Walk the Walk

I had been carefully writing this entry in my head all day (Sunday) while I went about my life and of course when I get the time to sit down and write it, I forget how I had written it.  The way I had written it was very graceful. oh well, I guess I will just jump right into it.

My family is big on self sufficiency (we talk the talk) and as part of that project we obtained our chickens.  As a refresher, last year we had a lot of trouble with them, we had a NH that cannibalized and we butchered her and consumed her. We did it all at home, just D and me and it was not as hard as we had thought but still not our favorite task.  My point of this entry though is that this year we are going to reduce our numbers again by ½. I know it sounds terrible because we named some of them and yes we loved them and cared for them for 2 years. I have already placed an order for 6 new chickens and I have already made the ‘call’ to a local processing plant.

I admit being slightly nervous about this and our flock will be significantly reduced until April when the new chicks come and they wont lay for 6 months after that, which will slow down the egg business here quite a bit.  We are doing it now because I only have a few to go and they have another “farm” processing a larger quantity at the same time. This saves us a bundle and well its just the right time.

I also admit being slightly sad about it but I have to remind myself that they will be feeding my family after 2 years of running around in my back yard, being carried around and getting to eat all the wonderful scraps from my garden as well as uneaten foods from the table. That they in fact have had 100 times better of a life than a chicken at a large processing plant, who for their short lives do not even get to see the sun, eat only bagged feed that has been carefully selected to maximize their growth. No, I shouldn’t feel badly at all. I should feel thankful. A life is a life though and so I am a struggling with this a little.

Thank you chickens for the last 2 years.

T is for Trouble, S is for Solution.

In an effort to try to gain back my full flock after this winter's troubles, Dave and I have decided to set some eggs for hatching. We have easy access to fertilized eggs so we are totally cool with hatching little mutts for our own personal flock. I mean if this goes well maybe I will buy some cochin eggs or wyandottes for the future of SWood flock but for now as an experiment we are just hatching our own eggs.

I learned first how to tell if an egg was fertile by cracking open 4 of our eggs (we ate them) and carefully examining them, running back to google and then examining them again. Turns out 3 of the 4 were fertile. Thats 75%. We agreed to set 12 eggs on Friday evening so we fired up the incubator on Thursday night. Here is a picture of our incubator downstairs in our pantry. You can see our freezer, this one is just for dog food (raw fed), and you can see our cans and dry good storage. We had nowhere else to store the bator so lol i guess it goes with the food right?

We collected eggs on Thursday and Friday and then on Friday night after work, I rushed home and we carefully inspected all of the eggs according to the directions I found online. Dave and I happily set 10 eggs, our little egg family, on their spots on the turner. We congratulated ourselves and I stood there and watched the temperature like a hawk.

As soon as Dave went off to do his thing for the time being, I snuck upstairs and grabbed more fertile eggs and set them too. ha ha ha So we now have 14 little eggs on day 2 of the 21 day incubation! I eventually fessed up to Dave and told him what I did but I waited until he was in a great mood first. We have room for 6 additional hens. We also have plans for a little grower area inside the coop. They will be brooded in the house with us until they are about 1 month old, then they will go out to the coop with the rest of the ladies in the grower pen. This will hopefully make the transition easier for the introductions. I figure it will be just in time for free range time.


I will of course, update you but don't expect major news over the next few weeks. After all, they are just eggs and will remain so for 3 weeks :)

The one where she admits its not that easy :)

As I sat at my desk yesterday, I hear the familiar "bing" of new email received. It was about 4, and my day was over at 4:30. It was from hubby telling me about a chicken rescue. My heart just sank because I found myself back in the same spot I had been in many times over the last few weeks. I was once again faced with losing a chicken.

Let me back track a bit so you can understand. Our flock was solid at 12 hens and a Rooster. We spent the summer learning how to care for them. They were easy really. We use the deep litter method so the whole thing takes about 10 minutes a day to feed and water the girls and maybe an additional 20 minutes maintenance per week. They were free-ranging too so it was fairly inexpensive as they were not eating as much as their feed as they would be if they were confined. All of those bugs and fresh greens were filling their crops with vitamins and they were producing a solid 8 to 9 gorgeous orange yolked eggs per day. How perfect!

