Posts Tagged ‘chicken coop’
So Happy
We were only away a few days but Pequenita seemed extra happy over our return yesterday. It seems as though she understands the routine of our leaving for days at a time and so maybe the occasion of our return is becoming something of an increased expectation for her.
She was rather comically clingy for the first part of the afternoon and then again when I sat on our bed and opened up my laptop.
I don’t mind giving her extended scratches when she shows so much appreciation for the touch, despite the limitations it creates for getting any real writing done.
The horses weren’t what I would describe as clingy when we showed up at the barn. Mix was in “bossy-mare” mode and preferred to pay amped-up attention to the two chestnuts, Mia and Light. They all looked noticeably more shaggy as their winter growth is filling in nicely.
Our weather is holding in “uneventful” mode while vast swaths of the country are experiencing events. The precipitation spinning around the low-pressure center in the middle states is staying just to our south. This buys us time to continue the process of winterizing Wintervale.
Today we plan to pull the pump from our landscape pond and cover the water with netting to capture leaves during the off-season. We also will remove the plastic awnings over the windows of the chicken coop and place solid plastic panels over the screens. Even though there won’t be any birds in there, we still want to keep it from filling up with snow.
We pulled in our plastic rain gauge to keep it from getting cracked when water freezes in it. We’ll be in the “in-between” season for a while, where precip can fall as rain and snow on any given day.
I’ll be happy to stay inside and give Pequenita scratches during weather like that, thank you very much.
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Empty Coop
It wasn’t long ago that we were renovating the coop in preparation for housing the two groups of chicks at the same time when we moved them out of their respective brooders.
Now the coop stands empty. On Sunday, my brother and his wife stopped by to pick up the three survivors of the massacre that took out 22 chickens.
The ghost predators that have been taking advantage of us for several months will not find one more chicken dinner here this year. Maybe that will provide incentive for them to move on to some other property.
We will take a year off to mull over the possibility of trying again. At this point, it feels like our methods will need to involve something less than free-ranging given the increasing priority of not experiencing any more losses like we’ve endured this year.
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Self Taught
The Buffalo gals taught themselves to climb their ramp into the coop at dusk! I had just arrived upon the scene as Cyndie was working to find a hole in the netting that would explain how one of the Rockettes ended up hanging out against the outside of the courtyard fencing. I did a quick head-count of both sets of chicks and walked around to where Cyndie was working.
The next time I looked in on the Buffalo gals, they were gone. All 12 had headed inside by their own volition.
That left the Rockettes to be tested with our new idea of herding them to their ramp to see if they would take the hint to climb up on their own. Very quickly half of them did take that hint, but the rest were a harder sell.
They seemed much more interested in cowering underneath their ramp and unleashing a cacophony of chirping. A modicum of hands-on support helped convey the intent and soon all birds were cooped for the night.
I think they will catch on to the ultimate routine soon, but further lessons will be delayed until after the weekend. Our trusty animal sitter is on duty starting today as we are off to the lake for a few days again. My birthday buddy, Paul, and his wife, Beth, are joining us up at Wildwood. There’ll be some biking happening, as I need to put on some miles in preparation for day-long riding beginning in a week on the 2021 Tour of Minnesota.
I wonder where I stashed my tent two years ago after the last Tour.
That ability I have to forget stuff… self-taught, I’m pretty sure.
I can’t really remember.
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Sweaty Horses
We are on our umpteenth day in a row of high-heat weather and the stress on growing plants is getting visible. Overnight Tuesday we were awoken by a brilliant flash of lightning with its associated crack of thunder that one would assume to equal rainfall. We received no noticeable moisture from the atmosphere.
Where we haven’t kept up with watering, our plants are suffering.
Our animals all seem to be tolerating the heat, but the horses are a sweaty mess. They almost look like they’ve just finished running a race. [slight exaggeration] To add a little flamboyance to their appearance, they take turns rolling in the dusty dirt to create a little mud pack that seems to provide some protection from the hot sun and biting flies.
The chicks don’t seem to care about the heat because they have those fabulous grassy courtyards covered by shade where they can romp all day long. We are in the phase of chick-rearing that requires forcing them back into the coop by hand because they haven’t properly developed that natural instinct of going inside on their own for the night.
Chick wrangling is not one of my favorite tasks. They don’t make it easy.
