Mid September......
We welcomed home our 4 laying hens in mid September. But before they could come to our house, we needed to secure their coop and get the feeders, nesting materials and all of that in order.
First thing was to get the ground leveled out and add a bit of foundation where the Coop-Mahal will sit.
Jenni working on the leveling and foundation
The hardware cloth wire is laid down first. This helps to prevent animals (raccoons, opossums, dogs) from digging under the structure to get to the chickens. Sand and gravel is for leveling the block.
Once the hardware cloth wire and leveling is completed on all 4 sides, dirt and mulch are added to level the ground inside the coop. Then the coop is placed over the secure spot.
The inside of the coop nesting area can now be prepared. Isn't this a cozy little place? Heck, if I ever get in trouble with Rowan, I can even sleep out here! :o)
We are using two different kinds of pine shavings as nesting material. A little denser and easier to maintain than straw.
The water and feed containers.
The runway to the sleeping/laying loft.
This is Kim, The Chicken Lady. Our neighbor referred us to Kim, who lives just outside of town and has a couple of acres where she raises all sorts of interesting chickens.
She has recommended the Easter Egger breed as they are very social, friendly and we will have the potential to get blue, green, white and brown eggs from our flock. Go here for more info:
http://www.mypetchicken.com/chicken-breeds/Easter-Eggers-B145.aspx Each chicken in this breed possesses the blue egg gene, but won't necessarily lay a blue egg. We will see what we get when they are old enough to lay (that should be in December).
Here is a photo of just part of her flock of 9 week old Easter Eggers we had to choose from. We spent quite some time following the flock around trying to pick out the four hens we wanted. Once we decided, the next major task was trying to catch them. It was hilarious as we ran around the yard trying to pick up our choices. Kim was very helpful on the easiest way to catch and pick them up. She says, once they get to know you they will actually come to you which will make this task much easier in the future.
Here is Rowan with our first choice. We instantly named her Sweetie Pot Pie, as she is very sweet and will taste good with gravy and vegetables one day. :o)
The girls went right into the coop when we arrived home and seemed to be very excited about their new digs. We fed them right away with some scrap vegetables that would normally go into the compost.
We discovered right away that Sweetie Pot Pie likes to be held and petted.
Here are all four of the girls: from left, Chicken Nugget, Chicken Dumpling, Sweetie Pot Pie, and Chicken Noodle. You may notice that they all have food names. Well, we decided to do this so that when it is time to eat them (after they stop laying in about 3 years), it won't be so hard. We shall see :o)
We are really having fun with this. We decided we would try free-ranging the chickens when we are out in the yard doing yard work. So, one day when Rowan was working on laying some stepping stones along the front of the house.............
.....we let the girls out of the coop and they followed us right out to the front yard and started scratching around in the thicket of bushes and trees on the north side of the house.
Every insect was running for their lives! They just loved eating bugs, berries, grass, leaves......EVERYTHING! Who needs goats when you have chickens! And, we get the extra benefit of chicken poop fertilizer in the garden!
It only took us one week of having the chickens before we just had to give them more of a run to hang out in during the day when we are away at work. We laid out the yard timbers as a foundation and secured them with 24" re bar into the ground.
We decided to use 1" PVC pipe to construct the tall part of the run/aviary. This way, we can pick it up an move it around easily if we decide we want o move it to the other side of the house. We secured it with screws to the yard timbers.
Of course, the girls were very curious about what we were doing, so we let them out to investigate. They stayed right around us and helped to clean up any crickets still hopping around in the garden.
We built a shorter raceway coming from the coop to the larger aviary. The small door at the bottom of the coop opens up into this new run area. When the girls come into the coop at night, we close the small door for security, as the aviary doesn't have any underground wire for protection from those nocturnal predators.
You can see how we laid down 12" concrete pavers around the exterior of the entire coop and run. It serves as a walking path and also as extra security from animals trying to dig under to get inside.
Here I am getting all origami-like as we start covering the entire new run with chicken wire. You can see how the chickens are behind me looking in at me. Now I know what it feels like for them when we stand around and look in at them! I felt like I was literally 'in' the zoo :o)
Of course, the girls couldn't resist helping to hand me screws and tools as we were putting the thing together. It was hilarious!
We decided to build a mini cooper down at the other end of the run so the girls would have shelter down there during the daytime (I will now call it this in honor of my sister, who drives one) :o). The whole coop thing suddenly seems to be taking on a life of its own! We are again using the old redwood siding from the house to build it.
The girls seem to be very happy to lay down right next to me to supervise the construction.
The inside of the mini cooper.
From left to right, the day coop, aviary/run, the A frame night coop and the wood/garden shed. We really do suddenly have a Coop Mahal!
The girls seem to LOVE it!
Here is a photo I took of the strangest bug we have ever seen. We noticed it crawling up the side of the aviary as we were working on the coop. It about scared the pants off of me! It looks like it is from another planet. It's called a Wheel Bug and is a true assassin in the bug world as it literally sucks the life out of its prey. Ewe! Here is the link if you want to know more about the bug:
http://www.hiltonpond.org/thisweek030901.html I chose this link because the author has a really cool and entertaining way of describing the bug and it's life.
Back to the chickens............here are the girls in their coop getting ready for bed. There is always much clucking and jostling for position before everyone gets settled in. They seem to be really happy.
We can't wait till they start laying eggs. Look for exciting news on that sometime in December.
All kinds of other interesting stuff coming to the blog very soon...............as you can see, it is never a dull moment here at our urban farm.