Perfect.

As you read earlier in the post regarding lessons learned, I added to my flock, and with that addition, we also added mites. Although more difficult, it was an experience I was bound to have so I trudged on enthusiastically and we rid ourselves of the problem. Then I added 2 Cochin. This time however, I properly quarantined them for 4 weeks, nursed one Cochin through a respiratory thing and then added them to the flock. 3 days after a "by the book" introduction, I came home from work to find one dead Cochin and another seriously picked Cochin. We removed her and nursed her back to live, but I re-homed her. I was done and had learned my lesson about adding new chickens to my already perfect flock.

Bad weather came, and with it, terribly low temps and much snow. The girls felt the snow was WHITE DEATH so we just stopped opening the pop door. They weren't going out there anyway and they were cold. I noticed that some of the black star's were getting thin on the feathers. I actually considered it a molt and went on with my life. A week later I noticed one of the black stars was bleeding. Upon closer examination I noticed that I had 6 bald hens and some of them were bleeding. One hen (Cotton's sister) was badly pecked with a HOLE in her back about 4 inches in diameter. I was horrified. I spent HOURS researching picking, minimizing their light (shut off the coop timer and let nature take its course), adding salt and vitamins, blue kote, pine tar and all the other remedies known to man. I cried and was fairly distraught. Found the picker and as you read, put her in our pot. We opened the pop door and shoveled the snow, the girls were out in the yard. Problem solved. The hens began to heal, even Cotton's sister was healing well.

I then noticed cotton's sister was limping. She had developed Bumble Foot. This being treated and the chicken starting to behave more normal... we were on to face the rest of the winter. What else could happen at this point? Had we not already dealt with just about every ailment that was common to flocks?

Monday of this week I was talking to harry and he had mentioned this awesome "hawk" that he saw flying in the yard. In fact, Django was barking at it. I warned him that the chickens were in danger and he told me that it was too cold, none of the chickens were out in the yard. Later, I got a call from Harry, who never calls me at work. You know where this is going. Cotton was gone and a hawk (or falcon) was well fed.

I was very sad again and now faced with having to shut the pop door again. Our pen is in the woods but without the leaves, they are exposed and now they are dinner. Now that we were down 3 hens, I assumed that the picking may not restart, the main picker is gone and they had more room to move around in there (they already had enough room but you know its just the train of thought I had).

This brings me back to where we started, the "bling" of the email received letting me know that once again, we had a chicken emergency. Cotton's sister was picked again, not knowing what else to do, Tarynn and Harry grabbed her and brought her in the house.

She has been cleaned, dusted with wonder dust and given water and food. Hopefully she will pull through again. She has had many ailments this winter and I am not that optimistic that she will make it but hopeful. I feel like she is very compromised with all she has been through. Harry and I will be putting a top on the pen and letting them out again into the yard.
We have learned so much... we are down many chickens. Our flock is now down to 8 with a Roo. I am sad for my losses I am discouraged in a way but not completely.

Yesterday I got an incubator (we didn't have time to build one, we want to start chicks right away). Sometime in the next few weeks I will completely document the process of incubating and hopefully hatching our own eggs and adding to our flock.

Thanks for always sticking by us :)

Anticipayyyayyyshunnn

(old picture of my buff rock)
I promised myself I would be patient. I did all my research so I knew it could be a while. Yet here I sit in anticipation of what you wonder?

Of eggs my friends.

I have 10 hens and 1 Rooster. Of those 10 hens, 4 of them are about 25-30 weeks old and laying DAILY since they were 18 weeks old (got to love those black star hens). There are 6 hens however, the ones that I have raised since they were tiny little peeps and loved with all my heart... Those 6 hens (2 Buff rocks, 2 gold sex links, and 2 New Hampshire's) who are now officially 21 weeks old have not given me DIDDLY SQUAT!

Now our combs and wattles have gone from flesh colored to bright fire-engine red and still. No eggs.
I wake up in the morning and hurry out to the coop to let them out and usually give them a treat... No eggs.
Harry goes out there to get the 4 eggs we usually get before 10am... only 4, no more eggs.
I rush home from work, no eggs.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? I want your eggs, your delicious 30% lower in cholesterol beautiful eggs.

sigh... so please my little lovelies... give me the eggs.... please.

