10-11-2010, 06:42 AM
We put a big gallon jar of hot water wrapped with a towel in the chick box at night and that keeps them warm enough. We are off grid so we don't run incandescent lights.
For the mongoose, we have dogs which run them off and occasionally catch a few. We trap them (an egg makes a good bait for the trap) and teach them to scuba dive in a big trashcan full of water. So far they haven't learned scuba diving. Relocating the mongoose to somewhere else is just giving someone else a problem so that doesn't seem right. We also have elevated coops and have a wire skirt around the legs so the mongoose has trouble climbing. I've seen them jump up into the coop, but only when there are small chicks cheeping up in the coop. Small chicks are apparently much tastier that mere eggs. Generally, when a hen hatches eggs, we will keep her and the chicks in a large dog crate for the first several weeks at least. That has really cut down on the chick mortality rate.
For folks who don't want to kill an animal, some sort of plan for what to do with excess roosters might be something to think about. Folks in our neighborhood drop off all unwanted roosters here and that solves the problem. You may want to find someone in your neighborhood willing to take in excess roosters or you will end up with a lot of noisy birds who annoy your hens. One rooster per ten hens is about the rooster to hen ratio I keep around. Any more than that and the hens have no feathers left on their backs and the roosters fight and injure themselves. Hmm, I suppose that is another answer for folks who don't want to kill animals. Keep too many roosters and they will do it themselves.
"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson
For the mongoose, we have dogs which run them off and occasionally catch a few. We trap them (an egg makes a good bait for the trap) and teach them to scuba dive in a big trashcan full of water. So far they haven't learned scuba diving. Relocating the mongoose to somewhere else is just giving someone else a problem so that doesn't seem right. We also have elevated coops and have a wire skirt around the legs so the mongoose has trouble climbing. I've seen them jump up into the coop, but only when there are small chicks cheeping up in the coop. Small chicks are apparently much tastier that mere eggs. Generally, when a hen hatches eggs, we will keep her and the chicks in a large dog crate for the first several weeks at least. That has really cut down on the chick mortality rate.
For folks who don't want to kill an animal, some sort of plan for what to do with excess roosters might be something to think about. Folks in our neighborhood drop off all unwanted roosters here and that solves the problem. You may want to find someone in your neighborhood willing to take in excess roosters or you will end up with a lot of noisy birds who annoy your hens. One rooster per ten hens is about the rooster to hen ratio I keep around. Any more than that and the hens have no feathers left on their backs and the roosters fight and injure themselves. Hmm, I suppose that is another answer for folks who don't want to kill animals. Keep too many roosters and they will do it themselves.
Kurt Wilson
Kurt Wilson