Which Came First?

In the case of our chickens and their proper housing, the answer would unfortunately be the chickens.  Having raised 3 chicks from day-old before, neither of us were worried about handling a new group of young, locally grown chicks.  We had settled on 16 chicks (8 Australorp, 8 Welsummer), knowing we would likely have several roosters in the bunch.  We needed to make sure we had enough hens for the egg production we hoped for.  We also knew we would need to raise them in the house, as we have no secure outbuildings, but certainly we would have a coop and run ready for them by the time they had feathered out......?

I picked up our 16 chicks from a hobby farm south of us in Duncan, in the first week of April.  We settled them in a Rubbermaid container with food, water, and a heat lamp, and watched them be adorable peeping balls of fluff.

While they spent most of their time eating, pooping, scratching shavings into their water and sleeping - keeled over on their faces for a lot of the time - we planned and built a larger brooder for them to inhabit.

We built big, knowing that in the future we would likely be using it for 40-50 chicks over several weeks' time, and designed it with a divider down the middle to allow for more options with brooding different groups, or for use with a couple of broody hens if needed.  It's assembled with bolts, so it can be stored relatively flat when not in use.

Then, we got started on the 'real' chicken house.  This is the last project to be started in our scary workshop before the building is demolished - it's the flattest spot on the property, given the cement floor, so I'm not sure how we'll manage until we've saved enough to build again.  We assembled the base of the house, covered with linoleum for ease of cleaning, and mocked up the wall framing as best we could so that we could assemble it on site.

We built nest boxes to attach off the back of the house so they won't take up valuable floor space. The build is roughly 8x4, minus the frame, so the maximum capacity for this coop should be about 10 chickens.  We're temporarily housing more while we 'audition' roosters.  There is an attached 10x20 run we've covered with 2-inch stucco wire, to provide them a space protected from the ravens, eagles, and goshawks that might find them a little too interesting. There are also mink and raccoons to think about - even bear and cougars - but we've constructed the coop itself to lock down rather tight at night, and raised it off the ground to prevent digging in.  One can hope that there are other sources of food that would be less trouble to access.  Once the flock has learned where to eat and drink, and roost at night, we can carefully give them daytime access to the additional area outside their run, enclosed by electric net fencing.  Hopefully the rooster we select to keep will be good at keeping an eye out for predators, and there are trees and space under the rabbit hutches in the enclosure for the chickens to find cover if they need it.

In order to prepare the site for the coop, we spent quite a bit of time digging, leveling, and scratching our heads.  I bought a bigger level, just to get it right.

Which only served to show us just how off level everything else is....

Trim work and paint went a long way towards making the coop presentable, and giving it the illusion of being square.  We've added 1x4 boards at the doors, to keep shavings and poop inside the coop until clean out, and we will be adding plastic bins to the nesting boxes, for ease of cleaning.

The wired run is now attached to the front of the coop, and hardware cloth and 2-inch square wire surround the base, to give the chickens a dry covered place for dustbathing in the heat of the day.  The enclosure wire extends 6 or more inches out from the bottom, and is screwed tight to the frame, then pounded into the ground with tent pegs.  Hopefully this will discourage digging by any predators curious enough to make their way past the electrified perimeter.

The chickens are outside and loving it now - and it only took us 2 months to get things sorted out.  Word to the wise - keeping 16 chickens in the living room is not an ideal situation.  Oh, and the current estimate is that we have 6 hens and 10 roosters.  It's going to be interesting.

Work Party

This past month we had some wonderful friends come over to the Island for the day to help get some projects done.  Things are evolving on the property, and we're taking some buildings down and re-thinking our use of the land.  The rabbits needed to be moved, wood was waiting to be cut, and the fence around the kitchen garden had already proved that it wouldn't keep out the deer.

Our solutions aren't pretty, but they are practical, and they'll serve the purpose! Adrian has taken to heart Joel Salatin's words "good enough is perfect."

The fence around the garden was probably 40 years old, and was sagging severely in spots - the deer had beaten me to my spring kale harvest, and I was determined to keep them out of my vegetable patch this year.  Before the plants could go in, we pieced together salvaged pieces from assorted fencing we'd taken down around the property as well as rolls of old wire fence we'd found in the brush, grown through with weeds.  Several pairs of hands, some work with zip ties and a staple gun, and we're happy to have 2-3 more feet worth of height around the perimeter.  Hopefully it will do until we can afford to replace it.  Over the past 2 weeks there's been no evidence of damage to the garden, so the deer may be happy browsing on native plants.

After all the trees had come down on the property, there was a lot of salvageable firewood left on the ground.  We made a landing zone for chopped wood with some salvaged pallets.  We made ends and dividers with more pallets, hammering salvaged rusty t-posts (found in one of the piles of discards uncovered when the big trees came down) to hold things in place.  It's functional and will keep the firewood neatly piled to dry out for use in the winter months.

A couple of hours' work, with barely a dent in the piles still to be cut!  We'll be working to build our supply over the weeks ahead.

Open Invitation

We installed a bat box in March, in the hopes that we would have some reduction in the number of mosquitoes on the property.  So far, we've seen small bats at dusk, fluttering through the air with quick jerky movements - obviously following the sound of food on the wing.  As far as I can tell, they haven't taken up residence in our box, so they must be nesting somewhere close by.  We're happy they're here, and hope they will stay and prosper.

Gone Again

Just an update on our bee swarm - the bees that we managed to scoop back into our hive the day after they decided to leave decided to leave once more.  Apparently they took a portion of the workers from the hive that remained, as an inspection last week showed that the queen was indeed laying, but the numbers were nowhere near the 10,000 bees that came out of the package the day we installed it - perhaps 2-3,000.  They're also building across the bars and up the sides of the hive body with fragile comb, making inspection difficult and correction of their mess too risky.  I will be going back in this coming weekend, to see how disruptive my last inspection was, and to try and remove some of the poorly build comb in the hopes that they will build again.  Better a cross-comb hive of honeybees than no honeybees.