important to the hens is their appreciation for a nest and fussing with one comes naturally. Sounds contradictory? Sure. Sleeping in one is 180° from having a nest of eggs. Two hens may be in serious competition with one planning on laying eggs and the other having decided to sleep there. Pecking order wins. Eggs left must be thought of as just something in-the-way but broken, they are food ... uh, oh!

After I retired, I found it little trouble to close the boxes during the evening and open them again early in the morning. They may be a little off-schedule at first but hens normally lay eggs during the morning hours.

Another thing you can do is put a heavy curtain over the box so that the interior is dark. This isn't the 100% solution of closing it completely off during the night but a hen is willing to push in there to lay an egg but they seem to want some light to get themselves comfortable to spend a night. I'm not sure that a completely dark nest is what they want but it did deter bad behavior in my coop.

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

I'm sorry. You are being VERY helpful digitS, but I'm still having a little trouble understanding. I'm a complete newbie at chickens!

" I found it little trouble to close the boxes during the evening and open them again early in the morning." I am doing that with the enclosure (nest boxes plus tray/roosting bars). Close them in it at night and open it up in the morning. But that enclosure has no division between the nest boxes and the tray/roosting bars area. The nest boxes are against the back wall. They have two sides that only go about half way up and are open in front to the tray area. What was the point of closing the nest boxes for the night and opening for the day, if they aren't supposed to be in there? You were closing it to keep them in or out?

"Another thing you can do is put a heavy curtain over the box so that the interior is dark. This isn't the 100% solution of closing it completely off during the night but a hen is willing to push in there to lay an egg but they seem to want some light to get themselves comfortable to spend a night. I'm not sure that a completely dark nest is what they want but it did deter bad behavior in my coop."

So you are suggesting that I should put at least a curtain between the nest boxes and the other part of the enclosure? The nest boxes should stay dark and the rest of the enclosure should have some light? Currently when I put them in the enclosure and close the door, it is dark in there. But if I open the vent slide and leave a little crack in the sliding door (which I will soon be doing for ventilation anyway) there would be a bit of light in there, not a lot. But the vent slide opens into the nest box area. If the nest boxes are curtained off and they don't sleep in them, will they find them to lay eggs?

Do you think it is important that they should be in the enclosure at all? I wanted them up off the cold damp ground and with protection and keeping some of their body heat in when it was so cold. Once it has really warmed up, does it matter? Can I just leave the sliding door at the top of the ramp open (as I do in the daytime) and let them come and go as they please? They do go up in the enclosed area on their own sometimes in the daytime to nap.

Is it a problem that there are six hens and three nesting boxes? I have seen estimates from 3 eggs a week per hen to one a day. If it were one a day, it seems like I would need six nest boxes. Do they need their own nest box or can they use which ever one is vacant?

Who knew this was so tricky? Thanks so much for all the help!!!

[Allyn]

Just to make things a little more clear:
The solid enclosed part is the coop. The bottom part with the hardware cloth is the run. (Advertising calls the whole thing the 'coop', but it's really a combined coop and run.) Inside the coop, the little compartments along the side are the nest boxes. The chickens should be sleeping on the roost bars, not in the nest boxes, which it sounds like yours are on the roosts. Digit is correct. Don't let them roost (sleep) in the nest boxes. If they establish sleeping in the nest boxes as habit, the eggs will be laid in poop, and who wants to eat poopy eggs.

If you were to need to 'close off the nest boxes' you could block them by putting gallon milk jugs partially filled with water into each nest box compartment so the chickens couldn't get into the box. Once they get close to laying age, you can remove the jugs to unblock the boxes and put fake eggs -- one or two -- in the nest boxes to show the pullets that this is where she's supposed to put the butt nuggets that start popping out of her backside. Don't be concerned if you get the first 'surprise' egg next to the waterer. Each pullet's first egg is a surprise; she's walking along wondering what this pressure is in her backside and then ::plop!:: Oh! That's what it was. Then she knows when she feels that pressure to go to the boxes where she saw the egg because if a flockmate put an egg there, that must be where she's supposed to put hers, too. Once one of the pullets starts laying in the nest boxes, you can take the fake eggs out and do a home decor thing with them.

[digitS']

Yes RainbowGardener, find a way to keep them OUT of the nestboxes at night.

A heavy curtain that they could push aside worked as a deterrent for my hens. They used the boxes only for laying. Every flock did not have a bad actor who would suddenly decide that a nestbox was where she wanted to sleep. Nests can be open and airy, easy for you to access. Then, a switch goes off in the little pea brain of the bad actor. Having one start sleeping in the nest should have an immediate fix. Make her stop.

Chickens have these ideas about rating nest sites. The #1 hen will choose the best one. Nobody will want the nest rated, somehow, least valuable real estate. They may wait their turn, as best they can. They may drive a hen lower in the pecking order out of the nest. I found it best to have boxes large enough for two at a time. It doesn't have to be spacious, they will still have a preferred corner but the nestbox should be as stress free as possible.

My most recent coop is fully insulated, top bottom and sides. I replace one-half of the north-facing door with a screen door during the summer. If this neighborhood had raccoons, I bet I could have gotten into trouble with doing that.

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

Thanks so much for all the help, it is getting clearer. For the time being I will just keep an eye out. Since the weather warmed up, every time I have peeked at them while they are in the coop/enclosure, they have been on the roosting bars. The tray is under the roosting bars and that is where all the poop is. If I spot them getting into the nest boxes I will do something about it.

Until you both mentioned it, I had no idea they weren't supposed to sleep in the nest boxes! Thanks!