Mensa Chickens

I have thought that my chickens are exceptional really the whole time we have had them. When they spill their water, or when they fill their feeder with litter, I am always defending them. No matter what Dave says I am all "no our chickens are geniuses, you don't need to do that". Between you and I though? I am really starting to wonder. Dave created these great roosts that fold up. They are specifically made for 6 chickens, 3 on the top, 3 on the bottom. Then on the other side of the coop there are other roosts for the other 5 chickens. Its not hard to figure out. It became obvious to me fairly early in the whole roost game that things were not going to go the way *I* had planned them. Now what am I going to do? See, it all started when I realized that the chickens actually vie for the top roost next to our man Ted who has quickly become the most important member of the flock. Every night I would sneak out there and watch very quietly as they hopped on and off their roosts, very interesting to see how they decide who gets to stay where.

Ever notice how I tend to get off topic alot? My point of this entire update is that over the last few months, that ONE roost on the top has become THE MOST important place on the planet for them. So important in fact that tonight when I snuck out there to see them sleeping (with my camera) I found this:

Do you see the one in the middle that has her wing kinda up in so she can fit? That's 5 chickens in the same space that was made for only 3! My extremely smart and terribly over thinking husband designed this so that 3 Hens belong on the top and 3 full sized hens belong on the bottom on the bottom... Instead we have 5 on top and 1 on the bottom? The other 5 are indeed BRILLIANT as they are behind me spread evenly on the one level perch comfortably sleeping.... My chickens are NOT exceptional.

Loosey Goosie

***note*** Please note that I moved shmoopywood to greenpress and it can be seen by going to http://shmoopywood.greenpress.com Please update your links!!

Dave and I took a few days off from work to celebrate my birthday as well as get some things done. As you have seen in the last few weeks, Dave and I have finished the pen and the coop enclosures, we have a latch on the door that fits securely. Unfortunately it fits SO securely right now that we need a brick to smack the latch open.

Its been raining here in New Hampshire for what seems like weeks but we headed out early Thursday morning to go look at van's. A van may not sound like the greenest vehicle we could drive but because we cannot currently fit both dogs and kids in one vehicle, we often find ourselves taking 2 cars/trucks to the cabin which is by far less green than taking ONE van. Again, not the point of my story. So we head out around 10am and we are gone a long time. We even had lunch! We had to come back to pick up the title to the car we were trading in and I happened to look out the back door and noticed that Ted looked weird. There is sometimes an optical illusion where the chickens appear to be outside their pen but really arent. Well Ted looked closer than normal, what really freaked me out was that ALL of my chickens looked closer. It took a second only to realize that the chickens were out, and they had been out a long time. Parts of our woods are dug up! We figure they were out most of the day. Anyway, I had to chicken wrangle, with some creative thinking and some bread I managed to get all them to WALK into their pen except for one. Large Marge took some time to convince but eventually i caught her and told her she needed to stay in her pen so she didnt end up Hawk Brunch.

Thankfully the new chickens didnt get out (there are now officially 4 new chickens but I am thinking this may be a story for another time lol)

My best guess is that I (or dave but probably not dave and more likely I) probably didnt feel like beating the latch with a brick and just lightly latched it. This means that it did not take much to open the door. My chickens are geniuses (except marge who continually lays on the floor) and it did not take them long to go out of the door.

Of Lessons Learned

I am going to tell you a story. Currently this story has no end, because its an ongoing story but I will be sure to fill you in as things move along.

I will begin my story with explaining that I am learning alot about myself in the process of becoming more "self sufficient". One of the things I have learned is that I am pretty strong, but I am extremely stubborn. I do not necessarily jump into things but I engross myself completely in the research and when I think I "got it" then I go for it. Last weekend is an example of that.

