I'm so glad I could help! I figured I wasn't the only one who could use some pointers....

One small comment: the 2 small hose clamps on either side of the lid holding the tubing in place MUST be stainless steel...anything else will rust.

That last pic is sideways...it 'could' go upright, cropped if necessary. I started to get dizzy with the floor tiles running at an angle to the text, ha!

It's still working great, I'll let you know how it goes when we get a good cold snap. I'm pretty confident it will continue to work.

I must say that I am very happy with them. I went on the overkill side and put 3 in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket for 2 hoop house tractors with a max capacity of about 25 layers. I figured I could have a watch and remove one, if I need to.

The chickens caught on really fast (less than 30 minutes, but I wasn't watching the whole time). I also dropped a bucket heater in each of them, so I shouldn't see a problem (unless the heater goes through the bottom of the bucket...lol).

Thank you for a fine product, and my chickens thank you, too! I'm sure that we'll be getting more, as we're about to expand our meat birds and add about 15 turkeys...

The photos are so great, I thought they merited their own blog post. So, stay tuned! They'll show up this week or next, once I have time to play with them.

Thanks for posting this! It was very helpful and clear enough for even me to figure out! Aloha!

Tonya

Thanks for the excellent website and great idea! I took what you've done a step farther...others may be interested. I used two buckets from the odd ones laying around which had a little extra room between them. Put 4 chicken nipples in the bottom of the inner bucket, wrapped it with a 6' heat tape; cut off the bottom of the outer bucket to make a 'loose fit' in the inner bucket. Then the inner bucket was wrapped with foil-bubble-bubble-foil (about 1/4" thick) and duct taped to hold in place. The lid of the inner bucket was fitted with a thick (3/4"?) tube, assisted by 2 small stainless steel hose clamps on each side of the lid, then buckets were assembled and the whole thing is held by the outer bucket.

By creating a length of hose on the bucket, I can fill from outside with a funnel (an old wine cork with a 'knob' on the end seals the hose when not being filled). The hose is a bit long until it is in its final place (may want to move it), then will be trimmed. The chickens are using and enjoying the un-frozen water!

I have some nice pix, maybe I can get someone to include them...

Melissa --- Glad to hear the Flock Block has been so useful. I see your point about how the block could be handy if you aren't going to be able to head out to the pasture for a few days but want to make sure your chickens have food that won't be ruined by rain.

That's a great question! I think that in your shoes, I'd probably go for cattle panels, as long as you think the adult chickens can't get through the holes. I've found that you don't need to worry too much about chicks if they have a mother hen --- the chicks won't stray far. And it's a lot easier to add a bit of chicken wire or hardware cloth to the bottom section of a cattle panel than to make a solid barrier above a hog panel.

That said, goats can be tough. I've read that you could have trouble if the goats can stick their head through the holes in your panel --- they'll get stuck and sit there crying. And I'm not honestly sure if the cattle panel would be enough to keep in goats without a strand of electric wire across the top.

Looking at Tractor Supply online, it looks like there are other panel choices that might fit the bill, though. Horse panels seem to be small spacing all the way up for a five foot height (although I can't figure out why they're so expensive --- $75?! Really?!) The "Feedlot Panel Combo" has the same small holes at the bottom as a hog panel, but might be taller. (The website clearly needs some work...) And the Sheep/Goat panels look like the holes are a uniform four inches by four inches in a four foot tall panel.

Unfortunately, we're full up on cats. Our two spoiled boys wouldn't like anything to cut back on the attention they receive.

I'll trade a cat for the waterer.

In hindsight would you have put in hog panels or cattle panels? We're currently in the process of moving to a place with a 2 acre back pasture (unfenced), and I'm looking for a solution to fencing it.

After reading your post I did a bit of research. Hog panels stand just a bit less than 3 feet tall, so they're not going to be ideal for goats who can jump, but the holes get smaller towards the bottom, so they will work well with young animals and chickens. Cattle panels are about 5 feet, but they have uniform holes, which would allow smaller animals in or out.

