Rush hour at the nest box (Pic of my chickens)

Clockwise from the back: Snow, Pepper, and Frightful.

Not pictured is Coal, who decided she could wait til after rush hour to use the nest box. There are four boxes, but all four will lay in the same place.

Frightful and Pepper are broody so a bit grumpy. Grumpy chickens are hilarious

Hmmm... How would I do this within the code? Preferably as a %...

Also, Pepper is adorable. If you want a laugh, here's her Velociraptor impersonation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMrEUY19MT4

Frightful is a banty Silkie Polish who knows cross. She has the silkie feet, regular feathers, and the Polish tophat. Pepper is her daughter and a throwback to the silkie feathers. Snow and Coal are Barred Rocks. Snow was going to be dinner but my mom insisted I have four laying hens, lucky gal. (I bought NH Reds and Barred Rocks as a dual purpose flock. I was going to raise Black Stars from them but I decided to eat all the roosters and half the hens instead...) (end morbid side note)

Pretty much Though Snow didnt lay her first egg until well into the winter. At least she didnt wait til Spring.

Wow! Good ducks!

I almost never eat pasta since I'm on a GF, corn free diet, but I'll remember that. Maybe I'll cook them some as a treat. They would totally jump for the noodles too, so entertainment value alone would be worth it.

Mexican is right out, unfortunately. I love Indian though. Curries ftw.

Start a food allergy thread in the cooking forum. I've seen misc threads on certain topics but never a group that I recall

And then we can talk chicken recipes, lol

Get Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens and then implement All The Defenses.

I have a dig skirt around the run And coop. A tri level scare wire. And most the run has netting over it. I also leave a trap (havaheart) set near a narrow spot where predators might go while circling the run. Recently I caught a skunk, but was able to release it without even the threat of being sprayed (carry a sheet and move slow). We have too many skunks and they love to see if they can get a chicken.

So far no break ins or losses though.

Any herding dog will herd and then kill a chicken. Even if it only nips and you dont see a mark, the bacteria in a dog or cats mouth will kill a bird. If you must mix to a degree, adopt an older dog who doesnt get excited by anything and still supervise.

There are breeds of chickens that are very friendly and if also handled daily from peeps will do great. My barely handled Barred Rocks run up to me for food and will tolerate being caught and handled.

Wicked- cheers I used to have guineas, but then I ate them!

Among other things, I'd like to have a better set up before trying meat birds again (except maybe small numbers). The more they can forage, the less I pay for feed...

Luckily for laying hens, we don't mind building a $500 coop and awaiting that first backyard egg

AZ_Dawn said:

Thanks, Fenika!


Guess that leaves out heel nippers like corgis. And shelties, too; they're excitable into their old age!

I don't think there would be much mixing, though; the chickens would be in their own fenced off part of the yard. If they and the dog did mix, it would be because someone opened the gate and the dog slipped in or the chickens ran out. In that case, we wouldn't want a dog that immediately thought, "Chicken season!"

That's good to know; I've got 3 young nephews and wouldn't want them to be constantly pecked. Yes, we would supervise them with the chickens.

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There are rare exceptions to any breed, but since strong instincts have been bred in, I would start with a more likely breed.

Of course, training is always important, starting on a leash and through a fence. And keep in mind that behaviors can change. I had a LGD who was a bit timid but VERY friendly with people. I soon found out that she would DIVE for and chase rabbits. Any rabbit. Well on our evening walks we almost always came across a rabbit in this one patch of grass we walked past.

I taught her, progressively to ignore the rabbit as we went past it a few times (the rabbit didn't bolt far). I then taught her that if we approached the rabbit that she had to stay at or behind my side. Whenever she got really low and focused I made her sit and relax and we'd go again.

Long story short, in a few weeks I had her heeling, without the lead in my hand (she dragged it, something she was used to, and she knew if given permission she could run off for a ways with the lead at a gallop)... anyways, she would heel, lead dragging on the ground, and follow my lead exactly, with barely any interest in the rabbit. She'd sit and everything too.

When I moved to PA I got her pretty used to guinea fowl but didn't quite trust her with them.

I gave her to a lady with a farm and chickens.

A month later she had attacked three chickens, killing the last one

(And somehow this was all my fault. ffs. I'm a horse person more than a dog person, but I clearly understood more about dog training than this lady.)

Liralen said:

They all got to acting like dogs -- if someone drove up into the driveway you'd hear an awful racket, look out there and there'd be the GSD, the Corgi mix, the Rat Terrier, big yellow tom cat, ducks, rooster and sometimes one of the hens all lined up barking, yowling, crowing and squawking at the interloper.

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Youtube or it didn't happen!

And protective dogs are the best