Since beginning the chicken thing, I have done nothing but read about chickens, look at pictures of chickens and as you know, write about chickens. There are some pretty cool chickens out there. I have a short list of all the chickens that I would like to someday own. Last weekend there was a swap in my local area. A chicken swap is a meeting of many chicken people who have different kinds of chicken products, chickens, hatching eggs, eating eggs etc. You can buy/sell/trade whatever chicken related item you want to. I had met a few chicken people online and one of them offered me a chicken that I had always wanted. She is 9/10 weeks old and "beautiful". This chicken is a breed that I did not know much about, but it is mostly a "show" bird. I have a coop full of practical birds ranging from egg machine to dual purpose. I somehow convinced myself that this bird would make a fine addition. I did some research on the person offering and found that she had swapped with MANY people in the forum and was reputable... or so I thought.

Anyway long story short, I picked up the chicken and brought her home. It was not long before I realized that there was something seriously wrong with the chicken. She wouldn't walk. When she did try to walk she was crossing her legs over each other and stepping on her own feet. She was also shaking her head alot. Dave and I finally discovered (over the next 2 days) that she was in fact INFESTED with northern poultry mites. I mean INFESTED with bugs guys. Not only was she probably anemic from blood loss (hey those dots on her feathers aren't dirt, they are blood spots), but she was never let out of her cage, was kept confined, malnutritioned and probably never learned to walk in the first place. We have her segregated in a great dane crate, by herself. We have dusted her with Diotomaceous (sp?) Earth and started giving her polyvisol vitamins and watching her carefully.

As I sat at the table late on saturday night, with my head down, worried about the state of my chickens (incidentally, they had to be dusted too for safety). My husband looked at me and said "read the paragraph that states what our blog is about... It's about learning and this is us learning". This reminds me why I love him and it reminds me that my failure may teach someone else a lesson. Of the lessons easily learned from my mistakes, please remember to practice biosecurity with your poultry and do your research. I could have very easily infected my entire flock. These mites can take down younger chickens if gone unnoticed.

We do not know if Phyllis Diller the chicken is going to live or not, we dont even know if she will ever learn to walk or recover from her malnutrition, but if she does, we will find her another home. We have alot of love to give, but I have learned my lesson and will stick to my own flock, regenerating my flock within my flock by having babies and nurturing my core flock only.

I will keep you updated on the little chicken.

this is her on saturday, see her legs?

I live under a big black cloud

As I scroll through all of my favorite blogs, I cannot help but wonder what are we doing wrong? Everyone seems to have this fabulous garden except for us! I keep looking and then I run to find out WHERE they live, Oh it must be Alabama or Texas or somewhere that they have warm all year. I am unfortunately finding that many of the blogs I follow are in such places as Maine, New York and even Scandinavia... sigh... so much for that excuse!

We are still making our first attempt at gardening. We have out in the garden, tomato plants, bean plants, lettuce, carrots, radishes, green peppers, hot peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, garlic, corn, watermelon, eggplant, squash of some sort but forget what I put in the ground because I am THAT gardener and strawberries. Unfortunately, the sun is not shining on Swood South *sigh*. We have had only a handful of sunny warm days. For example, today's high was 58 degrees and no sun. Yesterday was lower 50's and rain. Our plants are not loving the lack of sunshine at all.


Here we have lettuce (sadly these are the only thing that really ENJOYS water and they are still not growing in all this rain) and in the background we also have beans.


Corn... this is the one I am most excited about... It is also the bed that Django keeps JUMPING INTO! So i have many corn plants that have been trampled by the dog.


This is a tomato plant. I would love to tell you that this is one of the tomatoes we started but that would e a lie. We actually purchased this one. The started plants are behind, maybe at like 3 inches tall... (sigh again)



Dave has managed to engineer this contraption. Here we have a miracle grow feeder that we bought years ago, and a 2-liter bottle. We are going to be putting our own home grown fertilizer that we are making with our composter (mmmm compost tea) and putting it in the bottle and spreading it with water. He rocks.

There is one thing that we are growing fairly well... that is eggs. You are viewing 2 eggs, both came from my chickens. The one on the left was given to me by our biggest chicken Pearl. The egg on the right was a gift from Marge this morning. She is the smallest chicken we have that is laying. (we only have 2 laying, the others are only 13 weeks old)



So thats it for me. I hope you are all well! We will see you soon!

FAST UPDATE!!!

OMG Day 1 with nest box and we have egg IN the box.

