Poultry

Chickens

Our cute little chickens arrived at the post office as part of a bundle that we had ordered with our pioneering friends who were going to be in charge of brooding them until they were old enough to go outside.  These particular friends are experts at brooding chickens and keeping them until they are old enough to start producing eggs then they usually end up moving and giving the chickens away.

In hopes of keeping our new little birds safe we built a chicken wire cage to go in front of our hen house and then put fencing around the whole kit and caboodle so they would have a little running area.  The chickens ended up sleeping on the little wire cage all nested together.  They did lay thier eggs in the little plastic buckets we had installed for the purpose inside the coop. We were very grateful for that.  The way we had set up the wire cage would have made it almost impossible to fish the eggs out without a whole lot of effort.

During the winter, the first winter we had the birds, I went out each night and shooed them into the coop and shut the little door we had so they would stay in there, now we have a variety of places they can go to get in out of the cold, if they choose, so I don't worry about them.  Many nights they just sleep while it snows on them...silly little birds.

Things that I have learned from our experience with chickens:

• If you live in a cold climate buy hearty birds - we get our chickens from www.meyerhatchery.com
• Your chickens don't need much for shelter especially if you let them free range
• You do need to give them places to lay eggs - or you will be playing easter egg hunt everyday
• If you want eggs in the dead of winter put in a light bulb (red is better)
• Eggs keep better if you don't wash them and you do refridgerate them
• If you want a complete protein egg, keep one rooster
• If you keep one rooster know that he will wake you up at 4:00 am each and every day
• Clipping chicken wings is not hard and it probably isn't all that necessary, but it will give your neighbors a    chuckle to watch you running around trying to catch them and clip their wings

Ducks

We acquired ducks quite unexpectely.  There was a gentleman here in town that had too many to take through the winter so he gave us six.  Again, we started studying what ducks needed. So in September we got a plastic swimming pool special ordered so our ducks could swim.  We didn't build them anything special, because we had gone to so much trouble for the chickens and found it wasn't really necessary.  We just put the ducks in with the chickens.  They liked sleeping in the wire cage, not the coop, under the chickens.  Ducks aren't real smart.

Ducks do lay eggs. They get along well enough with the chickens, but they like to keep to themselves.  Where one duck goes the rest follow.

Last summer we inherited seven more ducks, four of them are white-ish/grey.  They were ducklings when we got them so they went in the dog crate for brooding, in the garage.  Ducks don't take to new commers as readily as chickens do.  It took the baby ducks several weeks to be accepted as part of the duck group.

Things I have learned about ducks:

• Ducks lay green eggs
• Ducks are very dirty, worse than chickens
• Ducks are dumb
• Ducks like to mess up all of the water in their vacinity
• Ducks make a lot of noise, even at night

The Great Duck Caper

The ducks have discovered the creek that runs next to our neighbor's property.  Ducks having no concept of property boundries don't seem to understand the need for them to remain in our yard. While we do have fencing around our animal yard - it seems to be more of a suggestion of boundry rather than an actual deterent from wandering.

The nightly walk abouts began a couple of days ago.  In the morning we would round them back up and throw them over the fence, back into the yard.  Yesterday, despite my aching hands due to carpal tunnel, I put up a ton (I'm sure it wasn't a literal ton it just felt like it) of chicken wire.  The boys and the neighborhood friends went to the creek to catch the ducks yet again.  There was much thrill and rejoicing as Alyse caught her first duck!

This morning the ducks were out again.  Obviously, we need more chicken wire. I'll keep you posted as to our success.