"Lila I'll try to remember to open the blind on the door that is the sunny side of the house. It wasn't getting much except fluorecences at the store 20ft high & it was on the floor. I like the rocker too found that at K-Mart many…"
Chicken Rearing 101 a very funny lesson in chicken rearing A MUST READ!
Capon: A castrated male used for meat. [How much could that yield?]
Pullet: A female chicken under one year old.
Hen: A female chicken over one year of age
Rooster: A male chicken over one year of age.
Raising Chickens for the first time can be intimidating. When I first called the Feed Shop, I was trying to sound like a pro. I asked, "Do you sell pullets?" "Yes", the man replied. "Are they all females?" It's been an uphill battle ever since.
Pullet parenthood is as much of an adventure as child rearing, only with more feces per pound of body weight. However, I've been reading quite a bit on poultry matters. [Yes, my coolness just turned over in its grave.] So if I am correct and I am quite certain I am not, here is how chicken rearin' goes.
Go to your local feed store and purchase $10 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Don't forget the . Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always advised. Must be country humor. I have yet to see a metal one.
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Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly dangle a glowing just above them. Note to self: Update homeowner's policy. |
For the next several weeks feed them 3 lbs of food per day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t per day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not just one wing total. If clipping is done late chicks will nest in your toilet. This is a bad thing.
Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, feces and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile.
Restrain it with one hand. Stretch the wing out with your second hand. Clip off 50% of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand.
As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree per day. No, this is not actually possible. That's not my point. You start at 100 hatchlings then down by one degree per day until your bedroom is a minimum of cooler than the spring blizzard outside your window.
Once you have frozen your ear to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they can be moved outside to the coop. I estimate the initial closet rearing stage to have taken five years.
Before the move, experience the Joy of Wing Clipping one more time. Feather clipping never works the first time. No one knows why. Still, after all the hassle you probably don't want them to fly the coop in under sixty seconds. Of course, if you're like me, by this time you may be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a stack of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate.
Regarding habitat construction: Hen houses and chicken coops are a competitive art form. There are a myriad of websites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my own home look like - well - like a chicken coop.
Always fashionable, I went with a shabby chic motif for my coop. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of stolen milk crates affixed to the wall by anything in arms reach. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire which eludes me. Quite frankly, my first
attempt at a coop looks like Dr. Seuss dropped a hit of acid, blasted some Jefferson Starship and rolled around on the wire with every Who in Whoville. I think I'll keep it.
Inferior design aside, I ultimately learned a thing or two. The nesting boxes are supposed to be up off the ground. That is correct. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds flight feathers only to hang their houses in the sky. It's just sick.
Higher than the nest boxes, you are to build a roost. This is where the birds crap at night so they do not crap on your breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is usually OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don't use those perforated plastic .
For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house. Then on cooler nights an animal with a brain the size of a bulimic toe nail clipping will make the conscious decision to forgo your nest boxes, bypass the instinctual roost and leap into a .
And finally there is the feed regime. I asked several experts and read up on feeding as well. Make sure to give your chickens starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing suggested on the internet, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never, ever switch in-between.
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I may not be Queen of the Coop yet, but I'm working on it. Though I am a zoologist and I still know Birds 101. Here are two myths I can help with. First, you do not need a rooster to get eggs. Most folk, especially those who have never owned chickens, will advise you on chickens. Each will insist you need a rooster for a while to do his manly duties. Then you can slip him in the pot. As appealing as this concept is, your pot is a separate issue.
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are only needed to make fertile eggs. Hens are all that is needed to make breakfast eggs. Fertile eggs are just peachy if raising chicks was such a joy the first time you want to repeat the whole freakin' process. In addition there is always the risk of breaking a fertilized egg open and finding a 50% formed chick fetus hitting your hot skillet. Yum! Years of therapy will follow.
To keep it straight in your mind consider this: You are going about your life. Suddenly massive balls of calcium start stacking up inside your abdomen. Are you going to hold on to them just because you have not had sex lately?
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The second bird myth is totally unrelated so I thought I would mention it. Penguins occur in nature from the Equator on Southward. That is down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they do not hang out with Polar Bears who live in the Arctic. No, you did not see them when you worked in Alaska, in the Arctic. Those were puffins. No, I am not sorry you look stupid to all those folks you told penguin tales to. |
Yes, some penguin species even reside on the at the equator (Cold weather would kill them), not floating around on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I realize my eggs are not all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded people who insist you need a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears won't lose their food supply drove me crazy!
Satirist Nola L. Kelsey is the author of Bitch Unleashed: The Harsh Realities of Goin' Country & coauthor of the wicked political/self-help, satire Keeping the Masses Down. Both are available everywhere fun books are sold. More of Nola's work may be read at: http://www.NolaKelsey.com
PERSONALY I HAVE NEVER HEARD WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO CLIP THEIR WINGS AND HAVE NO INTENTION ON DOING SO
DALE
Views: 43
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kim Beall on -
LOL yah I learned the hard way that you do NOT want to raise baby chicks inside your home - not if you want to entertain human guests in your home ever again, anyway. Chicks make a LOT of dust, and you don't want to think about what that dust consists of. I raise them in the potting shed or the garage, now.
Better still, I raise only the kinds of hens that are inclined to go broody, and when one does, I quickly order some fertile eggs to slip under her. The hen does all the hatching and raising herself, and does a much better job of it than I ever could.
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Contributing GardenerPermalink Reply by Lyn (Sydney,Aus) on -
Only us chicken keepers can truly appreciate this! Thankfully I bypassed the chick rearing and bought mine direct from a breeder at 12 wks. The paragraph about what to feed them made me chuckle out loud. After 1 yr of chicken keeping I still find it a learning process, but have loved every minute of it!
Even after losing a couple and you tell yourself, no that's it, I won't get any more! Then you see an ad for 4 girls requiring a home urgently and off you go travelling an all round trip of 150 kms with car loaded with boxes and so it continues.....
Thanks for sharing this chicken humour! -
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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Hannum ~ Missouri, USA on -
Dale, thanks for the good chuckle!! There IS so much back and forth information out there, that the humor in this story is the only way to cope with it sometimes. But in answer to your question of "why" would you want to clip their wings'.... you don't clip alll of their wings, just one flight feather on one side. It throws them off balance and keeps them from flying out of the coop and off to timbucktoo but still allows them to fly short distances and up to the roosts. I've never heard of anyone clipping them when they're youngsters, tho; just after about 6 months....
Parrots kept in captivity as pets are also given a lopped wing to keep the owner's investment close to home when they are out of their cage.
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Permalink Reply by dale learn bayda on
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I do know why they clip the wing feathers just didn't understand why on a chicken, being they can't fly that high...but then again I do have a lid on my outside coop and have only seen them get to the top roost by jump/fly from the lower to the upper.
So it make sense if you have a problem child, no roof and low roosts and nests.
My sisters chickens like to roost in the barn rafters.....
so there you have it; they do fly the coop
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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Hannum ~ Missouri, USA on
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Haha, Dale, another good chuckle. No wonder you liked that article, sassy and clever! ;)
We don't clip our chickens' wings, but we also watch them fly up and over the 5 foot uncovered fencing we have..... they enjoy a good walkabout parade around the yard before flying back over the fence into the chicken yard and putting themselves up for the night. Silly girls. The youngsters who can't fly yet just peer at the escapees through the fence like incarcerated jailhouse rockers. haha.
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have you watched "chicken run?" sick, but funny.
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