Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

I now own a pair of Rhode Island Red hens.... muahahaha!

...In a cardboard box while I build their permanent residence. They're cute little things, fairly tame and very soft if you pet them. They make cute noises and snuggle up with eachother to sleep. It'll be a few months before they're laying, they're really more like month old chicks. These won't be for the table unless they do something really bad, just eggs and a bit of an experiment at raising chickens. I paid 5 bucks each for them but the animal is always less expensive than the supporting equipment. Since I live in the big bad Florida wilderness with lots of coyotes, boars, possoms, raccoons, hawks, swamp monsters and who knows what else I'm building a 4'x6' open bottom pen to keep them in, at least until they're full grown and I have a rooster. I'll probably have $70 or $80 into the project when the pen, henhouse, food and water dishes are all done.

Now I can survive on fish, eggs, blackberries and swamp monsters for an indefinite period of time if TSHTF and it only cost me $200,000!(still a bargain, a zero lot line tract home around here goes for half again as much as my rinky dink farm that has a pond big enough to hold four such homes with pasture, garden and house plus room to spare left over)

Now if only I could get broadband out here. Sighs.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

You could get wireless?

I just read some good stuff by someone raising chickens & rabbits in her basement, among other things - http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

The better idea would be to use them as bait for the swamp monsters.:D

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

Put some really tough hardware cloth on that open bottom or things will tunnel in. Lots of things eat chicken or eggs.

It has to keep out snakes and rats which can get in really small openings. And raccoons who are smart. double latches or the raccoon will open it.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

I want the open bottom as I'm going for a chicken tractor kind of setup but you bring up a good point. I probably need to rethink my idea for their actual nocturnal housing, something that closes securely. We are blessed with an abundance of indigos, so there's not really any snakes around here that'd be too interested in the chickens I don't think. I might even bring them in at night, it's only two and they're fairly well mannered. I've been reading that some people like these critters for pets.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

They really are charmers if you treat them like pets, but they poop just anywhere. It is not on the same kind of mental control mammals have.

Even good snakes will steal your eggs, but with the tractor moving they may not get the idea. A secure night house in the garage might do. Especially since it is just 2, and if you are an early riser to let them at that green stuff.

If we slept in ours read us the riot act. :haha:

They love most table scraps too.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

Copy that on the poop! They had two good 18 square foot pooping sessions in 3 hours! I was reading about a lady who holds her Rhode Island Red on her lap while she watches tv. My first thought was I hope there was a towel involved!

Do you know if it's better to have perches for them or a flat floor to sleep on? Their feet seem well adapted to either.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

As they get older they like perches. Not too high as Rhodies are heavy bodied. Keeps them out of the poop too if you wire or otherwise block off the under perch area.) Wire lets the poop fall through. then you gather it later for fertilizer. some sawdust or leaves or something there is good too. A hinged perch area you can just open and scrape out the built up fertilizer once a year.

If you can find about 2 inch branches, fairly straight with bark, they can grab the bark better than smooth dowel.

Ours would cuddle when it was chilly and seemed happy.

Diatomaceous earth in the house keeps bugs at bay and is not poisonous to them. They need extra calcium because of making eggshells. So you can mix it in their feed too for keeping weevils out of stored laying mash. That also is a mild wormer for them. Only food grade, not the pool kind. Shop around. It need not be expensive by the big bag.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

These chickens are working out pretty good so far. If one had a suitable setup I do believe it would be perfectly feasible to keep two or three inside on a permanent basis. They aren't as noisy as most pet birds which are much smaller, they don't seem to be much messier. The limiting factor here seems to be the ammount of poop they produce but if you clean out the cage once or twice a day it's no problem and that's with two of the things in a 6'x2' cardboard box. If you made a proper enclosure for them, say 6'x4'x3' with a nesting box I'd bet you could get away with it longterm no sweat. Mine will probably remain in the house a little longer than anticipated as I don't feel like leaving them out in the approaching storm.

That kind of brings up another good point... the barn I have is kind of questionable. A good solid barn to protect the animals in a storm looks like a necessity to me. I did notice some people just left their cattle outside when a hurricane came through, the cows seemed to survive but looked a little funny up to their necks in flooding. I'm sure that wasn't the best for them.

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

For anyone looking at getting involved in a similar project here is a little free advice. My wood chicken tractor has turned into an expensive disaster! Standing and staring at this nefarious contraption glaring out at me from the darkness of my inheritted ramshackle barn it dawns on me that I should have built the tractor out of pvc pipe instead. It would have cost less, been immune to the effects of weather and been easily cleanable with a hose and the household disinfectent of your choice. They sell sheets of corrugated platic, like cardboard kind of, at some hardware stores. It'd make an excellent roof for the enclosure and the hardware cloth or poultry netting or what have you could be secured to the frame with many zipties for a snug and secure fit. You could use the pipe and fittings to build perches right in or make a place to stick an appropriate branch through to serve the same purpose.

The chickens themselves, by far the least costly component, are doing fine. It took them a few days but they're warming up to their new environment. As long as you have a good setup to deal with their non-stop pooping they're actually quite easy to keep and are otherwise pleasant creatures. I don't get any obnoxious squaking out of them at all, just some chirps and coos and the sorts of noises the little birds outside your window make, but not as loud. Thus far chickens are my favorite livestock, replacing the long reigning champ... a pair of breeding rats! :eek:

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

Bird flu man, you are doomed, doomed I say.


:haha:

Re: Chickens Are In My Living Room!
 

Good info Rev and Am_Pm. It's great when people take time to share their experience on this site.