Chickens?

[Wheezy50]

I have never had a problem with my chickens and my dog living together. I have a mini barn with chicken coop on one side and dog house on the other and my chocolate lab had never been sick. In other words they literally live side by side.

I'm not going to say its impossible, but I've not had a problem.

 

[medicr224]

My dogs stay around the chickens most of the time during the summer months with no problems. The vet as told that we had chickens and never said anything about keeping the dogs away from them.

If you have a garden the chicken droppings are great fret for it. Look at backyardchickens.com there was info there about it.

 

[Loco179]

A little update.

Rural King has some Rhode Island Reds for sale. Those would be my pick. Pullets are 1.99 a piece with a min. of 6. The RIRs chicks are very very young. They are small. They told me that the Martinsville Rural King went though 11000 chicks last year. They are thinking double this year. If you do not mind white eggs ( they are harder to sell ), they have Leghorn hybrids for sale that are pretty large. Pretty much there is not selection at Rural King anymore. You have RIR and Leghorn pullets with some straight run thrown in.

I did lose one of my Barred Rock chicks this year. I am down to 15 layer pullets. They have doubled in size and are growing nicely. I will say this. Barred Rocks are pretty flighty chicks. I was very spoiled with my RIRs last year. These birds are inside in the kitchen because my garage is not heated. Their vents are staying very clean, so that is the only bonus having these birds.

The Martinsville Feed Mill has a very good chicken mix for sale. It is 279 pounds for 55 plus tax. The protein is 20% with the trace elements for layers. This is a hell of a deal because this is at least half of the Rural King/Tractor Supply brand feed per pound. What the protein means is that you can use it as a meat bird, grow or layer mix. They will give you the breakdown or custom make your feed for you. This load lasted about 4 months for 12 layers though the winter ( they did not eat a lot of scraps ).

Meatbirds will be coming in late April or May. The tractor is not done but I need to watch the weather. It needs to warm up for me to do it. I am doing the Rainbow Rangers if anyone wants to tag along to my order.

Anyway I was asked to post more. If anyone has questions I will try my best to answer or find you the answer.

 

[88GT]

is this what everybody does?

No. And I definitely would NOT use straw. I've used it before in the run and it's great for dry weather, but mats and becomes slippery and gross in wet conditions. I would make a perfectly awful coop substrate IMO too.

My hens are kept in an enclosed run because I don't want them getting out in our suburban neighborhood. I'm not convinced my dog wouldn't love 'em to death either.

The run used to be bare dirt, but in wet times, it's nasty. And dangerous. Now it's sand. I just rake it on a regular basis, but I don't collect it. Just spread it out and let nature take it's course. I'm debating about adding pea gravel over the sand this summer since I'm constantly vacuuming up the sand that gets tracked in as I'm in the run at least twice a day.

The coop itself has pine shavings. I tried the deep litter method but it doesn't work with the logistics of my coop. So I clean it out on an irregularly regular basis (translated: as needed). Just rake the crap out, shaving and all, and fill it with fresh pine shavings. The old stuff gets shoveled to the wheel barrow and carted to the compost pile. (Sweet PDZ is an odor absorber that helps extend the life of the shavings too.)

If you're free ranging, you don't need to worry about anything. They don't poop that much.

 

[RockofStrength]

If you're willing to compost it, chicken poop is prized as great fertilizer. Be careful with fresh, though: fresh chicken crap is too rich in nitrogen and can "burn" vegetables and plants.

EDIT: Also, if you have a garden it's a good idea to let the chickens roam over the soil when possible (pre and post planting if they tear into your crops like mine will sometimes) both for nutrients and because chickens are bug killing machines. Die caterpillars....