I wanted turkeys, but the city we live in doesn't allow them. We do have 4 ducks (4 weeks) living in our garage right now.

@603Born you inspired me to build this. Just put the turkeys outside. Turned out great!

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Yes it’s 1/2” EMT conduit. The instructions in the plans were kind of crummy so there was a lot of unbending as well.

They have started laying!  This is so cool!  

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Woooo Whoooo  fresh eggs

What was your rooster/hen ratio from the straight run?

Last time I tried straight run I got 75% rooster.

We lucked out and were pretty much 50/50. Actually I think we had a tad more hens.

Now that we slaughtered a couple roosters from this batch, I now realize it would have made more sense to get sexed pullets and a rooster plus meat birds. These “dual purpose” birds take a long time to grow a scrawny carcass.

That is actually printed on the egg cartons that come from Aldi. Lol. . We are religious though and really like it. Once we run out of those cartons we will probably incorporate something in to our label.

Curious, did you fatten yours on corn the last few days or just fed them as usual?  Ours were even scrawnier than I expected but we just fed them as usual. Planning to feed the last 3 on scratch for a few days to see if that helps.

Man I love this thread. Next year I should be having chickens. I needed ideas and my night time bad weather coop will be a basic purina design with a run that will be homemade large concrete
pavers, and heavy duty wire fence with hardware cloth all the way up. It will be coon, bobcat, snake, dog , hawk proof. I will alarm the entrance for 2 legged proof.  '

Now the  Stress Free Tractor looks to be my answer for their daily run out of the pen. I will build this for sure.  I am looking at a total of 6 hens for egg production only.

I was reading in a book not to get all your chicks at one time but to buy half then wait a 6 months or so then get the other half. The idea behind it is you will be rotating only 1/2 of
your flock when egg production goes down.

My experience with maintaining groups of chickens of different ages is that its way more work and is inefficient. Back in March I started keeping flocks of various ages. I basically have 4 flocks. 12 layers (6 leghorns, 6 Wyandottes) that are 6 months old, 13 red jungle fowl hybrids that are 3 month old, 6 old English game bantams that are 4-5 months old, and 7 guineas that are 4 months old.

Each age group has different housing and nutritional needs. I was spending up to 2 hours a day tending them all. Mostly the youngest ones need the extra attention to give them fresh feed, water, and bedding. The older they get and the larger run or yard they have access to, the more they take care of themselves. I now spend about 30 minutes a day tending them all as flocks have been combined and their needs have become more uniform.

Not to mention, bigger birds are rough on smaller birds. You’ll have to keep the young ones separate from your 6 month olds until the new birds are nearly the same size or else the big birds may peck them to death.

My 2 cents is that you’ll be better off getting them all at the same time and you can stagger egg production by choosing different varieties. Some kinds pick up egg production at times of the year that other varieties slack off.

By rotate do you mean culling old hens who aren’t producing, or literally just moving out different chickens at different times of the year?