porkpal said:Paul do wait long enough to be sure you are keeping hens not roosters. Even if you buy pullets, typically 10% of them will be roosters.

My 8 sex-linked should be pullets and are the best layers. I have 2-3 of several other varieties which were supposed to be pullets but I will probably get a few roosters. I may keep a rooster as there are already several in my neighborhood that I hear when I go outside in the morning. As long as a rooster is not right under my bed room window I don't mind one.

try setting 180 at a time in one bator Hehehe and I 've got 3 hovabators with turners

Paul!

dave719 said:try setting 180 at a time in one bator Hehehe and I 've got 3 hovabators with turners

Ha! Mine are only home incubator types. But I still think it is lots of fun to hatch chicks.

Week Willed! Week Willed! You callin me week willed! Just because I have . . . . Just because I have 23 horses, 2 dogs, jillions of chickens, some turkeys, ducks and a bunch of cats doesn't mean I'm week willed I can quit any time I want to. I just have to remember to go to the meetings. Oh, and maybe I have 4 or 5 hundred irises, and a hundred or so daylilies. OH heck, I might as well admit it, I can resist anything except temptation.

Who wants to resist?

Tom - No roses? LOLLLLLLLLL!!! and 23 horses? How in HELL do you feed them all? Horses are SOOOO expensive! There's the running joke here:

Dogs have Masters
Cats have Staff
Horses have Financiers

Hay is TOOO expensive.. yikes!! I'd LOVE a horse, but I like having a roof over my head...

If you have enough pasture, you need very little other feed. Horses don't have to eat you out of house and home.

people here have to buy hay. And hay prices are ridiculous from what I've heard people complain about. I know I just spent $9 on a small bale of straw for my chicks' outside hutch...

http://www.elizabethcountrycor...

I agree with Porkpal. I used to have a couple of horses and they were relatively inexpensive to maintain. I trimmed their feet myself , and they had pasture in summer and local grass-hay we put up ourselves plus a bit of grain during the winter. Back in the day, I think we paid $1/bale to the hayfield owner and our neighborhood all helped one another during haying season. We piece mealed the equipment with what we each owned, which all broke down on a regular basis, lots of laughs and cold beverages, usually followed by a BBQ. The teenagers would try to out-buck each other, and the youngest kid was driver of the pick-up truck, often barely able to see over the steering wheel. Fond memories.

That said, it is easy to spend tons of extraneous money on any animal (just check out any big-box pet store, my word...).

Well, we had a shortage of hay last year due to the drought, so hay prices went through the roof, but last summer we had a record crop of hay, no shortage at all this year, but for some reason the prices didn't go down....go figure. Same with corn, right now a 50# bag of whole corn is $10. the farmer gets 4.50/hundred pounds. Then try to sell a horse why don't you. Since there is no more horses slaughtered in the US, they have to be shipped to Canada or Mexico. Along with that all of the dog food industry has moved North. I used to be able to get $900. for a lame or old horse, Now I have to pay a vet $200 to put them down, and then pay another $200 to have the carcas hauled off to be ground up into fertilizer. Beginning price for a poor horse was over $1000, now you can't give them away. I spent $6000 getting a horse trained last year. She's a world champion quality mare who could go out and win the world as an all around horse. 20 years ago she would have brought $25,000. Now I don't think I'll even get my taining fees back. Here's a link to her being worked after 4 months of training, she ended up getting 7 months of training http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
We need to get more farmers involved in government. Maybe the stupidity might stop, not sure, as Gallager used to say, the opposite of pro is con, so is the opposite of progress congress????

Got my coop ready today so I will move the growing chicks out of the brooder tomorrow. I will, of course, hang the heat lamp in the coop so they can go under it when they want. Please disregard the weedy iris bed next to the shed. That is on my list for cleaning next week.

Nice!

Pail, it will be a wonderful home for your chickens!

I plan on building a run on the right side and will need to move some iris after bloom time to make room for the run. I look forward to letting the hens out this summer for an hour in the evenings just before they go to roost and sitting in a lawn chair and watching the antics......small things can bring me pleasure.

Cute building Paul, and that fork is really one I'd like to have! They are old silage forks and work great for cleaning horse stalls. The more grass and insects the chickens eat, the more omega 3 in the eggs. It is so cool to see them run around and scrath for bugs and worms.

Good plan Paul. And it is so much fun to watch chickens. It will be so nice to sit and take a break watching your new flock.

Tom, I have a fork like that and find it heavy going. Shall I send it to you?

We have two forks like that. Use to unload manure from trailer.

What fun, Paul, when you get the run built, sitting and watching the chickens. They are so funny!