(ok I will stop talking about chickens now)

Whats up? Chicken Butt?

Its a long weekend and we did not go to the cabin :( poor swood... we will be there soon S-wood but right now we had some things at home we needed to get off our plate... such as... *insert cool music*
THE COOP!!

Yes folks, it is almost done, the outdoor pen is just about completed... Thought we would share the progress with you! I will be interested to see if the girls know enough to go into their coop when it gets dark, we are about 45 minutes away from that moment. I may find myself running around trying to shoo the chickens up the tube. Who knows but if I do, it will be pretty funny regardless.


Thats the new chicken tube. Came right out of Dave's head. I am really pleased with how it came out. We were not even done and the chickens started walking in the tube.

Whats up



Chicken butt

Seriously? More chickens?

XYes we are still building S-
wood for those of you who are asking, but also, we have another home, with a daily life and I thought maybe we. might expand this blog to. chronicle our constant goal to become more self sufficient xand learning some of the basic skills in life that are being forgotten.

The original plan was to get 4 chickens. It quickly became obvious that 4 chickens was not going to be any easier than 10 chickens and staying true to form, before we knew it there were 19 baby chicks in our laundry room. Course, 7 of those were unsolicited "packing peanuts" and 4 of them were to go to our friend, we then decided it actually made sense to keep one of the peanuts. I mean every good flock deserves a rooster right? We really arent sure what is going to happen with the Rooster to be honest and Uncle Ted he is probably not aware of this but he is on what I refer to as "soup probation". I am withholding his destiny until further notice. A "trial" period if you will. Anyway, the point of the post is not Ted although he feels he is the center of the universe. Shortly after I promised 4 of the chickens away, and found homes for the peanuts, I realized that I was going to have only 9 chickens and well that just didnt seem like enough. Coincidentally, at this time, I also realized that all (and I mean all) of our hens are the same color with the exception of 2 which are tan and Cotton the white one that is supposed to be red... So I went on Murry McMurray and for some bizarre reason ORDERED 2 STARTED Black sex link pullets. Ahh yup... I ordered more.

So we are slowly discovering that yes, Dave has the propensity to over engineer, but I also fit right in with my "are you sure that's going to be enough" personality. Best part? We aren't nearly done with the coop and pen combination, dropped off 4 to my friends last weekend and the 2 new hens are due THIS WEEK!!! Now we are trying to finish up the roosts, nestboxes and chicken pen so they can be outside and inside comfortably. We hope to have the outside part done next weekend. Today Dave worked on the roosts.
Here is a picture of one that he finished today. Its 2-tiered and its on hinges... (over-engineer alert) so that you can put it up and latch it to the ceiling. This makes it easier to clean out the hen-house.

I love that about him.
Anyway here they are:



So in this picture we have our 9 week old chickens. In the way back you can see our Rooster "ted" and you can also see all our red chickens who are gold sex links and 2 New Hampshire Reds.. (clicking t makes it big)
There is the 2-teired left side roost. Each perch is long enough for 3 full sized chickens (the lens distorts).

And then, just because it cracked me up... I had to include this picture of my girl "cotton" the white chicken. White chicken (gold sex link) is considerably smaller than "big bird" who is on the left. That might be Honker... not sure... but she is one of 2 of Buff Rock hens. Now that you know more than you ever really wanted to know about my chickens, I will go. We will be headed to S-wood soon. I look forward to updating you on progress there and I hope that the slight format change will make you more interested in our blog rather than make you go away.

Chickentopia and other things

Things are happening in the garden! Personally, I feel this is a huge accomplishment for me. I have never been able to grow anything. We have some starters that have met their demise due to cats or other horrible reasons (such as the great dane sweeping them right off the counter top with his tail after being excited). I am happy to say that alot of the things that we have planted are actually growing!
Here is some update:

This is my very first strawberry plant ever. We now have 3 pots full of them. I decided to hang them because they are easier for us to keep safe from birds and other critters as they are hanging right outside our door in the back yard.








On the far right, is our onions, we got these on a "whim" at the farm store when we went to get prices on some dirt. And the big bushy things... those are some bad ass eggplants! They are BEASTS!! they don't care about wind/cold they just keep growing!




















