Finding Contentment

Spring has sprung

The coop is just about finished, and I can't wait to put the new chicks in there. A few days ago they went from the house to the unfinished basement because I couldn't stand the smell anymore!

Baby chicks are so cute but when they start getting big they're not so cute anymore! Okay, so they're still cute, but the smell kind of knocks you down - no matter how often you clean.

Our established flock is only five hens, and the new one will be seven. But because the pecking order is already established in the first flock, we decided to keep the flocks seperate. That required totally rebuilding the coop. The hen house (in the middle) will be split down the middle with a wall. Each flock will have half of the hen house and has their own run coming out of their side of the house.

You can't really tell in the picture, but there is chicken wire on both runs and windows from floor to ceiling to keep predators out. Hubby is finishing up the inside now, and making new nesting boxes. Hopefully he can finish with the inside in the next few days and we can put the new flock out. We allowed the babies to run around the coop for about 20 minutes the other day to stretch their wings while the adult chickens were foraging for bugs in the yard.

On the left is Cinco, the 5-toed Salmon Favorelle. She is supposed to be a hen, but her coloring looks more like a rooster to me. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm really hoping she is a hen! Next to her is Lucy, a New Hampshire Red - so named because her red feathers and mischievous personality reminded my husband of Lucille Ball.

Here's Della, as named by my DS, 12. She is a Delaware chicken, hence the name.

This is Doe, so named because she is either a John Doe or a Jane Doe. She was the freebie the hatchery sent with the others. We can't decide if she is an araucana or a Silver Laced Wyandotte. What do you think?

This guy with the dirty mouth is my DS, 5, with one of the Buff Orpingtons. He named one Pickachu and one Ash (two Pokemon characters).

And this is my favorite, the beautiful Simone, a Buff Polish. She is the smallest of the chicks and the most docile and sweetest. I had also ordered another Polish, a Golden-laced, which would have been beautiful. Unfortunately she died within hours of arriving home. I guess the transit via the U.S. Postal Service was too much for her. The chicks were actually delayed a day in the post office of another city and were a day late arriving. We ended up with three dead ones, but I've heard of people who received entire boxes of 25 chicks where nearly all were dead, so I'm counting my blessings.

By the way, in the photo of the chicken coop you will notice the garden. It has been plowed and is ready to go, but hasn't been planted yet. Not only have we been short on time, but our weather has been really weird lately. One day we will have freezing temperatures and the next it will be in the 70s. I can't wait to get the garden planted!

As the post office employee said when we picked the babies up a month ago, "I know spring is arriving when the baby chicks start arriving!"

The new coop

Hubby doesn’t get much time off, so we decided to make the most of Easter weekend and do family projects in the yard. Last week our new baby chicks came! We ordered 25, but only seven of them are ours. The rest are a friend’s. The hatchery marked my seven by painting their heads red! We will add these seven to the five we still have.

Two of my friend’s Patridge Cochins died upon arrival. One of my chicks also died - my Golden Polish. I still have a Buff Polish, though. I love her hair-do!

In order to keep from stressing the chickens by messing up their “pecking order,” we decided to keep the two small flocks separate. Our previous setup included an indoor coop and a small run. We decided to close in the entire thing and put a wall down the middle to make it into two coops. Then we will add a large run to each side of the building.

We let the chickens out into the yard, and they were more than happy to go. Because we have several stray cats in the neighborhood, we no longer let the chickens out unless we can be out there with them. That’s also why our entire coops, runs and everything will be surrounded 100% by walls or chicken wire. But because we are outside less in the winter, the chickens haven't been out that much in the past couple of months.

Hubby put up the posts and the roof for the first outdoor run. Then while the kids and I primed the posts, he started putting up walls on what will be the indoor coop. He left two spaces in the middle so each flock will have its own window on its side of the coop. Last year’s walls were made out of what I call press-board (particle board?), and they were crumbling. So this year we bought heavy duty plywood not only for the new walls, but to reinforce the old ones.

We got one run and all but one side of the coop framed in, primed, and the trim painted. I know you usually paint the trim last, but Hubby is going to have to nail chicken wire to the posts on the run and wanted them painted so he could that and put the chickens in there.

