Deb your persimmon sounds great!! And letting the fruit drop is a good idea too! It makes sense that if you collect regularly that there won't be much formed Are you planning to sell eggs?? These 2 chickens here give one a day, and one is teal colored and the other pink - so each day that I've been here has felt like easter morning
Stephanie, love to see photos of your chicks!!

Deb, persimmons are a delicious fruit, but they have to be very ripe to eat. I'm sure your chickens will love them.

Thanks Margaret - they look interesting and it sounds that they will fall off the tree when ripe and since the primary purpose is chicken snacks, I won't care about bruising. I'm sure the birds won't mind sharing some with us humans either. Since I was unable to find a mulberry, I was looking for something unusual and colorful.

Greg, pastel eggs sound very festive! I think most of my chickens will be laying some shade of brown eggs, not sure. I was trying to avoid the white egg layers, but since the granddaughter was doing the picking out, who knows.

How long typically before laying begins?

I'll write more later. But a quick answer is that Deb should have eggs around August. In years past, my march born chicks start producing late aug/early sept. although some breeds take longer than that.

I'm so amazed! I thought it would be much longer than that! Thanks Stephanie.

I can hear the chickens laying - haven't noticed it before today, sounds painful! I heard it and almost ran outside thinking something was hurting them, but remember someone told me they're loud when they lay...feel kind of sorry for the poor girls (I know its nature, but hmmm)

My chicks stay inside, b/c we have cats---so I would worry about them in the garage. They are in our electric train room, which also is supposed to be our nursery. Now, I guess it's a chick nursery. We keep the door closed.

We had around 15 chickens last summer. Several were roosters, which I gave away. (we hatched them all in an incubator). I planned to keep one rooster, but he wouldn't let the new girls move into the coop with the older girls. The new girls were sleeping in the trees for several months. So I finally had to give him away also.

If any of my chickens get out of their fenced area (which is large, they have a good life), my chocolate lab will eat them/kill them. Unfortunately, we have had 4 or 5 fatalities as a result. I am having a new fence built next week. It will be more functional, and also a lot cuter. (cedar picket, scalloped tops). So we are down to only 7 laying hens. which is why I bought the 9 chicks, to get us back up to 16 or so. We get a lot of eggs---5 or so per day. We eat them all. I am on a diet, so I only eat the egg whites, which causes me to go through quite a few eggs. I give some away to friends/teachers also.

My husband added a florescent light on a timer to the interior of the coop this winter. This brought our egg production back up to summer levels by extending their hours of light. it was a very easy thing to do, with enormous rewards.

Good ideas Kosk. My chicks are all itching to get outside (they literally rush the door when I open it), but I think they are still small enough to squeeze through the fencing and I'm fearful my dog, like yours, would also have a bit of a hay-day with them. She's OK with the neighbor's occasionally free-range full-grown chickens, but my tiny young skittish ones would likely be too much of a temptation.

I started with an even dozen chicks, allowing for some attrition hoping for about 8-10. All made it through the baby to middle school stage, but they've been in a safe and enclosed coop so far. Also hoping for a rooster, but so far no signs of one. How soon can I tell if a chick is a pullet or rooster? Do I just look for a longer tail being developed, or are there other tell-tale signs? When would a young rooster start crowing? My chicks are not yet 2 months old.

It all depends on breed. Some breeds are very easy to tell that they are roosters. Others, not so much. I had one breed that starting crowing at 4 weeks of age (Egyptian fayoumis). But most don't start to crow until around 4 months of age. And it's hard to catch them in the act of it!

The neck feathers are much more jagged and pointed at the neck area on roosters, and very much rounded at the tips on hens. However, this difference doesn't show until 4 or 5 months also.

The roosters will have longer tail feathers. Larger feet, larger bodies also. They do not necessarily behave any more aggressively at the beginning. In fact, the most aggressive one is almost always the head hen.

Last year, we hatched 15 eggs---10 ended up being roosters! 5 were hens. The year previous we also hatched 15---8 were hens, and 7 were roosters.

I bought one chick from the feed store last year. ONE. It ended up being a rooster. Grrr.....
Having three human boys, it seems to favor my odds of having more roosters than hens.
I am hoping my 9 chicks this year are all girls.