When we finally got to the last couple of the older bunch, they actually chose to run up the ramp themselves instead of succumbing to the grasp of our scary hands. It inspired me to next time devise a method of corralling them into an ever-shrinking space that funnels directly to the ramp so they can practice getting back inside without being grabbed.
By the time all the chick chasing was done, it was the humans who were sweaty.
We chose to pass on the rolling in the dirt thing.
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Heat Advisory
With the pressure of multiple days of excessive heat driving our concerns, Cyndie and I put in extra hours yesterday to complete the two separated fenced-in courtyards outside the coop for the two batches of chicks. Late in the afternoon, our chicks were scratching dirt for the first time in their lives.
While we worked, we opened their access doors, allowing them to tentatively investigate the strange new opportunity in their own time.
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I appreciate their caution. Being cautious might protect them from risks they will face when ultimately allowed to free-range our fields and forest.
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Getting the chicks out of the coop and onto the shady ground dropped the temperature of their environment significantly. Keeping their water sources filled requires extra vigilance in the heat as those little beaks drink a surprising amount much quicker than expected.
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In no time, I witnessed insects being hunted and devoured. It’s interesting to watch the instinctual behavior of scratching the ground beneath them and then stepping back to peck at whatever might have been revealed. I saw a little beetle rushing to move from one spot to another and wondered how that might play out. The keen eye of one of the chicks spotted that movement and raced over to scoop it up in one smooth move.
Then the great hunter needed to fend off the immediate attention of several other chicks who desperately wanted what she had.
If ever there was a version of “eat and run,” the competition of other chicks defines the phrase when it comes to finding the perfect morsel.
It won’t take long for those birds to change their limited landscapes from green to nothing but bare ground.
At the rate things seem to be advancing, they will be ranging free in a blink. The next big hurdle will likely be figuring out how and when we can take out the barriers isolating the two age groups. I expect it will come after the point of development where it becomes much more obvious which of the Rockettes are noticeably roosters.
Let’s hope high heat pressure will have taken a welcome break long before that milestone arrives.
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Chicks Moved
We left the lake place yesterday morning with the weather doing everything possible to make our departure as conflicting as possible. Alas, tasks at home beckoned, energizing us to focus on hitting the road before lunchtime.
Upon greeting our animals, we immediately turned our attention to planting the trillium we brought home with us. Instead of planting in spread-out sets of three, this time we are experimenting with planting them all together in a closer bunch.
They were pretty droopy by the time we got home, but most stems appeared to stand back up after we got them in the ground and watered. Time will tell whether they accept what we’ve done to them and go on to establish themselves 125 miles south of their previous location.
Next order of business was to complete the dividing of the coop space and then move the chicks from each of their separate brooder locations.
The Buffalo Gals went first and acted rather unwilling about getting picked up for the transfer.
We decided to move both sets of chicks to the coop on the same day, combining the shock of a new location and the first exposure to other birds to happen all at once.
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It was hard to tell which troubled each batch more, the new digs or the strange other chirping birds suddenly appearing in close proximity.
By nightfall, they all seemed to be doing just fine with their abrupt change in housing.
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Coop Cleaning
The chicken coop received a thorough going-over yesterday as we took the first steps in preparation for moving the twelve chicks Cyndie has taken to identifying as the Buffalo Gals.
As we pulled out the removable portions, it was discovered that a few repairs were in order. A plank sealing a seam in the hardware cloth lining had come loose in the ceiling. A significant gap between the two overlapping segments provided ample room for small birds or rodents to wander inside.
Not any more. With that problem fixed, Cyndie put her attention to cleaning every surface and I hunted down a branch to make a third roost perch.
As we were preparing to put away tools and call it a day, I remembered the window covers that needed to be installed over the two side windows. I recalled seeing the flimsy plastic forms, covered in dust, stashed in the barn among a lot of other dangerous-looking objects.
Working together, Cyndie and I delicately, and successfully, lifted the covers out of the debris and headed out the back door of the barn to wash them. I was so happy these things had survived the hazards of removal and storage intact.
While I was washing the first cover, Delilah, the oblivious canine, walked up and stepped on it, busting it in three places as I shrieked at her, frantically shoving to get her off so I could pick it up.
