Backyard Chickens on Twitter

1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic by 9 people | Log in to rate

Ranked #412 in Me, #58,674 overall

Chickens, Coops, Hens and Eggs

A current trend is to move away from the sterile exotic lawn landscapes and move back towards useful, food producing yards. With that, the reappearance of chickens in the backyard naturally follows. All over North America, peeps are building coops and chicken tractors for cheeps that will lay healthy, "home grown" eggs.

And where can you find up-to-date information about building chicken coops and caring for baby chicks and hens? Why, on Twitter, of course. I've searched tweets for all sorts of chicken related information from how to build a chicken coop to backyard chickens.

We have also joined the ranks of those who keep chickens. We were given 6 baby Ameraucana pullets and you can follow their progress through our tweets.

Backyard Chickens Twitter List 

Best of:

view all 51 tweets

Community write-ins:

Write a new tweet for this list! If naturegirl7 likes it, it could get picked for the best-of list above.

Add your own!110

Your message will be automatically sent via Twitter.

Our Ameraucana Pullets 

We have added another aspect of permaculture to our property. A good friend gave us 6 Ameraucana pullets, which are hybrid (Auracana x American) chickens that will lay blue or green eggs. We have been researching the art of raising chickens and have found many references about building coops and about laying hens on Twitter.

We have decided to build a movable coop (some call a chicken tractor) for our little flock. When they are 6 weeks old, they will have feathers and can be moved into the outside coop. Since we have many predators, we will have to make their coop very secure.

The chicken tractor will be placed inside the fenced garden, in the back where a compost pile was started. There is some shade there, so the hens will be able to get out of the sun and they will fertilize and work the soil in that area. In a few months, we'll move the coop to another location.

Ameraucana Chicks from 3 weeks to.... 

Click on the small photos to enlarge them & to read the captions.

The 1st day, the chicks were exhausted from the move & the new surroundings. They are all supposed to be hens.

The 1st day, the chicks were exhausted from the move & the new surroundings. They are all supposed to be hens.

The 1st day, the chicks were exhausted from the move & the new surroundings. They are all supposed to be hens.
The next morning they were perky and were eating and drinking & doing little chick things.
2 chicks are different from the rest. They have white faces & are younger.
At 4 weeks they are beginning to get some pin feathers and are eating more. They don't need the light on for warmth as much.
These are the 2 youngest ones at 5 weeks. All have wing and tail feathers & are feathering out on their bodies, too.
We put a perch in the cage & even the youngest is using it. We are a little concerned about this one because it is so colorful. Hope it's not a rooster.
All 6 of them at 5 weeks. (1 has its head down.) We are working on a portable coop so they'll have more room and can eat grass, bugs and other good stuff.
We finally finished the coop I it stopped raining. Here they are at 7 1/2 weeks exploring their new home.
It doesn't look like much, but it is sturdy and was made with recycled materials. We will build a wooden house before they start laying to replace the summer cage. The run will be attached to that.
The first day they were testing out the perches, but we were surprised when they didn't use them to roost at night. They huddled together in a corner, instead.

Chicks Mini Wall Calendar 

Chicks 2010 Mini Wall Calendar
Price: 7.99
Chicks Mini Wall Calendar: Fuzzy and frail, the chick emerges from its hatched egg with no guidance. Small enough to rest in the palm of your hand, chicks need to be in a warm environment for the first few weeks of their lives in order to survive. Keep an eye on the soft, chirping, innocent birds in this charming Chicks mini wall calendar.

Guide to Raising Chickens 

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities

by: Gail Damerow

Amazon Price: $12.32 (as of 12/26/2009)Buy Now

Path to Freedom - City Chickens 

powered by Youtube

Barnyard Rooster Towel Calendar 

Barnyard Rooster 2010 Kitchen Towel Calendar
Price: 7.95
Barnyard Rooster Kitchen Towel: Linen Calendar Towels, first introduced to the market in the 1950s, have become much sought after collectibles. Join in this tradition by starting your own collection today. Calendar towels also make great gifts. Consider personalizing your calendar with hand embroidery. When the year is over, unlike paper calendars that are usually thrown away, calendar towels can be used as kitchen towels, stitched into decorative pillows or framed for attractive wall hangings. Contents include: One 16" x 27" calendar towel, hanging cord, dowel coupling and hardwood dowels.

Chicken Coops 

Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock

Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock

by: Judy Pangman

Amazon Price: $12.97 (as of 12/26/2009)Buy Now

Automatic Waterer is a MUST 

Filling water containers twice a day for 6 almost grown chickens is getting to be a pain, so we have gone automatic. By hooking the stainless steel water bowl to a garden house and securing it so that the chickens can't knock it over, our chicken chores have been cut in half. All we have to do now is check to make sure that it is functioning correctly and rinse it out when it gets dirty.

H2O Animal Hydration Flow 1-4/5-Gallon Stainless Steel Automatic Waterer

H2O Animal Hydration Flow 1-4/5-Gallon Stainless Steel Automatic Waterer

Amazon Price: $21.49 (as of 12/26/2009)Buy Now

Chickens on Flickr 

Ladies and gentleman by Mat Honan

Ladies and gentleman

Chickens by goldberg

Chickens

Andromeda's sad tush by goldberg

Andromeda's sad tush

Chicken strutting around by alluvinian

Chicken strutting ar...

"Paula deen", resident celebrity by alluvinian

"Paula deen&quo...

Julia makes a bid for freedom by niddynoo

Julia makes a bid fo...

automatically generated by Flickr

Chicken Tractor 

Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil

Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil

by: Andy W Lee, Patricia L Foreman

Amazon Price: $19.62 (as of 12/26/2009)Buy Now

Almost 4 Months Old and One Crowed 

Our 6 baby chicks have grown into strong healthy chickens. They were guaranteed to be pullets (hens), with a 10% chance of a rooster. As we watched them grow, 2 of the little darlings acted very rooster-like with mock battles and circling when they were very young.

