Coop remodel

As promised, pictures of our mini-coop and run expansion project. Mama hen took to moving nests up to twice a day which isn't going to hatch any chicks any time soon. Perhaps she felt that she needed to sit on all three nests??

Here is the dog house we picked up. Cute, isn't it?



Here is the mini-coop painted (mostly) and in place with the expansion in process. We always dig a trench around any expansion and fill it with chicken wire and rocks - keeps raccoons, etc from digging under and getting a midnight chicken dinner.


Here it is from the inside. That funny thing hanging from the tree? A truly amazing fly catcher. I think the day I took this pic the trap had only been hanging up for 24 hours. My new and favoritist defense against flies.


And here it is mostly done! We still don't have anything on the roof but we'll get to that. The people who built the dog house put insulation on the backside. We were going to move it in but didn't. Now we're thinking about just painting it so it's not so ugly.


Here we are on the inside.  It didn't seem like the expansion would give them that much extra space, but when it was done it did seem so much bigger. I moved the nipple-waterer (the bucket) to a different location where more of them can drink from it.  See one of our "chick" roosters peeking in to the mini-coop?


I guess it looks a little piecemeal, but when it's all painted it will look better. Not that the chickens care.
Something you can't see is that there is bird netting stretched over the whole open space above - keeps out the sparrows and hawks - and keeps the chickens inside!


And here is mama hen in her new house!  Jeremy did the door a day or two ago. Yesterday evening we drilled in the 2x4s to designate the nest area. Later, if a chicken wants to roost in here we'll put a 2x4 up on top of the standing ones. Voila! Roost!
Anyway, we put that in, filled it up with straw, put in some food and water and went to fetch mama. Jeremy grabbed one egg from another nest that was still warm and the three mama was on. She was so angry when he picked her up!! Leather gloves were a good idea. I made a little indentation in the straw, placed the eggs in, and Jeremy put mama on the nest.  She's been hunkered down there since (except of course to jump up for food and water at least once).
If she manages to stick with it this time - and there is nowhere else for her to go, so she'd better! - we should have up to four new chicks by the second week in October. It's a bit late, but we hope hatching a few chicks will break her of her broodiness.  Otherwise, we'll have to have chicken dinner sometime soon.

Do-over

After two-plus weeks sitting on the nest, mama hen decided enough was enough! Maybe she got chucked out by the other chickens one too many times, or maybe she decided the eggs were duds, or... who knows. But she gave up on that nest.

And... moved to the one next door! I guess she wanted a do-over.

Unfortunately, she got a bit excited about the whole do-over business and decided to start over AGAIN four days after that. We're a bit fed up with her wrecking all the eggs. Jeremy has taken to putting on thick leather gloves when he collects eggs at night and taking away whatever eggs she is sitting on.

We might be able to solve this soon though. I've been working on a project to add a mini-coop (tee hee!) to our ever-expanding farm outbuildings. We bought a good sturdy dog house off craigslist and have put it in place next to the main coop. I'm working on extending the run in that area to incorporate a little more space for the chickens and the mini-coop.

The idea is that we put broody hens in the mini-coop to do their business. That way they don't get kicked off their nest repeatedly by our bully Rhode Island Reds, and once the chicks hatch they can stay safe with mama for a few days until they are big enough to venture out. That issue was a bit tricky for us last time so this should solve it. It's an experiment - as everything here tends to be.

The other idea is that if we have a sick or injured chicken, it can be in isolation and recuperation in the mini-coop - instead of in a giant dog kennel in the middle of our living room, stinking the place up. So I'm looking forward to finishing this project.

I'll post some pictures when things are looking better.

Again? Seriously?

This started up last week:

Jeremy of course is beside himself with giddy joy. He is a crazy man. I'm actually surprised the mama didn't go crazy when I was filming her. I think her first or second day of broodiness she snapped at Jeremy when he opened the door on her. I had to pet her a little just to get her hackles to rise a bit. So, in another two weeks or so we'll have another bunch of chicks. I'm not sure how many she is sitting on - the other chickens haven't been able to kick her off like the last time. Actually, I'm not sure if this is the same hen or a different one.

This batch of hens will be one year old at the end of September and the first batch of chicks are just over 2 months now. Some of them are the same size as the silver leghorns; getting hard to tell them all apart.