I'm interested in what you feel would have best suited your pasturing needs - we're looking at chicken and goats in the pasture - so neither seems ideal

Turns out our library has the book too - so I'll have to pick it up and read it myself after the move is complete

I've been using FlockBlock as a supplement for my pastured chickens, and I love it. I like that it doesn't get spread all over the pasture and wasted or pooped on, and it's a blessing when I'm busy or tired and need to be able to feed the birdies for three days running without dragging myself out to the pasture twice daily. But I'm more of a backyard flock kinda gal, only about an acre or so of pasture, so I'm not obsessing about super-duper egg production and the perfect mix of nutrients.

Right, here (zone 8) we know only asian persimmons (and i think fruits of trees planted in garden are not harvested ...). Very few cultivar of persimmon available here (early golden and meader)...

Such a chance you can design so many months of persimmon

The hand pollination was adviced for North America too, it seems pawpaw is a lazy tree on fruit, cause it propagates by suckers.

BTW, pawpaw trees are so expensive to buy here, and it seems so hard to sow and graft that i think i'll never give a pawpaw to chicken

Actually we just give ours a handful of millet and corn sometimes, they are amazing foragers and almost completely self-sufficient.

In most parts of Europe, I think you can probably get away with planting Asian persimmons --- we're right on the edge of their hardiness range, although I'm trying some of them as well. A grafted Asian persimmon will bear in just a year or two, vs. up to 10 for a seedling American persimmon. The Asian trees are much smaller, too, and come in lots of varieties, so you can choose ones that ripen over a long period.

I think the reason you're having trouble finding information on ripening dates with American persimmons is that there are very few named varieties. In the wild, you can find them ripening all the way from August to February.

Paw paws are native here, though, which makes me think that they should set pretty good yields on their own if you get the conditions right. But we might not have figured out those conditions yet....

As an addendum to this post, I read in Harvey Ussery's new book that he's tried feeding paw paws to his chickens and they weren't interested. However, he does think paw paws have a place since his black soldier flies love them.

I'll look forward to hearing about your chicken pasture system!

Interesting to hear some firsthand data about guineas. To me, they'd have to be good for more than just eating ticks to make them worth feeding, but if you're raising them as broilers, eating them in the fall, they do seem intriguing.

I'm deeply interested by using persimmon as a tree fodder crop for poultry, i think it can replace corn (american persimmons have the same cal by weight, wet or dry. I dont know the metabolized energy for persimmon thought (i dont think academic folks ever bothered).

It's very hard to find info about ripening dates or even pattern of fruit fall (like pawpaw, we dont know very well american persimmon in europe, what a shame). I've read that date plum (D. Lotus) ripens few weeks before american persimmons, and it is a good rootstock (fibrous roots, but less hardy than D. virginiana)

I've read a little about pawpaw (we dont know much about it in Europe), but it seems that if you want good yields, you need to hand pollinate it

BTW excellent blog, i plan myself to design a chicken fodder the permaculture way.

Our area is known for ticks and rattlesnakes. When I was a kid we had to do a daily dog check in the warm months to keep them from getting infested with ticks. And I remember my grandfather killing several rattlesnakes, unfortunately my favorite of his hunting dogs was killed by a snakebite. A few years ago we happened into a pair of guineas. Since we got those two I have seen one tick, and it was on my pant leg after a trip down the creek where the guineas don't go. I haven't seen any rattlesnakes since they came either. Although guineas have a reputation as noisy birds I've found my geese, ducks, and rooster to be much nosier. Geese and ducks especially are noisy, they don't sleep the same way chickens and guineas do. They take short naps at night and are frequently awake and wandering around talking to each other. I've been woken up many times by ducks quacking loudly to each other in the middle of the night.

We put our thermostat on the outside and it seemed to work well. We also tweaked this design a bit to come up with something that felt easier to construct.

Marilyn --- Thanks for your kind words!

You might want to check out some of our customers' other heated chicken waterer ideas.

To answer your question --- I haven't heard of a thermostatically controlled heat lamp, but there is something called a thermocube that's $12 on Amazon. You can plug anything you want into it, and the thermocube turns the item on when it gets down to 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

My husband brought home a 15 gallon plastic jug and I drilled 4 holes in the outer edge of the bottom and placed 4 of the watering nipples in the holes. I then turned a 5-gallon bucket upside down and placed the larger 15-gallon jug on top. As the weather got colder here in Nebraska, I bought a fish tank heater and placed it inside the waterer, which worked great to keep the water in the jug from freezing, but then I found that the nipples froze, so I aimed a couple of heat lamps toward the nipples and that solved the problem.
I am wondering if someone has some sort of thermostatically controlled heat lamp or power strip so that the heat lamps don't need to be on all of the time. I will have to check this out and get back to you. I have to say that I LOVE the watering nipples as I was really sick of the disgusting poop-filled ordinary waterers. THANK YOU!

