Chicken Showing 101 How To not Raise Birds

Chick: A hatchling 

Capon: A castrated male employed for beef.  (How much could that yield?) 

Pullet: A female chicken under one-year old. 

Hen: A lady chicken over one-year old 

Rooster: A male chicken over 12 months old. 

Increasing Chickens for the first time could be scary. I was trying to sound like a professional, when I first called the Feed Shop. I asked, Can you provide pullets? Yes, the person answered. Are they all women? Their been an uphill fight from the time. 

Pullet motherhood is definitely an much of an experience as child-rearing, only with more feces per-pound of bodyweight. However, Ive been reading a lot on chicken issues.  (Yes, my greatness just turned over in its grave.) So if I'm right and I am quite certain I am maybe not, this is how chicken rearin goes. 

Head to the local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of girls and $50 worth of food and materials. Dont forget the water dispensers. Purchasing the steel ones, never plastic is always encouraged. I've yet to see a steel one. 

Next, place the chicks anywhere protected, such as a bedroom closet. Toss in a few highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly hang a glowing heat light just above them. Notice to self: Update homeowners policy. 

For the next many weeks eliminate 4 lbs of sh*t per day from your cabinet and feed them 3 lbs of food per day. Despite all logic the birds develop. While the adult feathers grow in make sure to attach one-of their wings. That is one per chicken, not merely one side whole. If clipping is performed late women will nest inside your toilet. This is a bad thing. 

Cutting could be accomplished by throwing your scissors and your body to the heaping mound of hay, poop and girls. Get a wiggling screeching bird from the bile bin. Limit it with one hand. Grow the side out with the second hand. Cut off 500-1000 of the wings external ten feathers along with your third hand. 

While the birds grow regulate the heat light temperature down by one degree daily. No, this is not really possible. Thats perhaps not my position. You begin at 100 degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree each day until your room can be a minimum of 3 degrees cooler compared to spring blizzard outside your window. 

As soon as you have frozen your head to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they may be moved outside for the coop. I calculate the first closet rearing point to have taken five years. 

Prior to the transfer, feel the Joy of Wing Clipping once more. Feather clipping never works the first time. No-one knows why. Still, after all the problem you almost certainly dont want them to fly the co-op within sixty seconds. Of course, if youre like me, by this time you may well be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a bunch of Greyhound seats by the open co-op door. 

Regarding habitat construction: Hen houses and chicken coops really are a competitive art form. There are a variety of web sites showing architectural styles from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my home look like well like a chicken co-op. [http://www.waterloostructures.net/Potable-Sheds.php Portable Sheds] contains additional resources concerning where to mull over it. 

Often popular, I went with a shabby chic design for my house. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of stolen milk cages fitted to the wall by any such thing in arms reach. As for the house it-self, there is a present for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Quite frankly, my first attempt at a coop looks like Dr. Seuss slipped a hit of acid, blasted some Jefferson Starship and rolled around on the cable with every Who in Whoville. I think Ill keep it. 

Poor design aside, I fundamentally learned anything or two. The nesting boxes are allowed to be up off the ground. That is right. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds trip feathers and then hold their houses in the sky. Their just tired. 

More than the nest boxes, you're to build a roost. That is where the birds crap through the night in order that they don't crap on your own breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is normally OVER the nesting boxes, so anything you do, dont use those perforated plastic milk crates. 

For young birds maintain a heat light-in the hen house. Then o-n cooler nights a dog with a mind the size of an bulimic toenail clipping is likely to make the conscious decision to by-pass the roost, forgo your nest boxes and step into a tanning bed. 

And finally there's the supply routine. I asked several experts and read on feeding as-well. Ensure that you give your birds, starter formula, mash, progress formula, start & increase, family formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing proposed on the web, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never switch in-between. 

I may perhaps not be Queen of the Coop however, but Im working on it. Though I'm still a zoologist and I still know Birds 101. Listed below are two myths I can help with. First, you do not desire a rooster to get eggs. Most folk, especially those individuals who have never owned chickens, will advise you on chickens. Each will insist you desire a rooster for a time to complete his masculine obligations, then you can slip him in the container. As appealing as this idea is, your pot is just a separate issue. 

Roosters are merely required to create fertile eggs. Hens are typical that is required to make breakfast eggs. Fertile eggs are just wonderful if increasing chicks was such a joy the very first time you intend to repeat the complete freakin process. Additionally there is always the chance of breaking a fertilized egg open and locating a 50% formed girl baby reaching your hot skillet. Yum! Years-of therapy may follow. 

To keep it right in your mind consider this: You're going about your lifetime. Suddenly huge balls of calcium start stacking up inside your belly. Are you going to retain them simply because you have not had sex currently? 

The 2nd bird myth is wholly unrelated so I thought I would mention it. Penguins occur in nature from your Equator o-n Southward. That is all the way down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they cannot hang-out with Polar Bears who live-in the Arctic. No, you did not see them when you worked-in Alaska, in the Arctic. These were puffins. No, I'm perhaps not sorry you look ridiculous to all or any these persons penguin tales were told by you to. 

Yes, some penguin species also live on the Galapagos Islands at the equator (Cold weather would destroy them), not going swimming on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I know my eggs aren't all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded individuals who insist you will need a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears don't free their food supply drove me mad!.