We managed to close up the unfinished coop in a temporary way last night except for the windows. The chicken didn’t realize they had an opening until this morning. We are going to my MIL's for Easter dinner at 1 p.m. and don’t want to get dirty working on the coop until we get home. So Hubby is currently trying to find a temporary way to block the windows.

This is as far as we got last night. The coop is in the middle, that is one of the runs on the left, and there will be another run on the right. The gray part is actually primer, we will paint that and all the walls barn red. These are the chickens that escaped this morning.

I think the coop is looking great, thanks to my husband’s creativeness – he free-handed this whole thing without any plans. He just plans it in his head, but even those plans change often as he goes along. All I have to do is the painting, and I run errands to the hardware store whenever he decides he needs something else. I am also his sounding board, as he needs someone to bounce ideas off as he goes. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

Good-Bye, Big Mama

  Big Mama as a chick. She is the one in the corner.

After nearly a year of owning our flock of six backyard chickens, we have lost one.

Some of you may remember last August when I posted about Big Mama and how she had been attacked by our black Lab. We nursed her her back to health slowly but surely until she was as good as new as far as we could see. Then we painstakingly introduced her back into the flock, letting her spend time with the other chickens each day until they accepted her again.

Big Mama as a young pullet.

As you can imagine, Big Mama became one of our favorites. A few days ago, we went to feed and water the chickens only to notice that something was wrong with her. She had an egg hanging outside her vent, in what appeared to be a bloody membrane of some sort. I put gloves on and tried to remove the egg, but it wouldn't budge.

I decided to try and find a veterinarian who would see chickens. Because I lived in a city, albeit a small one, I found only one vet who would see any kind of farm-type animal. But when I called to see if they would see my chicken, they acted like I was crazy. I guess most people think chickens aren’t really worth the time and money involved in veterinarian care.

I then called an older man from my church who has a chicken farm. I described her condition and he immediately told me she had had a "blowout." There was no fixing it, he said.

I went online and googled "chicken blowout," and discovered it was technically called a prolapsed oviduct. Apparently, it happens when the egg is too big for that particular chicken to lay. The only solution I found was to push the oviduct back into the chicken, put some Preparation H on it, and hope for the best. But I couldn't get the egg to come out. And I couldn't very well push the entire egg back up into her and leave it there. The other chickens were already starting to peck at her, and I read that they would eventually cause her intestines to fall out.

It was with a heavy heart that my husband and I drove to a family-run hardware store and purchased a hatchet. Mercifully, Hubby did what he had to while I went about my business inside the house. We couldn't quite bring ourselves to process and eat her, so we buried her.

Big Mama as an adult hen.

The children cried, but I think this was really a good lesson for us all. We are working to become self-sufficient homesteaders, with hopes of moving to a large piece of land in the countryside in the next few years. We have come a long way in the year since we made this decision, but if God decides to eventually bless us with our dream of a country farm, we will have to get used to things happening with the animals sometimes.

Still, we will always remember Big Mama.

Winterizing the chickens

Today we hit Black Friday sales at Bass Pro Shop and Wal-Mart, made a stop by the cemetery to put flowers on my mother's grave, and made a trip to Tractor Supply to get chicken feed and pine shavings. We did all this and managed to be home by lunchtime.

Right now Mark is outside "winterizing" the chicken coop, and I snapped a few pictures of my babies as they foraged in the yard.

Here the chickens are in my flower garden. Unfortunately, I planted flowers like cannas and roses that attract Japanese beetles and the entire garden is infested with them. As soon as I get a chance I plan to pull all the flowers and introduce either some milky spore disease or beneficial nematodes to help kill the beetle larvae organically. Then in the spring I will turn my flower garden into something more beneficial - an herb garden!

Triple yolk!

When the kids brought me a huge egg from the hen house yesterday, I figured it would probably be a double yolk egg. Last night we had breakfast for dinner - sausage, eggs, bacon, biscuits, and french toast - and I cracked the egg in question open first to see if it would be a double yolk. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a triple yolk! I was so proud of my chickies! They've only been laying for less than a month now, so every egg still brings joy. But this egg - this brought lots of joy!

My husband took these photos as I was cracking the eggs. This is the egg in question.

This is a comparision of the triple yolk egg and a normal-sized egg - one the chickens normally lay.

Here is the pile of eggshells from the eggs I cooked last night (we were serving two families). All of these came from our six chickens - well, only four of which are currently laying.