Does the thermostat go on the inside of the white bucket or the outside?

I wish I could help you out, but I decided not to use Dark Cornish this year --- I experimented with laying breeds instead. But I'm very glad you commented --- you make New Hampshires sound extremely intriguing!

I am searching the internet to find out if any have experimented with Dark Cornish/New Hampshire Crosses. The New Hampshires have proven to be excellent foragers. After raising them to about six weeks old they did not need any feeds or grains as they free ranged for all of their needs. By five months they all reached a large and healthy slaughter weight. I have heard that Dark Cornish are also fast maturing and are good at free ranging. That is why I think that the New Hampshire / Dark Cornish Cross would be the best for fast growing free range meat chickens that will produce more eggs than pure Dark Cornish hens. I also have some large Barred Rock hens that I'm planning on crossing. I just ordered two Dark Cornish Roosters and a few Dark Cornish hens. I will post my experiments by the fall of 2012 but it sure would be nice to find someone who has experimented with these breeds to know the results of such crosses.

Good luck! I hope you have a great hatch rate!

Hi,

My Scots Dumpy Eggs are due to hatch in the next 3 days so was so pleased to find this site especially as I'm using the Octagon 20 too and was concerned about keeping the humidity up. Many Thanks! Fingers crossed now for a good hatch!!

Pretty much, although you want to rake back the top four or five inches to save as inoculant for the next year's deep bedding.

And then in the spring it heads to the garden?

I'd say it's maybe ten inches deep so far. The way the method works, you start with a few inches of bedding and just keep adding more on top to cover up manure. Since the bedding/manure mixture lower down is composting, it doesn't get as deep as you might think.

How deep is your straw there at the door?

That is a fascinating question. I hadn't noticed a difference with our Golden Comet eggs, but I'm not sure I'm an expert enough chef to know the difference. I've also been learning to cook mostly while using our own eggs, so I tweak recipes constantly and might not have realized some of the tweaks were necessary because of the fresh eggs.

With this fall's transition to smaller eggs, I have had to tweak my recipes again. These smaller eggs have bigger yolks in relation to the egg, which I believe is even more true if you ever cook with bantam eggs. That means adding more eggs if the recipe needs a certain quantity of yolks, but I don't mind baked goods tasting eggy --- I like that.

Anonymous --- That's what we like about this design --- we had the same problem, and this seems to fix it. The outer bucket forms a lip that extends down past the bottom of the bucket, partially enclosing the nipples and tempting the heat from the heat tape to head down that way. We also concentrate the heat tape near the bottom of the bucket, which seems to help. We're still in the trial stages, but so far this method has held up very well down into the high teens. Now, if you live in Alaska, I doubt this will cut it, but if you're in zone 6 or below, this is worth a try.

Heath --- Thanks for the followup photo! Looks great!

David --- I thought it might be helpful. Hoping we'll never have to read a crime scene ourselves, but it's best to be prepared....

Heath --- Sounds like you need an automatic chicken door. Some people swear by those Predator Eyes, but I've heard mixed reports. Another anti-raptor alternative I've read about is stringing up netting over the whole run, which might be hard or easy depending on how large an area your chickens have.

Owls put a hurtin' on our chickens this year. Apparently one figured out the little chicken door and helped itself to a free meal any time I didn't make it home in time to put them up right away. Fur bearing mammals I am able to shoot or trap but these darned owls are protected. They're beautiful creatures, but I sure wish they'd leave my chickens alone!

I have looked at forums online for indicators for various predators, but your summary is probably the best that I have seen. Thanks!

I've got it assembled and ready to go to the chicken coop tomorrow. Here is what it looks like now.

Last year I got all excited about chicken nipple waterers and used them happily all summer. The trouble in the winter wasn't with the water freezing in the bucket, the trouble was that the nipples froze up. I'm not sure that the heat tape is going to address this problem.

I heard some time ago that, generally, cake and cookie recipes, etc, from cookbooks and the internet are developed using commercial eggs. Have you ever found a difference in the quality of your baked goods when using commercial eggs versus those from the home flock?

