chickens in the basement

the chickens are growing well, the dog is surprised by the appearance of new residents, we need to teach her that these are her friends, not food

I bought an incubator with mist humidification and temperature control via a smartphone, settled on the Maran breed, hatching eggs should be sent on March 17

Hi Bogdan,
That sounds great! Be sure to post picks of the process and especially the chicks. We love pictures.

This is my first year incubating eggs and I can say that it definitely has highs and low points!
It's so nice to have chicks that I know from the first peep. It's heartbreaking when things don't go well.
I hope everything goes well for you. It sounds like you have a great system in place and are steadily working things so that you have what the chickens will need before they need it.

Bedding can be any organic material, as long as it's chopped or made absorbent. I use pelletized horse bedding, fallen leaves, old hay, dried grass from the lawn mower, and whatever dead stuff I rake out of the yard. We sometimes run the lawn mower over last year's dead garden plants and use those in the areas that need bedding. As long as it won't cause irritation to the chickens or you, it's fine.

I was able to teach my older dog that chickens were friends, not food. I brood chicks in the kitchen, so she was around them from the moment they arrived and she learned to accept them as just another critter to watch over.

I wish you luck with the next steps in your journey. Pats to your sweet dog, too!

The chickens feel great, they have a wonderful appetite, the room temperature is +8, the temperature inside the litter is +20.  Every day I open the windows and ventilate. I set the light to an automatic timer that turns the light on and off.  There are no power outages and we have passed the most dangerous period; we placed separate bowls with sand, seashells and ashes.  I add sprouted wheat and oats to the food.  He can buy worms and make a worm farm in the basement and use them as protein supplement.  I also came up with the idea that a stable temperature of + 8 C in the basement is ideal for growing tulips, especially since creating lighting is easier than building and maintaining the required temperature in a greenhouse)))) but this is a separate topic

Kristine Keeney wrote:This is my first year incubating eggs and I can say that it definitely has highs and low points!
It's so nice to have chicks that I know from the first peep. It's heartbreaking when things don't go well.
I hope everything goes well for you. It sounds like you have a great system in place and are steadily working things so that you have what the chickens will need before they need it.

Bedding can be any organic material, as long as it's chopped or made absorbent. I use pelletized horse bedding, fallen leaves, old hay, dried grass from the lawn mower, and whatever dead stuff I rake out of the yard. We sometimes run the lawn mower over last year's dead garden plants and use those in the areas that need bedding. As long as it won't cause irritation to the chickens or you, it's fine.

I was able to teach my older dog that chickens were friends, not food. I brood chicks in the kitchen, so she was around them from the moment they arrived and she learned to accept them as just another critter to watch over.

I wish you luck with the next steps in your journey. Pats to your sweet dog, too!

Thank you, I have a garden shredder and will be running the bedding material through it.  This will also be my first experience with an incubator, I think everything will be ok, and then I will think that it would be better to have a flock of chickens from different breeds or from one purebred Maran, which in turn will allow me to sell hatching eggs in the future, or raise purebred chickens to 1 month of age  and sell

bogdan smith wrote:
Thank you, I have a garden shredder and will be running the bedding material through it.  This will also be my first experience with an incubator, I think everything will be ok, and then I will think that it would be better to have a flock of chickens from different breeds or from one purebred Maran, which in turn will allow me to sell hatching eggs in the future, or raise purebred chickens to 1 month of age  and sell

I'm looking at that, too. Some of the prices I've seen around the internet for "grow-outs" is just startling. I don't mind brooding chicks and it seems like an easy way to make chickens profitable. At least get them to bring in enough to pay for their supplies and upkeep, maybe.
Based on the neighbor across the street and the neighbors next door and further down the road, they add to their flocks regularly from adult birds (or older grow-outs) that they buy from flea markets they attend in the city, They might like slightly cheaper birds that are more local to them. Or not. Selling anything to a neighbor can invite problems if things don't go well.

This is my first year with Cuckoo Maran and I love them! A dog got two of my hens, so I only have the one hen and a rooster, but I have more on order from a hatchery I like. Those chicks should be arriving after May 15. I'm hoping some of the eggs I'm hatching now came from those hens. It would be nice to expand my flock in that direction.
I'm hoping to get my Dorkings going well, so I can offer those to the market, but it might be a few years before I get them where I want them.

I like the plan to turn the basement area into a growing space. The sprouts are a good idea, too! I think I have a suitable tray around here and can set up some sprouts. A great addition to their diet! Thank you for the idea!

The chickens are growing and I’m trying to diversify their diet; today I gave them a mixture of cottage cheese, fresh cabbage, dandelion, sprouted oats and wheat.  I bought a natural feed mixture and diluted it with mixed feed 1 to 2. I also added vitamins and honey to the water.  Chickens love to sleep on perches, but they didn’t like the metal rod, so I made one out of branches.  The size of the pen allows the chickens to move around and conveniently turn over the bedding for aeration, and I noticed that the smell of the bedding began to resemble the smell of earth in the forest, I think this is the result of the work of bacteria.  The temperature of the litter rose to + 21; the temperature in the basement was stable at + 8-9.

Now I’m thinking about purchasing worms in order to process waste and provide chickens with an additional source of protein.  Maybe placing them directly in the litter is a paradoxical idea, of course, but why not?  The worms will process the waste products of the chickens and leftover feed, and the chickens will have direct access to protein. I can’t decide which type of worm is better than dendroben, Californian or prospector

Hi Bogdan,
My only worry with your worm idea is that the chickens might like it too much. In a small limited area, they might eat all the worms before the worms can do much processing.