That one now has some funky-looking tape on it, but it should still do the job of preventing rain from coming in the window.
At least the coop is clean! For the time being.
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Lucky Thirteen
 The final tally from the hatch is thirteen chicks. It’s too early for us to discern the percentage of genders among them, but breeds appear to be spread across all the hens we had, which is very rewarding since the eggs selected were random and of unknown origin.
Just one black chick, which we believe to be from the Domestique. The others with coloring align with Barnevelders and the ones with feathery feet are easily pegged for Light Brahmas. There may be some New Hampshire or Wyandotte, too. In the image above, two chicks were messing around away from the group.
Combined with the twelve chicks Cyndie purchased, we are looking at housing twenty-five chickens in the coop in the weeks ahead. I’m going to need to add one more branch for roosting.
After the prolonged exposure to peeping chicks the last two days, I found my sleep disrupted in the middle of the night Tuesday by the frighteningly similar, though uncharacteristically loud, peeping of a frog or frogs outside our open bedroom window. From the edge of consciousness, I was forced to try to figure out why I was hearing the chicks for some strange reason.
Scary echoes of what it was like to be a new parent and have sleep interrupted by any sound that could mean a threat to a newborn.
I take some consolation in the fact these chicks take more naps than our kids ever did.
At the same time, I find myself wrestling with a concern that we are simply raising coyote food. I prefer not framing them as such, but part of me remains acutely aware that we have done nothing to eliminate that ongoing threat.
Could a poultry protection dog that doesn’t have any taste for eating chicken, nor an urge to play “chase” with them, be a possible option for us? It’s hard to say.
I know by now to never rule anything out.
There was a day when I couldn’t envision how we would ever accomplish having chickens to help control flies when we had no experience and no coop in which to house them.
Now we have twenty-five and a coop I built from scratch. What an amazing adventure it is that we are living.
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Popular Nest
We have four nest boxes in the coop for the hens to lay their eggs. History has revealed the box closest to the chicken door is the most popular.
I suppose when ya gotta lay, the first box might be a welcome necessity.
Cyndie is suspecting we’ve got a rogue who has chosen a spot other than the coop, based on the daily total of eggs collected falling a little short of expectations. She reports a pattern of suspicious chicken “call-outs” that frequently occur post egg-laying now emanating from a location other than the coop.
A cursory survey yesterday afternoon didn’t provide any evidence supporting her theory, but the fact this situation has occurred twice before feed our belief it is not only possible, but likely.
I told her she should let Delilah search using her incredible scent-detecting nose, but then we both felt a hesitancy over offering any encouragement to our intrepid tracker for predatory behavior toward our chickens or the eggs.
If it turned out to be just one hen choosing a remote location, that wouldn’t be such a big deal. Since the egg counts have seemed to be down by more than one a day this week, we are a little concerned that allowing this behavior to go unchecked might inspire more hens to participate in laying eggs in a nest of their own making.
Maybe it is unlucky we’ve seen such little evidence of predator pressure on this latest brood of birds and it has nurtured a complacency about their level of risk. Sure, they are domestic chickens, but they need to realize they are living in the midst of actual roaming wildlife.
A lone hen sitting on a nest in the woods of the neighbor’s property behind our shop garage (where Cyndie senses the familiar clucking outbursts have been coming from) will be no match for the fox that has been caught on the trail cam crossing onto our land from nearby.
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Rocky Maturing
Caught Rocky giving a few shout-outs yesterday when I stopped by to check if the brood might be turning in early for the night. I wondered if he might be trying to help me out by calling them all in.
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It turned out they weren’t done for the day and the few who headed inside for a short time were soon back out again. Some decided to scamper up the path toward the barn again. That’s my sign to leave them be and come back when it is much closer to dark.
As can be seen in my video, the added overhang extension performed flawlessly in protecting the chicken ladder from the sloppy, wet snow sliding off the roof. We received a serious dose of “heart-attack” snow that was a bear to plow, but it made for great snow sculpting.
To heck with simple snowmen. Cyndie went with a snowchicken.
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If that isn’t enough to show how much we love our chickens, I actually went along with my wife’s accommodating their tender-footedness and succumbed to her philosophy of shoveling a path to the barn.
Ralphie, is that dorky or what!?
I figure it’s just a sign of true love. I risked my heart for them.
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Relative Something 