I can't believe it your chicken Aqua Misers are perfect for my flock. I got my first set of chicks and after about 3 days they started fouling their typical water fountain with food and poo. I did not think so young they would switch so fast to the Aqua Misers but they did! No more mucky water and I am sure they are happy to having a ready supply of fresh water.

Thank you so much for your invention it is truly and AMAZING product. I am thinking about getting some meat birds and I am going to use another Aqua Miser in their enclosure too. Thank you so much for making this product available.

Unfortunately, I think our nipples are too pointy for guinea pigs. I suspect they'd hurt their tongues.

I wonder why your water bottles leak so badly --- is there perhaps a hole somewhere that prevents a suction from forming? I wish I could be more helpful!

We need something that does not leak so badly for use with our guinea pigs. Can you recommend chickennipples for this, or an alternative. They are using vacuum-type water bottles with the lightly-spring-loaded ball bearing in the tube tip now, if you are familiar with the type, and these seem to leak a lot, fast. I realize the piggies drool a lot while drinking, but this is much worse. Any ideas? Keith

By the way, it got down to the upper teens last night and our waterers were still free flowing this morning. Sounds like three feet of heat tape might be sufficient in a moderate climate.

Your pictures didn't seem to embed right, so I've embedded them (and the related text into this comment below:

Here is the metal bucket that I mentioned that works well with the Lowe's bucket like you've used in this write up. There is plenty of room for heat tape and if you remove the existing pop rivets from the handle and move it higher on the metal bucket you could easily hang your heated waterer.

It is a 6 gallon metal bucket made by Behrens and made in the USA! I bought it more than a year ago at Orscheln's, I don't recall the price.

Here is a picture of the Lowe's bucket sitting inside the Behrens.

[IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a357/smallblockfuelie/forum/photo-28-3.jpg[/IMG]

Here you can see the gap between the two buckets. I am going to bring the heat tape cord through this gap and then fill it up with silicone.

[IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a357/smallblockfuelie/forum/photo-18-10.jpg[/IMG]

If anyone is interested, here are the part numbers for the Behrens and Lowe's buckets, respectively.

[IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a357/smallblockfuelie/forum/photo-26-6.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a357/smallblockfuelie/forum/photo-23-9.jpg[/IMG]

This isn't actually our feeder, but it seems to work well for our friend. I've seen several similar feeders online, and might make one for our coops to keep the flock's food handy during trips. (For day to day, I'm a huge believer in giving chickens just what they need once or twice a day rather than offering them free choice food. That way, they have an incentive to forage for food and don't overeat on the storebought stuff.)

I've been itching to make one myself, but haven't, and no one has sent me any photos or notes about making one themselves. If you try it, I hope you'll send me photos! I don't see any reason it wouldn't work.

We raise chickens for eggs and meat. We kept our Golden Comets until this summer, at which point they were going on five years old and their laying was slacking way off. I really enjoyed them, but wanted to try out some varieties reputed to be even better foragers (Australorps and these Sussex) as well as some that will be good mothers (Cuckoo Marans.) The trouble with Golden Comets is that they're not a pure breed, so if you raise their eggs, you'll get who knows what. I was going to try it anyway, but it turned out they were too old to create good embryos. So, off to try new varieties!

Heath --- Our mother hen did her job great! We're going to cull her anyway, though --- we want to work with mother hens who are willing to go broody earlier in the year. Hopefully some of our young cuckoo marans will do better next year....

Ktm --- That's what I'm hearing from other people too --- if you use two different style buckets, it's much better than trying to use two of the same.

Holding up great so far! But we haven't had seriously cold weather to test it with yet. In a month or two, I'll be sure to report back when (if?) we find the lower temperature limit.

We actually believe that the skin is one of the most nutritious parts of the chicken, so we wouldn't want to waste it. Even when we don't roast our chickens whole (which is my favorite method of cooking them), I put the bones and skin in a pot of water to make awesome stock.

And now that I've read Harvey Ussery's new book, it sounds like I also need to stop wasting the feet, egg sacs, and more!

Have you tried skinning your chickens instead of plucking them?

How is the 3' doing? I'm curious to hear if it is keeping the waterer thawed.

Well, I simply changed out the outside bucket witha different bucket and it slid right together. I would guess not al 5 gallon buckets are exactly the same measurements, so the outside one I used was a hair larger.

