Show off your chicks (chickens)

[Bassin' Brad]

Anyone else here have chickens? 

I think having chickens is fun, all the different breeds and their different personalities. Yes I know, for the most part chickens are very dumb and are only good for the meat and eggs they provide, but all the different colors, sizes, temperaments, egg color, and variations make them pretty fun to have. 

 

The 1st time buying chickens ended up being an absolute fail due to a neighbors rottweiler breaking into the coup and killing all but 1 of them. My 1st batch consisted of Golden Laced Wyandotte, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Australorp, Buff Orpington, and Ameraucana (Easter Egger) They were a lot of fun and were just starting to lay when the catastrophe happened. It burnt me for a few years but this last December we decided to get my daughter a few for Christmas. After some research my mom told me about a breed called Serama.

 

They are the world's smallest chicken and are supposed to make great pets due to their friendly temperament. We got them at 1 day old and they are now 6 weeks old and doing great. My 3 year old daughter named most of them and thinks they are great. 

 

Here is a couple pics of the Seramas at 1 day old. They are super tiny. 

 

The bottom two pics are from yesterday. They are 6 weeks old. Their names from left to right are: Daddy, Pistol, Percy, and Fluffy

[roadwarrior]

[Sam]

Sounds like a great hobby.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[J Francho]

We had chickens, ducks, pygmy goats, pigs, and horses growing up.  Farm animals are great, but honest, hard work.  The chickens were funny to watch, but the ducks were the most comical.  They'd follow us around as we worked or played.

[Bassin' Brad]

37 minutes ago, J Francho said:

We had chickens, ducks, pygmy goats, pigs, and horses growing up.  Farm animals are great, but honest, hard work.  The chickens were funny to watch, but the ducks were the most comical.  They'd follow us around as we worked or played.

Yes sir having a whole farm is definitely a big responsibility. We mostly had horses, dogs and chickens growing up. Horses are fun, but I have no interest in owning one until I have both land and money. Horses are money pits. 

[TnRiver46]

Chicken coops keep me in business (I’m a trapper ) . I’m not trapping a Rottweiler though!!! Ever had any trouble with wildlife?

[Bassin' Brad]

I live in town so we don't have much wildlife right where I'm at. We do have gray fox that roam the neighborhood but the chickens are still in my shop until they are full grown. The coop I built is pretty tight so once I move them in there I don't think it will be problem but if I do start having one nose around I actually do some trapping myself. What I mostly trap right now is gophers for people but I have trapped skunks, possums, coons and coyotes when I lived in OK. 

[TnRiver46]

56 minutes ago, Bassin' Brad said:

I live in town so we don't have much wildlife right where I'm at. We do have gray fox that roam the neighborhood but the chickens are still in my shop until they are full grown. The coop I built is pretty tight so once I move them in there I don't think it will be problem but if I do start having one nose around I actually do some trapping myself. What I mostly trap right now is gophers for people but I have trapped skunks, possums, coons and coyotes when I lived in OK. 

We’ve caught a few skunks around coops recently but then again there’s skunks everywhere around here. Rats And raccoons are usually what we catch at the urban coops. I think you can legally have 4 or 6 chickens in the city limits here but no rooster . People always find a decapitated chicken and assume it’s a mink or weasel but here it’s always a raccoon doing that. 

[NorcalBassin]

41 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

People always find a decapitated chicken and assume it’s a mink or weasel but here it’s always a raccoon doing that. 

The raccoons around here have that same reputation. Sometimes we hear reports of a coyote, bobcat, or even skunk getting into a coop to kill the flock, but the vast majority of the time it's raccoons working together like assassins. I built our 8x24' enclosure with a hardware cloth apron that I buried extending out 18-24", and we've been fortunate to only have one (unsuccessful) attempt in the 4 years we've had it. However, I'm sure the two Saint Bernards patrolling the yard has probably helped keep the raccoons on the other side of the property.

[TnRiver46]

@NorcalBassin, customers ask me all the time what product “repels” wildlife. Now I could sell these people literally anything and they would buy it up by the truckload but it wouldn’t help, the real answer is nothing. They always try mothballs, hot peppers, music, lights, it’s prettt funny. I typically recommend that having a barking dog outside is their best bet. They usually have bird feeders and pet food outside and can’t figure it out why they have critters! The only animals we can seem to scare away are birds like woodpeckers and geese with visual deterrents and behavior modification. Unfortunately if a predator sees a bunch of chickens, they are going to try to get them regardless

 

Brad, are the seramas hard to find? I’ve never heard of them. 

[livin2fish]

A late friend had a problem with a weasel.  It or they got into his coop and killed all of his half dozen exotic chickens.  Weasels seem to kill just for fun, and can get through most small openings.

[Bassin' Brad]

3 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

@NorcalBassin, customers ask me all the time what product “repels” wildlife. Now I could sell these people literally anything and they would buy it up by the truckload but it wouldn’t help, the real answer is nothing. They always try mothballs, hot peppers, music, lights, it’s prettt funny. I typically recommend that having a barking dog outside is their best bet. They usually have bird feeders and pet food outside and can’t figure it out why they have critters! The only animals we can seem to scare away are birds like woodpeckers and geese with visual deterrents and behavior modification. Unfortunately if a predator sees a bunch of chickens, they are going to try to get them regardless

 

Brad, are the seramas hard to find? I’ve never heard of them. 

Yes, compared to other chickens they are hard to find. They are from Malaysia and they were introduced in the US in 2000 so they are still fairly new here. You just have to do your research to find a breeder. I was lucky, my mom in OK knew a lady who breeds them so I put an order in at the beginning of Dec and when I was down there for Christmas they hatched and I picked them up. 

[jimmyjoe]

9 hours ago, livin2fish said:

Weasels seem to kill just for fun, and can get through most small openings.

   When I was young, I was told weasels kill to drink blood.  IDK true or no.     jj

[TnRiver46]

6 hours ago, jimmyjoe said:

   When I was young, I was told weasels kill to drink blood.  IDK true or no.     jj

Luckily we don’t have any of them here. Although they did teach us common weasel and lesser weasel in mammals class in college and claim they live here. I’ve set traps 40 hours a week for over a decade since then and never caught one, never seen a roadkill, and never known another soul that saw one dead or alive in East TN. Now mink, we have in decent numbers . My buddy caught one raiding his trout hatchery not too long ago