my chickens lay more than eggs..............

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565
Location
Buse Township MN
....Tiger Woods is thinking of ordering a dozen........:eek:

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Our 13 hens lay 8-10 eggs a day. Not bad given the cool temperatures. Our 1 rooster smiles a LOT:D:thumb::rofl:
 
Very very nice nesting boxes as well as clean! Are you trying to get them to set on those eggs?

Thanks jonathan, but not trying to get them to set, thats what they laid between 630 am and 1030am. The boxes were built out of scrap flooring and I keep them clean as I don't like washing eggs!

Just saw your post Royal...got the plans out of a book but they are probably on the web somewhere. Pretty simple design and quick.
 
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That's a good idea using a golf ball. Long ago, when I grew up on a poultry farm, we had plastic fake eggs that we'd put in to get the hens to use the nests.

And I assume you know you don't need a rooster unless you plan to hatch the eggs. The hens will lay exactly the same without a rooster but the eggs will be infertile. If you don't plan on hatching, the rooster is just eating feed and adding nothing - until you use him for Sunday dinner.

Mike
 
Hey Barry, I'm out of the chicken business for now but had some for quite a few years. A little joke to play on whom ever collects the eggs. The folks who owned our farm house years ago raised chickens and the husband would wait until the wife had collected the eggs and then sneak out and put them back in the boxes.......She was bragging all over town that her chickens were laying eggs twice per day!!:rofl::rofl: She eventually caught him in the act.
 
Good one Paul, I'll have to try and pull that on myself:wave:

Yes Mike, the rooster doesn't add anything egg wise, but he is almost priceless for his entertainment value when they are out in the yard free ranging or (on a -15 degree day like today) in the coop! Raising chickens just wouldn't be the same without at least one rooster crowing and strutting! Besides, there's still 20 or so meat birds in the freezer from last fall's butchering spree.:thumb:
 
We had a few laying hens growing up, but mostly it was broilers...50,000 every 7 weeks to be exact.That was a bit too many, but the Rooster was I remember. Darn near pecked me to death one day when I was like 5...kind of scared of roosters after that.

As for the nesting boxes, its nice to see that I am not alone. I've been building and building but I didn't think anyone on here would want to see mangers, hay racks and Ram hovels so I kept to myself. Its nice to see people building practical, simple stuff once and awhile too.
 
Back when gas was a quarter... We had chickens, we used Alabaster nest eggs, been in the family a long time. also had some river rocks that looked like eggs (painted white) those hens were so stupid that they would sit on a rock and try to hatch it but at least they weren't dumb enough to try to hatch a golf ball. They must be at the bottom of the class.

BTW our nesting boxes looked just like those...
 
Well even if the boiling pot is always stewing, you'll have some good tasting chicken. Just curious what you use for feed though?

I know when we had chickens (a commercial operation) the feed they were given had arsenic in it. This was to get the chickens thirsty so that they would drink more water, and more water made them fatter quicker. They would often get so fat in 8 weeks time that the added weight would break their legs. Some times we shipped birds at 7 weeks just to keep this from happening.

I thought putting arsenic in chicken feed had probably been banned by now, but I recently found out that its still being done. I don't have birds, but if I did I would use cracked corn or an organic feed I think. I'm not trying to scare you,I just assumed that it was a practice that was no longer done.

We have switched over to buying organic chicken at the store and not just for Alyson, but for us too,and the taste difference would surprise you. I'm not a big promoter of organic chicken, so the difference has got to be pretty different for me to say so.

Again Barry, I am not telling you what to do, but it may be in your best interest to carefully select your chicken feed. It actually angers me that they are still adding arsenic to chicken feed.
 
Good points Travis. We don't use organic feed, but checked and made sure we weren't using a commercial feed containing Roxarsone.

From Science Daily:

"Use of roxarsone has become a topic of increasing controversy. A growing number of food suppliers have stopped using the compound, including the nation's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods, according to the article. Still, about 70 percent of the 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the U.S. are fed a diet containing roxarsone, the article points out."

"The National Chicken Council, a trade association that represents the U.S. chicken industry, claims there is "no reason to believe there are any human health hazards" associated with the use of roxarsone.""
 
Years ago an old timer told me, have to have cats or rat terriers to kill mice and rats around the hen house. Now what he said was the rate of antibiotics was so high in the feed that poison didn't kill the rats and mice. Now wonder if they were just fed low enough doses to build up an immunity?
 
As for the nesting boxes, its nice to see that I am not alone. I've been building and building but I didn't think anyone on here would want to see mangers, hay racks and Ram hovels so I kept to myself. Its nice to see people building practical, simple stuff once and awhile too.

Travis here is a couple of very simple structures build to the what the owner wanted for sheep and the latest chicken coop. Built with ohia, and guava post and used tin roofing. Most all houses have tin so it's somewhat easy to find. The trees are off her 30 acres

This is the sheep house. photo #1

This is a shot of the post after being in the ground for about 3 months:eek: everything grows in Hawaii photo #2

This is the coop before the chicken wire and roof. Hare to keep square when working with natural posts.:( photo #3

Couldn't get the photos to line up right sorry:(
 

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I can do "practical build"!:rolleyes:

Here's the "almost" finished coop. About 2/3 of the materials are salvaged/scavenged. Need to finish tearing down an outbuilding on the neighbors land for siding. Meat birds on uninsulated left, laying hens on fully insulated (including floor) on right. Storage in middle! Left side is 8x8, insulated part is 10x12.

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I'll try to remember to get a pic of the feeder I put together out of 95% scrap (bought the screws and glue)...............and post later.

Here's the coop today (about 15 min ago!)

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And the scrap feeder.............

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Seems to work just fine!

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Nice job Barry and it truly looks good for a chicken coop (no disrespect meant to any chickens living in any chicken ghetto-coop though). I will have to get a picture of my Ram Hovel, but I am not sure its as nice as your coop. Like you I made it on the cheap.

It was actually funny. I thought and re-thought my options, then one day I just grabbed some rough cut framing lumber we had kicking around, boarded it up with some boards off the sawmill, and then got some metal roofing at Home Depot. In 12 hours time I had a 12 X 8 foot Ram Hovel built. It was down and dirty, but then again so is my Ram. I even added a nice hay rack for him (so he does not waste as much hay) and put a lambing jug in my first sheep shed. I am not sure I am ready for lambing, but at least the Ram is out of the way.

I'll get some picture of it in a few days.
 
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