Update on Henry

My worries about gentle Henry are over. The chickens resolved the issue themselves and didn't include me in on the decision. I had decided I was going to keep him in a separate pen and was gathering materials to make one, but then I saw Rocky take off after Henry and chase him into the woods. I had a funny feeling that I wasn't going to see him again when I saw the chase go down.

We had company, I didn't follow them until after our company left and then I went out into the woods and called and called for Henry. He never came back. I waited a couple days, going out into the woods every few hours hoping to see him, but either Rocky killed him or something else snatched him up. It's been 10 days now and no sign of him.

I'll miss you Henry.

With Henry out of the picture, Rocky's new target is the other Speckled Sussex rooster you see on the far right, in the pix above. He's kind of mean and he pecks your feet when you walk by. He will chase you and peck you and when I say "peck", I mean he pecks. Hard. He has broken skin and left bruises where he pecks me or the girls. He's a stubborn one, that one, and refuses to get run off, though Rocky tries repeatedly to chase him off. I keep him separate in a large animal crate we have, and let him out when the other chickens are off in the field out of sight.

I called a neighbor that I know, who hunts and processes his own deer. I thought he might know how to butcher a chicken, but he says it's been over 50 years since he helped his Granddaddy butcher a chicken. Another neighbor sells eggs, so I'm thinking they may also butcher their own chickens, so I hope to go over there one day this week and introduce myself and ask.

I think in the future, I'll only purchase female chickens and leave those ornery males out of the equation. You don't need males for eggs, hens will lay eggs, but if you want them to hatch, then you need the rooster to fertilize the eggs.

I am gathering materials I need to build a fence around the chicken coop. They wander pretty far, and though they always return at night, they will soon start to lay eggs and I have heard enough stories about hens laying eggs every place but the nesting boxes. I don't want to look all over our 15 acres for eggs, so a fence it is. It will have two separate pens so I can rotate pens and let the grass regrow from all their pecking and digging. Ideally, there should be 4 pens, to rotate every week and then each pen will have 3 weeks of regrowth before the chickens go back into that pen. My issues are cost, so I need to figure out how much the fencing materials will cost me, before I make my final decision on how many pens there will be.

Pallet Chicken Coop

The pallet chicken coop is 95% done. I worked on it for most of the day yesterday and all that is left is to get the hinges on the wood flaps so that in the winter-time, I can close them for warmer digs. I have the hinges, but I currently can't find them at the moment. I just know if I give in and buy some more, they're going to show up and I hate that! So for now, I'm still looking.

Would you like a tour?

The main entrance. This chicken coop was designed entirely in my head, nothing written down, once I knew I wanted to make it from pallets. It is 2 pallets long and 1 pallet wide. The only material we had to buy was more nails and 3 8x4 pieces of plywood for the roof; leftovers went for the outside walls. Pallets, cinder blocks, roofing materials and chipboard all came from scavenging construction sites.

The door came from my Mom's home, when the contractor used it to make a temporary door when the firemen ripped out her front door. We asked them if they were going to keep it and they let us have it when they installed the new front door. They left the hinges on, too! All I had to do was cut it down to size. We also got all the wood they used to cover the broken windows.

Right-side view. Recycled some old cast-iron plant hangers that old owners left behind to hold watering can and feeder.


Left-side view. "Windows" are covered with chicken wire and in the winter, flaps will fold up to cover the windows. Small trees were sacrificed for roosting bars.

Rear wall with 9 nesting boxes. I have more nest boxes than hens, but eventually, I hope to have a larger flock of chickens. The floor is covered with pine shavings and it does not smell in there at all.

All told, we spent less than $50 for materials to build the chicken coop. This was more my project than it was my husband's, so I did the majority of the work. He helped me cut a few pallets apart, helped me lay down and nail the shingles and he cut down the trees I needed for the roosting bars, too. Thanks, dear! The rest of the work, I did myself. I have my Dad to thank for teaching me how to use power tools, measure twice, cut once, and for letting me be his "assistant" while he worked. Thanks, Dad!

I'll see big trucks go by with pallets stacked on them and I holler at them to drop 'em off at my house. I see pallets in a whole new light now, and I have a few more projects involving pallets up my sleeves.

The chickens seem pretty happy with the coop, they put themselves to bed every night and all I have to do is a head-count before shutting the door for the night. I'm proud of it and it was a fun project to do!

June!

Can you believe it's June already?! Man! They weren't kidding when they said time flies when you have kids! My Oldest will be 7 on Friday and since we have decided 2009 to be the year of no birthday parties, it will just be her grandparents coming up on Saturday for her birthday. She has already made her requests for specific meals and a cake for her special day and I need to get busy and make a doll for her like I did her other sisters. Shhh!



