Hi Sierra,
Good on you for getting chooks. No more chemical eggs. No more eating yellow colouring whether you like it or not.
You wont need to worry about hilines living to an old age. They are a designer commercial chook. They will lay every day for 2-3 years if you are lucky, then drop dead.
They are not worth eating. No meat on them. They do not need a rooster to lay eggs. They can be aggressive at times. This can be in the form of feather pecking.
If you do get an aggressive rooster get rid of it. They will pass on their bad habits to their offspring.
ISAs and Hilines are susceptible to predator attack as they have no natural instincts as do heritage breeds. They will however, learn off other chooks.
If heritage chooks eg Rhode island red, or Australorp etc, stop laying it will be seasonal and or moulting. If you get a rooster and they start to lay again it was because they have finished their moult and were ready to lay again anyway. These breeds will live for up to 8 years from my experience.
These breeds are great for eating. We eat about 20 of ours every year.
Put sawdust in the coop to balance the manure. Manure is alkaline and sawdust is acid. Straw is a great addition. If crap is sticking to your boots, you have an out of balance condition and will have disease eventually.
If the floor builds up with crusty manure it will harbour disease also.
If you can smell manure you have a problem. Sawdust and straw should build up to about 200-300 mm deep. Its is then called deep litter and the chooks will keep it nice and fluffy by scratching in it. There will be no manure smell, just a nice earthy smell when you pick up a handful of it. When you need to lower the level, put it on your worm farm or garden it will be in perfect balance and is ready to go.
Make sure you have enough ventilation in your coop. If you go into the coop on a still night and you can smell ammonia, then you don't have enough ventilation.
Plant silver beet and comfry and anything else that you find they like in their run and put a wire cage around it so they can browse through the wire without decimating the plants.
For $1500, You must have the taj mahal for chooks! Well done.