Now that they are about 4 months old, the 2 red ones, that used to spar off as chicks are looking more and more suspicious. In fact, a week or so ago, I heard a strange sound. At first I thought that one of the distant neighbors' small dogs was howling in an odd way. After listening for a while, I heard the noise again and realized that one of the supposed hens was crowing, rather badly, I might add.

We were told by the experts that some hens do crow. An old man at the feed store told us that his father would kill any hen that crowed. That his father didn't want any mannish hen in his hen house. Gotta love country folk.

We're pretty sure that at least one (and maybe both) of the larger red chickens is a rooster. Killing one for Sunday dinner is not an option as they have become pets. If both of the red ones are roosters, we'll just have to come up with another plan so that they don't fight in the movable coop.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of keeping chickens. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the guest book below.

Rooster, Rooster, Which One's a Rooster? 

One of these birds crowed. Which one is the guilty party? Write a caption telling us your guess.




1

Vote Up
Vote Down

It's not me! I'm just a little hen, tee-hee.

0 points

Grab this list

Roosters Wall Calendar 


Roosters 2010 Wall Calendar
Price: 6.99

Roosters Wall Calendar: Gain a new perspective on one of the world's most well-known birds. These vivid photos capture the rooster in some of his proudest and most exciting poses. This calendar will please familiar friends and admiring fans of the rooster alike.

More About Our Chickens 

The mystery of who crowed has been solved. Who the culprit was is revealed in Our Ameraucana Chickens lens.

featured lens Our Ameraucana Chickens

When I was a child, one of my favorite chores was to collect the eggs from the hen house on our farm. When we retired and moved to the country, some of the first animals that I wanted to get were chickens. I wanted to be able to go out each morning a...

Lenses About Other Related Trends 

featured lens Sustainable Gardening a la Rabbit Hill

When Robert Lawson wrote and illustrated Rabbit Hill over 60 years ago he was ahead of his time in the way he felt about sharing his part of this earth with the indigenous animals. For years, we have been using many of the gardening "techniques" that...

featured lens Best of Gardening on Twitter

I'm always looking for good references about gardening and I have just found a goldmine of them on Twitter. The good thing about this list is that it is ever changing and it can be updated with the click of a mouse. If you're like me and want to lea...

featured lens Eggs and Easter Teaching Unit

Eggs and Easter mean lots of fun, but they also present many learning opportunities for children. I have written a fourth grade, inter-disciplinary thematic unit on Eggs which includes many activities and bibliographies of books and audio-visual mat...

featured lens Growing Up in Rural North Louisiana

Growing up in rural North Louisiana was a gift that keeps on giving. The good times I spent romping through the meadows, fields and forests were some of the best times of my life. The life skills that I learned on our farm / ranch, near Coushatta, Lo...

featured lens Top 10 Sustainable Gardening Methods

Sustainable gardening has been a big topic lately. Everyone wants safe, organic fruits and vegetables and even eggs, so many of the old "Victorian" practices are making a come back. Here are 10 methods that will make it easy to create your own sustai...

Thanks for checking out my Backyard Chickens Twttrlist! Retweet at will

P.S. You can start your list too! 

Create your own best-of list of tweets. Go Twitter go.

Peck out a comment for us 

submit
Show All

About Naturegirl7 

Lensmaster naturegirl7 has been a member since April 22 2008, has rated 506 lenses, favorited 450, and has created 148 lenses from scratch. This member's top-ranked page is "7-up Cake Recipes". See all my lenses

Check out these great lenses...

lens image
Christmas or Anytime Cookie Recipes
Some of the best times I can remember were spent in the kitchen with my Mom, baking cookies. With our rush and hurry world of today, so many of the old family recipes have not been passed down as they were in times past. This lens features recipes th... view lens
lens image
Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins of Louisiana
Louisiana is blessed with thirty species of turtles, tortoises and terrapins. The body form of this ancient group of reptiles has changed little in the 200 million years of its existence. Besides various freshwater and land turtles, the Gulf waters a... view lens
lens image
Angel Crafts for Christmas
Creating Christmas decorations is an American tradition. In our family, we love to make our own decorations and many are passed down from generation to generation. I have included some patterns and instructions for a few of the Christmas Angels that... view lens
lens image
How to Show Off Zazzle Products Using Text Modules
Calling all Zazzle Associates! Here's a simple way to feature attractive picture links to your own or other Zazzlers' products. Products can be grouped in horizontal rows of two or more products or with one large picture link spotlighting one product... view lens
lens image
Rio, a Most Exceptional Dog
I really could never choose just one of my furry family over another, but if I was FORCED to, then I would have to choose our precious foundling, mostly Catahoula Leopard dog and Pointer mixed breed, Rio. He has been a joy and a loyal companion sinc... view lens

by naturegirl7

My husband and I have always loved nature and the outdoors. We currently maintain a 9 acre private wildlife preserve.





We are Master Gardeners and... (more)

Explore related pages

Raising Barred Rock Laying Hens
I'm raising Barred Rock hens this year to have fresh eggs once they are grown. I...
Who Layed THAT Egg?
Everyone knows that chickens lay eggs. Most people know that all other birds do...
Backyard Chickens
They will give you fresh eggs, do pest control, process your compost and give yo...
Chickie Pics
Though the average person knows practically nothing about chickens, they really...
Our Ameraucana Chickens
When I was a child, one of my favorite chores was to collect the eggs from the h...
Why I Don't Eat Meat
On a poultry farm, where meat was standard for every meal, I did a controversial...

Related Topics

naturegirl7 Recommends...

Create a Lens!