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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  2mo ago (text post)   628 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for February 25, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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It's a bastard depending on where you are. Lots of predators, some (like weasels) very clever about getting in. If you don't have enough forage for them, the feed costs negate most of your savings on eggs. You'll often have either way too many or none at all. Hens will go broody and sneak off to lay in the woods (or under a neighbor's deck) until the eggs go rotten or something eats her. If you can't rig up an automatic gate you'll need someone there every night and morning to shut them in and let them out. If they forget this probably means a coon tearing one of them apart, or a weasel killing everything for fun.

If you're set up well, are handy, can rig up some lights for winter, and have a good source of free forage on hand, they're great.

My backyard is fenced- will that make a difference in going rogue? I know chickens can fly but generally prefer not to.

The only daytime predators are hawks, feral cats, and coyotes. I’ve never seen the latter but the city government and Nextdoor assure me they’re present. I have seen hawks and feral cats in my yard, both of which would necessitate keeping chickens confined to a coop or run. I’m an HVAC tech with construction experience, so ‘being handy’ and ‘set up well’ isn’t a high bar to clear for me. I can get a house sitter if I go out of town who won’t think ‘bring water and food and let the chickens in/out’ is a big deal. Again, it’s possible for me to find someone to split costs, but not labor.

If you have hawks, then you need to build a very large movable enclosure for them to forage in during the day or buy chicken feed.

Not entirely necessary unless the wife or kids get unreasonably attached to them. Just some shiny strands overhead and a tolerance for losses is all you need. I only ever had one taken by a hawk, out of a few dozen lost to coons, cars, and Mysteriously Stone Dead Syndrome.

Damn thing must have been desperate to make the run, because it nailed her on the back of the neck and realized it couldn't carry her up out of the clearing. Dropped her after a few ft.

They're a very good animal for introducing kids to the mysteries of life and death, and answering where we go when we die (the compost pile)

Your hawks must be chill, then. I know of a prepper from Kiev who stopped having chickens because he had no recourse against hawks and wouldn't pay for feed, trying to be a 100% self-sufficient prepper and all that.

I assume I’m missing something obvious, but can’t you just keep the chickens in a coop/cage to stop the hawk getting in?

You have two options: keep them in a coup and feed them or let them eat whatever they find in your backyard but leave them unprotected.

It's "free eggs" only if you don't have to buy chicken feed.

I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to put a cage or net over the entirety of your backyard, would it? Aesthetics would suffer, of course.

I believe the "standard" practice in this situation is to use a movable chicken coup called a chicken tractor. You move the tractor from spot to spot in the yard as the chickens exhaust the forage the tractor is over. Feed would still likely be needed, though less. This is what @orthoxerox was referencing with the need for a movable enclosure.

The eggs may not count as "free range" if the chickens are raised this way, but it's arguably more humane than exposing them to predation. Chickens are a type of roosting fowl and tend to exhibit less stress if they have a place to safely roost at all times. As @SteveAgain mentioned modern chickens were bred from birds that can fly into tree tops to roost, it seems this instinct isn't completely gone with modern breeds, they just can't make it to tree tops.

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