Stephanie that is crazy!! I would have thought that the odds would have surely favored more hens than roosters!
I've heard that once a dog has killed something (bird, vermin, squirrel) that they will always be more aggressive towards that thing, and
be a kill risk (don't know if this is really true, but its what a dog trainer that I know says, its partly why Seattle animal shelter has a zero tolerance policy towards dogs that have killed other dogs, or cats)

We had a dog once who was aggressive toward (other people's) goats. So, we got ourselves a goat and diligently disciplined Max whenever he made any aggressive movement toward poor Bucky (who was likely terrified). They eventually got along OK and Max also learned not to chase other farm animals. It helped that he was basically a good dog wanting to please. And, being a used dog, who knows what his early upbringing was.

Aw! (I never heard that expression "Used dog" - that's sad but cute like a pound puppy! :tongue_smilie:)
I do believe that with patience and guidance and boundaries, one can teach an old dog new tricks!

No disrespect intended, I always get dogs from either other folks or the local pound/rescue agency. I'd rather not deal with puppyhood and have always referred to my pooches as 'used.' They don't mind. And I agree with Greg that one can almost always teach a used dog to behave. The exception might be a seriously aggressive alpha dog, which I wouldn't want in the first place. I tried one of those out on the pleading of its owner and the dog was fine around me, but was always challenging men. At the time I had teenaged boys with all their various friends coming and going. Not a good combo. Handsome animal, but way too aggressive. He went back to his owner.

It's funny---my dog is the sweetest dog, too. Sweet, sweet, sweet puppy. A very small lab. Not a mean bone in her body. All she wants is to be petted or to be fed. But she thinks about food constantly, unfortunately, as do most labs. So at least nothing is wasted when she kills those chickens---eats every morsel of them except the feathers. She seriously sees them as a food source. She knows she's naughty when she does it. I take one look at the feathers, then I look at her. She drops her head, puts her tail between her legs, and walks away looking extremely extremely guilty. I can't seem to get her to stop doing it if a chicken is on the loose. The only cure is a better fence, and keeping their wings clipped.

She is friendly with some of the hens----she likes the bigger breeds, and leaves them alone. She has only gone after the skinnier, more wild breeds. So my additional cure is that I am sticking to the larger bodied, heavy layer breeds for now on. (i.e., brahmas, rhode island reds, cochins etc). Avoiding polish crested and many other small bodied types for that reason. (Polish crested are always at the bottom of the pecking order also, and the other hens always peck their head feathers relentlessly. I've had that happen will all 3 polish crested that I've had).

I've also had two chickens killed by an owl or other bird of prey. "Necropsies" done by me show talon marks on the bodies and only the heads eaten.

In my mix of chickens, I do have one polish crested and it is noticeably smaller than the others (although I also have one banty who is a shortie, but kind of chunky). I'm actually wondering if the polish will get big enough to stay contained in our fencing -- we went with 2x4 wire rather than chicken wire for rigidity. There's also a couple real odd looking ones, kind of brown and white splotched (not in a real attractive way to my mind), that are tending toward the skinny side. Guess I'll have to wait and see, I haven't yet let them outside, although they are certainly chomping at the bit to see what's outside their current universe.

Deb, I hope you "got" that I was saying its a cute expression!! (Just hadn't heard it before!) I am so glad you're helping keep dogs from being homeless and euthanized! Its so important! (and now back to "Chickens" )

Greg, yes, I got that you were mildly amused by my terminology - just thought I'd clarify a bit. Sometimes it is difficult to include nuances in the written word. I guess that's where the dancing faces (as I think of the emoticons)come into play!

Very true!! I feel often like I'm coming off a tad arrogant, which I never intend! (since I met you in person, I always err on the side of the positive choice when you write something that could go either way!)

We've started letting the chickens out in the afternoon, while I am working in the yard and can keep an eye on them (and on Frankie). The grass is taller than the chickens, but I know they will soon eat it down to bare dirt. Looks like I have at least one rooster (a Welsummer with the red comb/wattles in picture 1 and 3). All the rest appear to be pullets at this point, but they are still young so who knows. Frankie (the dog in picture 2) is so far mesmorized by them, spends her entire time outdoors staring at the birds through the fence. I bring her inside with me if I am not outside to monitor her behavior. Hoping as they get bigger her interest will wan. We shall see.