What you may or may not know about chickens

     It all started about three years ago when my wife and I decided to get a few chickens. We thought it would be nice to have a few fresh eggs and they were so cute (or so my wife thought). Well, there were a few things we weren't aware of like housing, feed, watering, cleaning the coop, the weather, predators.... and so on!  Since the chicks were so young when we got them home, I had to build a brooder.  A brooder is a small cage that is kept at about 90 degrees while the chicks are young and then the temp is brought down about five degrees a week until the temp inside the coop is the same as your temperature outside.  Like I said, there was a lot we didn't know!

     I had about three weeks to build a coop before our girls were ready to come out of the brooder. We had an old wood shed out in the coral that came with the house. I thought I could cut in a few windows, frame out a door and I would be done. Needless to say, my wife had a different idea of what a chicken coop should be. I found a great website called "Back Yard Chickens". It was full of great information and photos. The more I read, the more I put into the coop.
 

    Not only did  I cut in the windows and frame a door. I also insulated the walls, put contractors mesh on the floor then covered that with 3/4 inch plywood to keep predators out. I put wire over the windows, to keep predators out. I built a run 16 feet long by 5 feet wide by 5 feet high covered in wire to keep the predators out. I put a roof on the run to keep the predators out. I dug a one foot ditch around the perimeter of the run and filled it with 30lbs. of nails and broken glass before I buried the fencing in the ground TO KEEP THE PREDATORS OUT! And finally, when winter hit and the cold weather moved in, my wife thought the chickens would be cold, so I put in a heat lamp. All of this was so I wouldn't have to share my house with them..if you know what I mean!

   As our girls grew, we noticed one of the four was quite bigger than the rest. Then, while working in the garden one day, I heard a strange screeching noise coming from the coop. At this point I wasn't sure, but I thought we might have a rooster! Well, in a few weeks there was no question about it, one of our girls was indeed a big, beautiful rooster. 

     Not knowing what a rooster truly meant in the pecking order of a flock, he quickly let us know. Now a rooster's job is to defend his ladies from any threat, including the people that feed them and give them fresh water and clean up after them. This bird was always ready for battle. Eventually, to go in the yard you had to have not one, but two weapons of mass destruction to DO BATTLE. My weapons of choice were a rake I could use to distract him and a broom to hop him in the ass while he was busy attacking the rake. This became a daily ritual that we both looked forward to. He was like a dino rooster!   But, in the three years we had chickens we only lost one bird and that was because she left the fenced-in area. I attribute the luck of the flock to this rooster's ability to do battle with everything that moves within his domain.

     You must check your flock on a daily basis. Our chickens live the good life.  They have feed and clean water daily, plus my wife makes them oatmeal on cold mornings and they get a treat of yogurt with raisins in the afternoon!  During the winter their water freezes, so you have to keep up on it because they drink a lot.   Chickens do get sick and occasionally you must medicate them. I built an enclosed feeder that holds 30 lbs. of feed, so I only fill it about once a month. Chickens love to eat and table scraps go a long way with them.  Our chickens love spaghetti, yogurt, raisins, carrots and just about any leftovers from the dinner table.

     I can't go over or even remember everything I have learned over the years, but if you have any questions about starting a flock or about an existing flock feel free to leave a comment and I will gladly reply.

Until next time....  

A Long Winters Rest

We put our vegetable garden to rest for the winter. You would think there is nothing to do in the garden at this time, but my wife and I are very active planning for next spring. We are looking through seed catalogs every day and trying to plan our layout. If the winter is good to us we are planning to purchase a greenhouse so we can start our growing season earlier than spring. We will keep you updated on the progress of this project.

This was  our third year planting a garden. The first year we had six inch raised beds which worked out well, but they were spaced to far apart. We had a large path between each bed which took up a lot of valuable planting space. We had only four 3x10 ft. beds.

On the second year we mounded the dirt to a higher level than the walking paths. It didn't work out to well for us. By the end of the season the lines between the planting area and the paths were blurred. And it was hard to weed and water. So this year we switched back to raised beds that are 16" tall, this should make it easier to weed and maintain. We made them wider and we still fit two more beds than we had before.

 I constructed the beds out of a few white oak logs that we milled right here on our property. We run a few small businesses her, one being a saw mill. I milled the boards to 2" thick x 16" wide x 10 feet long. I figure we should get about ten years out of these beds.

We added an insectory for this spring. Once this comes to bloom I will post some photos. There is a method to our madness. We plan on starting our first bee hive this spring, and the insectory should draw the bees to the vegetable garden. The extra pollinators should give us a better yeild from our garden.

A Long Winters Rest

Whats that smell ?

As our first winter passed and everything around us began to thaw out we wondered....                                                     "Whats That Smell"

Our first project was to find out what the smell was in the back yard. For the first few months we figured one of the neighbors septic system must keep backing up. Well one day while down wind from our 5500 gallon Koi pond I realized where the smell was coming from. When we moved into the house, the pond water was green with nothing but frogs swimming around. You couldn't even see the bottom. I was told to put a few fish in and they would actually clean the pond by eating the algea. Not knowing the first thing about a fish pond, I listened to the advise of the person that let the pond get to this point. I went out and bought a dozen koi, each about the size of a quarter. Due to the bad water quality we lost seven fish within two weeks. At this point I decided I better get some better advice. I searched the web and went to a local aquarium and pond store. Loaded with my newfound wealth of knowledge, I purchased a pool pump that circulated 5000 gallons of water an hour, a skimmer that we needed to be mounted mounted outside the six inch thick concrete wall of the pond. I needed to call in a professional concrete person to do the cutting , a skimmer pump that moved almost 3000 gallons of water per hour, PVC pipe for a drain and water flow system, a waterfall filter system and a UV light to sterilize the water as it flows through the filter system. 

    The first step was to get the five fish we had left and put them in a baby pool in the garage. Then we started to draining the water in the pond. The more water that ran down the driveway the more apparent it was what the mystery smell was. The pond is four to five feet deep and the bottom that we could never see was three feet thick of rotting leaves from the four maple trees that hung over the pond. The pond had no filtration system and was never cleaned. I put on my fishing waders grabbed a pitch fork and a wheel barrow and gagged my way through two days of mucking out the bottom of the pond. Next,  I had to put in all the plumbing and filtration systems. When all of the filter and drainage systems were in place,  I had a few tons of river rocks delivered, recruited a few of our younger relatives with strong backs and good knees and we lined the bottom of the pond with the rock. Then we filled the pond, put the fish back in and let nature take its course. Its been three years and our original five fish have reproduced into thirty two fish. We also have the local wildlife raising there young at the edges of our pond and the bird population stops by to get a drink from the waterfall. This was a big investment of time and money for us that we did not expect. But we do enjoy what it brings to our Farmhouse surroundings.