How did she end up doing?

As a boy my mother used bantam hens to raise chickens, ducks and geese. If you ever need a good laugh let a chicken hatch a few ducks. Watch her wig out when those baby ducks go for a swim for the first time!

Do you still have the Comets you mentioned in your E-book? We have red sex links but have only used them for egg layers and insect patrol. If we can get the Comets at our local tractor/farm store I will get a few and give them a try. Do you two raise chickens just to butcher?

Have you had anyone send pictures of waterers they've built with your chicken nipples that has been attached to a rain barrel? It's late in the year to tackle the project now, but I am thinking of trying to do something this spring.

This is over a year old now, how does the feeder work? Any complaints or redesign work gone into it?

Don --- I hope it's as easy to build for you as it was for us.

Heath --- That's an excellent question, and I don't really know the answer. Since they're thermostatically controlled, it will depend a lot on how cold the weather is. I should probably plug up our Kill-a-watt and see once it gets a bit colder. I'd say they'd definitely draw a lot less than the heated bowls.

I am sure you hear this a lot, but I just wanted to say your aqua misers are wonderful! They should be in every feed store! My hens caught on right away. Thank you for making urban hen keeping that much easier!

Any idea how much electricity these draw? Those heated bowls are HORRIBLE in the amount of electricity they use.

I plan to start making mine first thing in the morning.

We actually had a similar problem with the Lowes buckets we used last week. I'll post the full photo tutorial on our blog in a week or two, but here are the steps we took to make it easier:

• With the lowes bucket, at least, we had to cut the outer bucket down more than is shown in this post.

• We made the cord come out a slit in the bottom rather than a hole near the top.

• We only used a three foot length of heat tape that wrapped around the bottom of the bucket once.

Using those changes, our buckets went together quite well.

Several of our customers have had great luck using these with quail from day one on up. This will definitely solve your wet litter problem.

I don't think there's actually any lid --- that first photo is simply the bucket upside down.

Mark was trying to name this invention "Mother Plucker" but I told him it just wouldn't fly....

Do these work for day old bobwhite quail? I need something that REALLY works without getting all stopped up with the wood chips....

Because I am a bad person, I keep thinking:

I am a mother pheasant plucker;
I pluck mother pheasants.
I am the most pleasant mother pheasant plucker that ever plucked a mother pheasant!

You're welcome. :^)

Where did you get the lid for that heated bucket that's in the first pic?

I tried making thiis watererwith two identical "True Value" buckets but once I installed the heat tape it was next to impossible to get the one bucket inside the other bucket. I'm gonna try again with a different outside bucket.

Fascinating that his product traveled so far before the age of the internet!

my dad said just a small building in Waterloo that the city owns now it was a very small building!

Hey. Just wanted to tell you how great the waterers work. All our chickens immediately figured them out. Clean water! I love it!

We'll look forward to hearing more about your new flock. I suspect you'll find your chickens just as fun and rewarding as we do!

You'll have to take some photos and enter our contest. We'll have one coming up whenever I get time to write up a post about it, but you can also email your photos and description to info@avianaquamiser.com at any time and I'll put your entries in.

That's an excellent point. The pre-made waterers we sell are all made out of food grade plastic, but I think some people are less concerned about possible leaching in their homemade waterers. We do include a note to that end in our instructions file so that people can make an informed decision.

I see that a number of your waterer users use any random type of PVC or plastic buckets and that worries me. There is a reason that there are different grades of PVC pipe. There is only one class that is considered water supply acceptible. Other classes tend to have different solvents that will leach into the water overtime and are carcenogenic or at least toxic. PCBs are just one of the chemical families that will leach from the wrong type of plastic pipe.

I use heat lamps in my coop plugged into thermostat plug-ins. You can find them in hardware stores with the heat tape supplies. I'm going to try using a deicer in my buckets, and they usually already are thermostatically controlled. My biggest problem now is filling the buckets and carrying them in the cold. I like to spray them off with the hose, but my hose is froze already!

The chicken waterers and feeders look great! I stumbled on your site just after my wife and I were talking about how keeping a flock of chickens would tie us to the property. A God send. Thanks

Please keep me posted. You'll have our business in about a year and a half. Bill

I'm glad it could help. Good luck with your new birds!

