Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I know its off topic a bit But a friend down south is giving us 4 - 6 pekin bantam pullets next week. My wife, who normally prefers shopping to dirt is more excited than i am haha.

I have the pen design sorted but im interested in ideas for the house for them. The materials i have available is scrounged pallets, a few sheets of zinc colourbond and a bit of other timbers.

I want to build something safe for the chooks, something i can clean easily, and most importantly easy for my kids to collect the eggs.

Im thinking just a small box with hinged roof or something.

Hey Merrick are you on the Backyard Farming forum on here? (I'm not but folks will likely jump all over your post with good advice)

Chickens are way cool.

It's always nice to have a nesting box with a lid or door you can open from the outside without having to go into the coop.

If you have a rooster, lock him up in a cardboard box in the dark for two days with you and food as his only contact to make sure he's friendly. It sounds mean, but it tends to be the chop if they turn out mean, because they are unmanageable. They beat you in a fight to the death every time.

Just when you think something is fox proof, it isn't. Foxes climb and dig and walk through walls. Foxes are ninja, and if one gets in it will kill all your chickens before you make it out of the door.

If you get little bantom chickens that can fly, they might fly away as soon as you let them out. It's kind of fun, but it sucks a bit when you never see them again. If they are in some kind of wire pen thing that's open at the top, if you add a loose strand of wire 6 inches above the chicken wire, it convinces them it's too unstable to perch on and they seem to think twice before going over the fence, because they always like to perch on the top first.

If your chickens legs get thick and flaky seek advice. It's easy to fix but can really mess them up if it goes untreated. We had a chicken called chicken in a box for a year or two. We also had the same chicken for a stack of years before that, but it wasn't called chicken in a box then. It was called chicken in a box because it couldn't walk, and spent its entire later life in a box. we would just carry it around from place to place when ever we were digging in the garden or sitting outside and tip it out where it would promptly start pecking around and sunning itself and doing what chickens always do. It seemed happy so we looked after it util it didn't seem happy any more.

If you usually buy eggs from a shop you are going to go nuts over veggi scrap and scratched up insect fed chicken's eggs. Whatever it is that supermarkets sell it isn't eggs.

Dont let your emu near any chicken chicks you raise. It seems they are tasty.

That's everything I know about chickens.

Chickens are way cool.

Welcome to the world of backyard chooks. I have 3 australorps averaging 2 eggs daily. I built my coop to be light and easy to move so I used connect-it and cut up pieces of ibc for the roof. Hinged door to the nesting box which is simply a plastic tub which can be removed and cleaned. It also came in handy when one of the girls got broody and would sit in the box all day. I kicked her out and removed the box and she snapped out of it in a few days. I don't know about yours but austrolorps can get quite noisy at dawn with loud clucking. Lucky my neighbours don't mind and we can't hear them from the bedroom. My pen is not fox proof at all but luckily there are none where I am

i have had chooks before... the last 6 i got were Egyptian cross something feral because they were all insane and aggressive as hell... they made good soup. I also had chooks when i was a kid. Part the reason im getting some now is my kids and my son loves them.
the IBC is a good idea as i have a very ordinary one lying around here looking, well, ordinary that i didnt even think of using...
Keep the emu away from the chooks... that there, is solid advice.

i plan on making the pen open top and clipping the wings but there is thought that i may enclose it if i get problems with cats... i dont think theres any foxes near me but if there is ill have a broadhead waiting for it.

Only advice I would give is make the nesting box lower then the perch area otherwise your going to be busy cleaning the nesting box My pen is about 2 metres heigh with stairs and a nesting box at my head height I had to make modifactions to it for the above reason. I'm a big fan of the hertiage breeds I have 1 pure Australorp, 1 Rhode Island red, 1 Barbed plymouth rocks and 2 silver grey dorkings

Hope they can swim
What will be the stocking rate

Pekins are pretty cool birds, not much of a layer breed, good for sitting tho.

It was a Rhode Island red rooster that I had my fight to the death with. It was attacking my mum on a daily basis, and it had me bailed up in a corner. I actually decided to kill it on the spot, I had a broom stick, but lost. I got hurt.

I honestly think that I could lose a fight to the death against a team of say 4 roosters even as an adult. My only advantage would be intellectual. If I could hold out for long enough, I know they would turn on each other

This is one man who is set firmly somewhere around the middle of the food chain

The shame

so a rooster beat you?



a rooster?


was it on roids? just drank a bottle of jacks?

hahaha thats class some roos can be pretty nasty my brother had one that would chase him everywhere. it died....

Choose are great fun...and there are plenty of forums and places to get advice out there.

Doing your coop right first up based on other peoples experiencescan save you heaps of time and effort - much like BAP!

This is my set-up at home, it's about to be divided into two sections and a soundproof rooster box built http://forum.backyardpoultry.com/viewto ... &t=8007686

I dont want to talk about it.

<Font = Blubber> It was like the terminator. It just kept coming. I still get flashbacks</Font>

when roosters are a problem, catch them, gently carry them around under your arm for about 20 minutes, stroking them and making friends with them.
then let them go

it REALLY messes with their heads and they won't come near you again for weeks