[imafan26]

The feral chickens here will fly up to the trees to sleep at night. They keep their eggs on the ground usually under the bushes.
When my uncle kept Rhode Island Reds the house was large but he said the birds would fight over the nesting boxes so there were a lot of them elevated off the floor. Hens do like to choose their nesting sites and they do get territorial. He did have a device on the back of the coop that let the egg roll out of the nest box outside to the back of the coop for collection, but the mongoose and rats did most of the collecting so that did not work out well. But the birds actually like a schedule. If they are fed and the eggs collected at the same time every day they get used to it. The birds like to lay their eggs in the same place, we had one pet chicken that always laid her egg on the sidewalk. The jungle fowl was much more protectective, she laid 15 eggs in a cardboard box and when someone tried to move her eggs out of the rain she kept pecking at his boots.

[sweetiepie]

Ideas for fake eggs can be golf balls. I keep them in my nests all the time. It helps with egg eaters (they peck at something hard and discourages them because it doesn't open,) and gets them use to have to sit on something such as another egg. Do not be surprised if as they get closer to laying about 20 weeks or so that they spend time in the nesting box during the day but do nothing.

I always make mine go in the coop and get locked up at night. I have to many predators that come out at night.

[rainbowgardener]

Well, these are protected all the time. They don't free range. If they aren't in the upper level enclosed box, they are either in the run that is part of the chicken coop or they are in the additional wire run that we added. Then the whole area is surrounded by a 10' by 15' outer perimeter fence, to keep our dogs away from the coop and run. So the only question is are they going to be on the ground in one of the runs or are they going to be off the ground in the wood enclosed coop box (that has the nesting boxes and the roosting bars).

The ground is covered with a plastic lattice to keep down weeds and mud and then has straw on top.

So is it okay if they just sleep in the lower level on the lattice and straw covered ground? Or do I need to make sure they go upstairs to go to bed?

[rainbowgardener]

So here's a little bit more about my chicken set up. Some of this was discussed in someone else's chicken thread, but I thought it belonged here.

This is looking at it from the east side



Dog where he spends a lot of his time. But you can just see the chickens going about their business behind the fences (picket fence, wire rabbit fence, the wire enclosure of their run). The pavers are because the OTHER dog kept trying to tunnel under! But since the pickets and pavers were added everyone seems much calmer. Dogs lie there and watch, but aren't barking, etc. And for awhile today some of the chickens were napping in their run right in front of the dogs. If you could see the expression on the dog's face, it is very sad, hopeless, resigned...

This is the south side



Haven't gotten those pickets painted yet, but I will. The red is the enclosed coop and run. The white edged rectangle is a door going into the nesting box/ roosting bar area, that is wood enclosed, with pull out tray under the roosting bars. Where the blue tarp is that is a wire run about the same size as the coop/run, at right angles to it, with an open door between them.

You can sort of see in this picture that there is now a leafed out tree canopy over the whole area. So there is shade from hot summer sun, but in winter when the trees have lost their leaves, there is lots of sun from south and east.

Everyone seems to be thriving. We are giving them regular chicken feed, granite grit, oyster shells, and twice daily servings of chickweed and other greens, with occasional table scraps. They look about like adult chickens and sound adult (buck-buck-buck instead of cheep cheep). They are now 11 and 10 weeks old. So they have something like ten to twelve more weeks to go, before they start laying. It is hard to be patient, but they are very entertaining in the meantime.

[digitS']

Will the chickens be able to fly up ..

. and ..

. over the fence?

Steve

[sweetiepie]

Will the chickens be able to fly up ..

. and ..

. over the fence?

Steve

I would think so. Mine most certainly could. I have a six foot fence and they occasionally will. Especially leghorns but the Rhode Island Reds aren't as much of a pain. How high is your fence? 4ft?

[rainbowgardener]

The fence is only to keep the dogs away from the coop and run. The chickens are never out in that area. They are in the coop/run or the added wire run.

At some point when the dogs are in the house, we will try letting them out, into the area outside the coop and run, but inside the fence, while we supervise. At the horse ranch behind us, they let their chickens wander around the front yard and don't seem to have a problem with them wandering off/flying away. If the chickens show too much tendency to fly, we could clip their wings a bit. (This is just clipping the feather ends. I am told it doesn't hurt them any more than clipping our fingernails does, but it does keep them from being able to fly much. )

[rainbowgardener]

So as noted in the chicken roaming thread, we have been letting them out into the area inside the picket fence sometimes, when the dogs are in the house and when we are keeping an eye on them. They don't fly very much and have never gone over the fence (yet?), but they do fly up to sit on top of the wire run, at which point they are close to the fence and pretty clearly could get over it.

(I'm using this thread as basically my chicken blog)

When we started this and they were little, we were basically just giving them chicken feed, the kind made for young chickens. We have gradually been adding more stuff. We started giving them chickweed which they loved. Gradually we have added more and more greens: carrot tops, parsley, leaves of wild violet, plantain, dandelion. They like all of that. Pretty cool, I can just walk around pulling lawn weeds and feed them to the chickens! The greens are now a significant part of their diet. They get double handfuls at least twice a day. It took us a few weeks but we finally started giving them grit (granite chips). The first time we put it down, they went crazy for it. It was like they knew they needed this stuff, though it clearly couldn't have been particularly tasty. We have started giving them very tiny amounts of oyster shell. When they are closer to egg laying, they can have a little more.

Lately we have also been giving them some kitchen scraps, like potato and carrot peelings. They pretty much eat anything like that as long it is thin enough and tender.

I feel like a real homesteader here on my 1/2 acre! There are peaches on the peach tree, apples on the apple tree, and some time this summer we will start having fresh eggs! Life is good.