That's awful! Good idea with the hay bales. When I was reading up on large-scale pasturing setups, I saw that several places were making "artificial trees" that were just small roofed areas that chickens could dive under. Something like that might help until your trees grow up.

The fluorescent seems to be working like a charm --- our flock started laying within a week or two of installing it and are giving us plenty of eggs now. Sure, incandescent might be more helpful if the birds weren't exposed to natural sunlight, but since they play outside all day, I figure it's better to save the energy and use fluorescents.

I would suggest that you use incandescent light, REGULAR LIGHT BULBS, it gives off the broad spectrum of light, ultra violet to infrared, which is necessary for the chicken or any body to absorb calcium. You need vitamin D to act as catalyst for the body to absorb calcium. No D, you could consume a salt block of calcium and it would just pass through the system. The best source of vit. D is natural sun light or cod liver oil. Incandescent light is the closest to natural sun light we have. If you can find broad spectrum florescent lights, good luck!I even use a soaked in milk cheap dog food with cod liver oil mixed in as a supplement. Just to be on the safe side. Once a week give or take. Amazing what little meat eaters (well, most cheap dog food is mostly grain, but!)chickens can be. Just something I was taught years ago.

The coopers are really bad this year, I lost 4 chickens this summer to them; 2 young pullets, a very young cockerel, and my dominant (bantam) rooster. Our pasture has no bushes and only a few sparse trees, I planted a fig that I think will be a nice hiding spot when it gets bigger. For now I stacked several hay bales in random spots around the pasture for them to dive into.

Just preparing for our first small flock of birds. I love all the blogs and information!

I'm sorry you're having trouble finding it. This is actually quite a common item which is generally on sale at local hardware stores or places like Wal-Mart. Here's one on Amazon.

I have searched online for "waterproof heat tape" "heat cable" etc, with no success. CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE TO BUY THE 15Ft OF THIS CABLE FOR THE WATERER??

You'll want to be careful of using these numbers for meat birds. We've been raising heritage breeds, which bulk up at about the rate of laying hens and need about the same amount of feed. But if you raise the extremely fast-growing Cornish cross, they will clearly need a lot more feed. Good luck!

I've never heard of Golden Rocks, but my guess would be that they're some sort of hybrid.

Could you please tell me what these are. (go den rocks). Are these what you call Comets? I have e few reds,silkies and a few ducks.

I plan on using these feed amounts for our laying flock and meat birds starting next year. We haven't had any chickens in a couple of years, but we are planning on starting a flock in the spring. Thanks for all the excellent information you provide for your followers.

Our nipple system would keep shards of glass away from the chickens, but even so, I think that aquarium heaters are probably the least-suited to keeping chicken waterers thawed. You might check out what we consider the best heated chicken waterer for a more elegant (and not too pricey) design.

I thought of doing the aquarium heater idea but thought of another flaw. When the water level gets down low and the heater kicks on and off without water around it the glass can explode. Not only electrifying the water but putting small shards of glass in it as well. Unless you can make sure the level doesn't get below the heater I don't know if I'd take the risk.

I actually wrote a whole post about how to introduce your dog to chickens. It's best read in combination with the entire lunchtime series linked to from the bottom of the post. Good luck!

You might be a good candidate for an outside brooder. I was thinking of making one this year after raising so many batches --- we basically had chicks in the house for four months this year. Something right outside your front door that is predator-proof, warm, and dry would be great, especially if you planned it so that you could add a run to let the chicks start exploring the outdoors early. A mother hen will actually take her chickens out to forage on day 2 or 3, and the earlier you get them out there, the healthier they are!

Ah yes, the get-the-spouse-on-board dilemma. The trouble with using that approach with livestock, though, is that you end up with family members who think they're pets and fight against you eating old chickens, extra roosters, etc.

A chicken's upbringing does have a big impact on its friendliness, but there seems to be a huge genetic component as well. Our Cuckoo Marans are our shyest birds, and even though I hatched them in the incubator (so they heard my voice in the egg) and raised them inside for a few weeks, they were always terrified of me! In stark contrast, the Light Sussex came out from under the brooder on day 1 just to see me and would later fly up on top of the brooder to say hi. So, it's a combination of nature and nurture.

Chickens can definitely tell people apart. I'm the main feed-bringer, so they like me a lot better than Mark. That just means they run toward me, though, and might ignore Mark.