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.
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Notes -
Have any motteizeans kept chickens? I have a lot of unused square footage in my backyard and can potentially split costs, but almost certainly not labor.
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.
It's all about cover. Chickens are a brush bird, not open range creatures. They like bushes, rotting logs, low tree branches to perch on, and a protective canopy overhead.
I live alongside a ridge with a road on it, where hawks hover all afternoon on the thermals. They only dive on field rats and such out in the open. They're very nervous about going anywhere near brush, because being caught on the ground is a death sentence for them.
It's pretty common to see eagles circling above a dead deer in a bush, never having the balls to go for it until the vultures show up and take their lunch.
If someone has a bunch of open pasture... Get sheep, not chickens. They're the real ultimate prepper animal.
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