We've had to protect the toilet paper around the house from this little one. Whenever we let our guard down, we find a giant mound of TP in some random place...
Greg
Greg
Awesome dogs / Crazy pets Thread
- Thread starter Daren Todd
- Start date
My wife told me a treatment for sour crop, but I blinked twice since she did. One of the main causes of sour crop is too much grassy stuff in their food supply, which is why it’s always a bad idea to put grass clippings in their run or where they can get to the clippings if they free range.
We can’t let ours free range because we have no fence and way too many predators, including domestic ones that the owner refuses to control. I told her if I see her dogs at my pen I would at least have the courtesy to put their collar in her mailbox so she wouldn’t have to wonder if they were coming home. They will play hell getting into my pens, but Ive seen what a determined dog can do. I have also had a fox run past me within 20 feet of my coops. I try to coexist with critters and won’t kill unless I have to.
I have heard about balls of grass clippings getting caught up in the crop. We do keep ours picked up after we mow cause they do LOVE runnin around after all the bugs the mower whips up. Shes still hanging out in her "recovery" box getting hydrated often. Seems to be doing ok.
They free range daily in a fenced 2 acre area. Years ago, between our lab constantly jumping in our nasty pond, and the chickens roaming uncomfortably far from the house, we had to start runnin fence.
I assume you being right next door to me that we'd have similar predators. Coons and opossums always being a problem with the occasional fox a time or two a year. I showed you that pic a while back how ours get locked inside a coop every night, which is locked and fenced inside a pen, which is fenced inside the yard.
It doesn't keep them away but atleast they cant pull them out the coop at night. Couple times a year we'll find a coon or a possum (or huge chicken snakes like a couple weeks ago) munching early morning hours on the food that'll spill on the ground. I prefer to coexist as well with all the animals around us, but once you've made it into the pen, you're done. Several years ago we had a dealing with neighbors not controlling their animals. So I understand what you're saying perfectly.
Daren Todd
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Several years ago my brother chickens would get out into his garden and pull up all his plants.
He would re-plant and the chickens would tear his garden up again.
So he built a screen enclosure and contained his chickens.
The next day his neighbors chickens were out there pulling up the plants in his garden
Yup, I've been through Terry a few times. Know exactly where it is. I've travelled in MS almost as much as I have in Alabama. MS was part of our territory (AL/MS/TN), and we serviced most of the heavy industry in the state. You're exactly right that we have the same predators. I was by the front door of the coop a couple weeks ago, and a fox ran out of the neighbor's overgrown yard, stopped about 20 feet from me and stared at me like "Why are you here?". And then, just last night, we had a little chicken snake invade the run and coop. It was only about 2 feet long, but it made the mistake of trespassing in my coop and letting me see it there. It was small enough to get through 1-inch chicken wire, so not nearly large enough to pose a threat to the birds unless it was venomous, and it was not. But nope-ropes are not welcome in my home, nor my chickens' home. If there's anything that my wife is scared of, it's snakes. I have taught her to identify king snakes, though, and I leave them alone because they catch other less desirable snakes.