My computer still isn't back to normal yet-- I'll be calling the local computer fix-it place and see what they can do. We use this computer for so much that we cannot put it off any longer. I use the photo program I downloaded for ebay and etsy sales, this here blog, and for personal family pictures and it's so frustrating not to be able to upload more pictures. Plus this setting that the computer went back to is so plain and all our personal preferences and favorites are gone and we have to go by memory on where certain things on the internet are located. A real pain in the you-know-what!



A lot has happened since I last posted. Something got into our chickens Thursday night/Friday morning and left one Rhode Island chicken dead and 2 Speckled Sussex chickens were carried away, presumably to be eaten. I followed a trail of bloody feathers into the woods and then lost the trail. They were not in the coop, it was not done yet and they had been settling in for the night in the corner of our sunroom and dining room. I put up a fence and they spent a week there until the incident happened. Friday, the Husband and I spent the day finishing the chicken coop and it was a good thing that my Mom happened to be visiting us because she watched the kids and Baby for us.



We finished the coop! No pictures, unfortunately, but I'll post them when my computer is normal. I still have to build nest boxes, but the roof, walls and door is done. I'm sore from all the hammering and the physical work I did to lift and carry all the wood I needed, but I'm so proud of our little coop! It's nice and solid and we paid less than $50 in materials we needed that we couldn't scavenge. I need to tweak it a little bit, add windows for light and block a few spaces that the chickens got stuck in, but for the most part, it's done. They have been in there since Friday night and every morning when I go to let them out, I hold my breath and count the remaining chickens-- still 11 left, whew!



We also tried our strawberry wine! Yum yum! It's been a year since we made it and my instructions for the wine said to let it ferment for a year. I think I'll wait 6 months next time, try it and then check every month after that because we had a 50/50 success rate-- wine and vinegar. The wine is delicious!! I can definitely taste the alcohol. It's a sweet wine, light and tasty, I'll make it again. The vinegar is also good, but my! that's a lot of vinegar we're stuck with! Looks like nearly 2 gallons of vinegar so far. Looks like there's going to be a lot of strawberry vinaigrette on my salads this summer.

Pallet Chicken Coop: part2

Remember this? We had put a second row of pallets up and I was getting ready to work on the door frame when I realized that I really wanted the chicken coop closer to the house. The location we picked was out in the open, no shade, and behind the shed/pole barn where we couldn't see it from the house. Had I known how much fun it would be to watch the chickens and put more thought into location, I wouldn't have put the coop where I did.

So-- I made the tough decision to semi-dismantle the coop and we moved it closer to the house where we can see it. I hated to knock down all the hard work we put into it, but better now than to complete it and realize were not happy with where it was.


This is currently how it looks now. It is off to the side in the back of our house and pretty close to a mulberry tree. The chickens will be able to gorge themselves on berries come June. I can sit in the sun room and see the coop or when the girls play outside, I can also keep an eye on the chickens, too. Much better than when I couldn't see it at all.

We've had 4 days of rain and while I am grateful for the rain, it's holding up progress on the coop. I need to start all over again but hopefully it will go a little faster as most of the hard part has been done, I just need to put the walls back into place.

Semi-dismantled walls. I connected them on the inside, so all I need to do is get them standing and nail them back in, then it's back to where I left off.

The husband scored several packs of new roofing shingles from a friend's new house construction, so I am excited about that. We were going to recycle old metal siding from an old shed, but it was really rusted and holey, so new shingles are great! I even spotted a roll of tar paper in the shed from previous owners! How thoughtful! :o) I think we'll have just enough of everything for the roof. There are old gutters in the rafters of the pole barn, so we plan to use one for catching rain water to water the garden with. All this rain makes me wish we had bigger containers for storing the water in, but that will just go on our wish-list of items we'd like to have.

Hopefully the next coop update will have much more progress!

Pallet Chicken Coop: part1

Work has begun on our chicken coop. We are making it from pallets and leftover construction materials we have gathered over the past year.

Previous owners had a couple of heavy railroad ties stacked behind the pole barn. We are using that as the base with scrap boards on top for the flooring. I moved the ties myself using old egyptian methods-- a couple of short logs underneath and rolling them by moving the logs from the back to the front. The girls helped until they started to hamper and my back was screaming at all the stop and go. I had to shoo them away and finish it myself.

Part of the walls are up. This took the better part of the morning/afternoon because the girls wanted to help hammer the nails in. I would start a couple nails for them and then let them take over hammering it in. And they hammered. Hammered some more. Finally, a nail was all the way in. It took a long time for Oldest to hammer one nail in. Had to go look for another hammer so I could work at the same time. I'm not the most patient person in the world when I want to work on a project.

Inside view... That little log in front was part of my egyptian log moving tool. Underneath the scrap boards are cinderblocks for support so the floor doesn't sag. The husband has a day off tomorrow, so weather permitting, we will be working on the chicken coop. It's still too chilly for the chicks to be outside 24/7, but hopefully, they can be out there soon. They are getting big and the big box they are in is all of a sudden looking mighty small now.