We did lose one rather tragically last week. I was fiddling around in the yard and heard a chick sound that was unusual. Like someone was being picked on...a lot. I went to investigate and realized the sound was coming from inside the annex. I went in and peeked inside their little entry door. What I saw made me flip out and, luckily, gave me the dose of adrenalin power I need to lift the whole roof of the hen house and pull down the front wall so I could rescue the chick. She must have been attempting to roost on the ledge of the open window in the coop, fell, and got one foot caught in the opening of the window. I suspect it broke in her struggling. Then her lovely flock-mates came in and had pecked her head raw and bloody. Little savages.

The poor thing! I lifted her out and realized pretty quickly that there wasn't much we could do. I'm sure we could have patched up her head; but her leg was pretty bad and it didn't seem like she could hang on much longer. Thank goodness Jeremy had just gotten home from the farm. I did not want to wait long to take care of her and I didn't want to do the deed myself. I'm just glad I got to "rescue" her and comfort her for a moment before we dispatched her - instead of her dying in the coop being cannibalized by her siblings. Savage little beasts.

I've got a few more videos here for your viewing pleasure...or to pass the time if you don't have anything else to do. The first two were an attempt at getting a video of bedtime. I'm glad this phase is over. This would last for what seemed hours every night for weeks. Momma hen would wander around making her "y'all come to bed now" clucking sound and many chicks would follow. She head up the ramp, some would follow, some would go in; she'd go back for more, the chicks who went in came out; back and forth and so on. Then finally she'd go in and inevitably there would be 2 or 3 chicks left out that would suddenly realize mom was gone and they would peep miserably, and at the top of their tiny, not insubstantial, lungs. Many nights I'd go out and chase them around trying to coax them into the hen house with mom. It got really fun when they started escaping the run and I was chasing them around the yard half a dozen times a day. Grr. In one of the videos you can see a chick getting a piggy back ride from mom. ADORABLE. One of the cutest chick things I've ever seen.
Then the last one is from about two weeks ago, so they're much bigger - but still peeping away adorably. Enjoy! It seems like not much is going on around here of interest...well, perhaps it is...I just don't have time these days to blog about it!

Makes you wish you were convalescing...

Some friends of ours had a baby recently and Jeremy got signed up on the list to bring them a meal. Tuesday was our day and Jeremy went all out (of course).

 He started with a medley of dried mushrooms. I don't think he actually dried them, I think they dried on the logs. These are shiitake, oyster, and nameko (all grown by Jeremy). He thinks they look beautiful - I think it looks a little.... gross. (You know you're a mushroom farmer when...)

 

 Then he sauteed them (most likely in some bacon fat)



 Then tossed them in (store-bought, the horror!) crust along with sauteed onions and some chunks of cheese.  Gruyere maybe? I can't remember.

 

 Then in goes the egg mixture, then bake, and voila!
 

We also heated up half a baguette (store-bought) and Jeremy cooked up a bunch of kale from our garden with sesame seeds, sesame oil, and some garlic. He can never make enough of this stuff to make me happy.

 

 And finally a little package of homegrown raspberries from our yard.



Our friends were very happy to receive their dinner (though I think it was all mostly too weird for their 1 1/2 year old).

 Kind of make you wish you were convalescing and needed someone to cook you dinner?

So many berries

Our berries are doing quite well this year (except our blueberries of course - not a sign of them at all!).

A couple weekends ago Jeremy made pancakes for breakfast and I went out and picked raspberries and strawberries for topping.  It seems the tulle netting has worked well and we are getting lots of strawberries all to ourselves.



Nothing seems to eat the raspberries and there are tons of them. Black, red, and golden. I picked a lot Saturday and made a big cobbler out of them.




It looks nice, but the biscuits didn't rise much or turn out like they should have. Oh well - throw some whipped cream on and everything tastes better!

We have discovered though, one of the absolute best things to do with raspberries is make ice cream. Wow, that is some tasty delicious stuff!

The secret to success

I think the secret to growing food really well is not liking it.

Case in point: we grew wine cap mushrooms last year and did not like them at all. Now they are growing all over the place, spreading far beyond where they were planted. At least they look pretty.



The other thing is ground cherries. They look like tomatillos, little berries that grow in papery husks and are sweet. They're not bad, but they weren't our favorite. I think we had two or three plants on top of the terrace. Now we have ground cherry plants popping up EVERYWHERE. They're in all the garden beds and more. It's really quite amazing.

Maybe if we focus on not liking tomatoes our tomato plants will start growing!

chicky pics

Aren't they just so adorable!?! Poor mama hen: we like to go peek on the babies all the time and she is still not all that happy about it.
Looks like there are still some unhatched eggs under her - I'm guessing they're all white ones. Those silver leghorns... let's just say they won't engage in any funny business with the rooster!