The different natural predators bother me less than the dogs that an idiot neighbor allows to just roam about. We have leash laws, and she's already been cited twice, but still insists on letting them just run the neighborhood for exercise. I was sitting on my deck one afternoon and the most aggressive one came up on my deck and growled at me. He was on the WRONGEST deck he could have been on to do that. When he realized I wasn't afraid of him and was about to give him flying lessons (from a 12 foot high deck) that were initiated with a good kick start, he hauled a$$ outta my yard. The following day, animal control was over there talking to her, so she starts telling everyone that I called them because I didn't like her. I walked up to her, and told her while animal control was listening, "It was not me, because I wouldn't call them [animal control/police] if I thought the dogs were a real threat. You'd just find their collar in your mailbox and the animal would never be seen again. But now that you've made the accusation, the bar just got lowered for what I consider to be a real threat." Her dogs have not been back in my yard, somehow, but not through any intervention from her. They give me a very wide berth if they're out loose and I'm taking a walk. I didn't have chickens at that time, so me getting them lowered the bar even further. Turns out, they have raided another neighbor's pen and killed 5 of his chickens. He lets his free range some, so partly his fault that the birds were harmed, but he shouldn't have to guard against a neighbor's dogs. It could just as well have been his 3-year-old playing in the yard. Sunday afternoon, my granddaughter comes walking across the yard with something that looked like a bloody towel in her hands and crying for me to help her. Scared the crap out of me until I realized it wasn't blood, but a Rhode Island Red chicken. The idiot neighbor's dogs had captured it and were in the process of trying to kill it in yet another neighbor's yard, but she managed to get the chicken away from them, and then handed it to my granddaughter thinking it was one of ours. Complete disregard for the fact her dogs just tried to kill someone's livestock. Turns out, the chicken belonged to the guy that had already lost 5 to those damn dogs. His birds are accustomed to having dogs around (he has a big labradoodle that plays with his kid and the birds) so she didn't run from the other big furry things they usually play with. I think it pissed me off a lot worse than it did him. Those damn dogs are becoming a menace, and most of us with chickens are fed up. My granddaughter has captured those dogs and put them back in their yard so many times and has even been asked by the police to do it for them so they didn't have to get out of their air-conditioned cruiser and get sweaty. Animal control in this town is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. I don't try to capture them anymore. I just try to hit them with baseball sized rocks while anyone is watching. She'd best hope I don't see them in a place where no one is watching.
Like yours, my pens are built like bomb shelters. The foundation for the both coops and the fence on the newest pen is full size railroad ties. I laid them on buried dog wire for digging prevention. The bottom half of each fence panel (made with a split 12-foot 2x6) is also covered with dog wire over which the 1-inch poultry netting is laid. The panels are held together with 4.5" long 5/16" decking screws. I used a 2x4 for the top panels and lighter screen just to guard from aerial predators. One coop is built with scraps from two deck renovations using the old 5/4 x 6 decking boards for the walls and 4x4 framing (made from the rail posts). I covered all the windows with 1/2" hardware cloth to keep other birds out and anything that can climb the walls. The larger new coop is covered in 3/8 plywood with studs on 16" centers. Perhaps not as robust as the first one, but robust enough to at least slow down a coyote (which I've spotted in my yard too). So far, I've not seen any evidence of a single critter try to dig into or tear into the pens. Last night's little snake was the first threat I've had (other than a bunch of red-tail hawks that eye them off). I'm pretty deadly to snakes with a hoe. I keep mine nearly razor sharp, so it only takes one good hit to stop a snake. I put automatic doors on the coops to keep larger critters out at night, but the goofy birds like to party late so I can't just let it close at dusk. I have to set it to about 9 PM this time of year or the idiots get locked out in the run. I do what I can to protect the birds, but I can't fix stupidity no matter how hard I try. That includes neighbors with naughty dogs and chickens that don't go to roost when they should. The first bunch we got was like putting 8 toddlers to bed every night for nearly 6 months. They just didn't get it that sleeping outside was not an option. Never mind it was wintertime. For the most part, if a possum or coon can't see them, they won't try to bother them. I put the roosts away from the windows so it's hard to see them. The new coop has a storeroom as well, and the nest boxes open into the storeroom for collection. I put a solid floor in the storeroom to minimize rats/rodents from the feed. A mouse made the mistake of going into the run for some of the scratch. It met a very quick and probably extremely painful end when 18 curious chickens descended on it. Chickens are VICIOUS. A chipmunk is a little more agile and faster, and the girls don't quite know what to do with it. Fixing the hole I found in the fence stopped them, though. Poor installation (me) not bad wire or forced entry.
I love watching the birds when one finds a particularly tasty bug or piece of vegetable. It's like an Aussie Rules football game. Organized chaos. Completely random selection for which bird will have the morsel next, and a whole lot more running than eating. If the bird that's currently holding it stops to try to eat it, 17 more will steal it from her and start the running game all over. Unless it's the one we call Magic. If she get the morsel, the others will circle around her and watch her eat it. She can't run with the rest of them because of a slipped tendon on one leg and really messed up toes on the other foot, so she just stands her ground with the rest of them. She isn't aggressive at all, but she doesn't take any crap either.