Course plants are not the only thing we are growing here at Shmoopywood South... no my friends...we are also growing chickens, and coops. SO I have included some chicken cuteness just to keep those of you who are so chicken oriented happy.
Incidentally, anyone else notice that having chickens is like having an addiction? After greeting my dog at the door after work, I greet my husband and then its outdoors to greet my chickens.
We have a pen but there is currently no chicken way into it, as it is not attached yet to the coop. We also have not finished the top or cover to the pen at this time. We will get to it, Dave made a cat house that models our home a long time ago for a cat that used to live here and it has stood abandoned for years, so we moved the tiny little house into the chicken coop so they can go into it to get shelter or get away from Uncle Ted :)



On the right we have my favorite chicken, this is Cotton. Cotton is showing the other chicks how to take a dirt bath.











And for our last shot, here are some of the girls (Patty, Myopic chicken, and the unnamed chicken in the back) checking out the little house. I can't wait for them to start perching atop the house.

Uncle Ted

The chicks are here! They got here at 6:30am a day early! It was chaotic but I managed to pick them up and all 19 chicks survived so far. We got 8 sex linked pullets, 2 buff rocks (they were supposed to be brahma's but oh well), and 2 NH reds. The company put some "extras" in the box for warmth which I am eh ok with but the extra's are Barred Rock Roosters. After some discussion Harry and I have decided to go ahead and give the little Roo a try. This means that we have to pick ONE and the rest have to find homes for. Its easy to spot the little Roo's as they are black and all the rest of the chicks are the yellow/gold fluffy chick color. After watching the chickens (all day long) we have already noted some personality differences.

But there is also something else I have noticed. See this great and beautiful picture of this little girl getting herself a nice drink of water? Do you NOTICE anything odd about this picture? Perhaps you notice a chick that is looking at the camera beak first? As if it is going to attack at any moment?





How about this picture, where all the other little chickies are running away from the camera crowding into a corner?
There is that one chicken looking in the attach direction... as if to tempt you to mess with him. Cool and calculating.
He is the chicken that takes the treats and runs away from all the other chickens. He is smart, calculating and downright onery.









Of course it is the little Roo that we are going to keep (marked with a blue marker so we know who he is.) His name....

why its Uncle Ted of course.

Oy With the Chickens Already!

*since I wrote this post yesterday, I have been asked to explain the Harry/Dave references. Simply put: They are indeed the same person. No my husband does not have multiple personalities. Dave is his given name and Harry is what I call him.

You are probably wondering why I am, once again, posting about chickens.

This blog is supposed to be about the house you are building... you know, the one that is off-grid?? That one??

I am sorry about that, really I am. Maybe some day I will have to branch off into another blog to cover the chickens, goats, whatever else we end up with. Really though, this is the great chicken experiment and it is meant to be tested and tried to see if we can hack the lifestyle we want. Also we are full of theories for S-wood but until we start testing this stuff out, well we just wont know will we. Like the corn theory... we are going to attempt to come up with a way to plant corn at Swood THIS SUMMER with its own self watering plan.

So you see, the chickens they are part of it.
SO now I talk about chickens because well S-wood is closed, under siege by many feet of snow and we just can't get up the mountain! SO i dont have anything else and I do so love the whole chicken thing and I am excited.

So anyway back to the whole point which is this: Harry made the little baby chicken brooder. Its bigger than it needs to be me thinks but thats Dave and I guess I should be thankful that it is not the entire laundry room right? It would be funny if I came home from work and he was like "hey shmoops, you have to do laundry in the garage" right? Because that would be very Harry.
But no, its perfect. Its made out of some wire, shavings, heat lamp and a Walmart bin. Dave then made a little screen with some scrap wood and used 2 saw horses and a piece of plywood and he secured the whole thing down with tie downs. (*note* Please remember we have 2 Great Danes which equal about 350 pounds so things need to be secured down and dog proof)

We had it all set up and stuff because the babies will be here in a week and we really needed to figure out the "95 degrees" thing with the heat lamp and such. We had to do a dry run in order to make sure the little chickies would survive!

(you don't see the coors light, you don't see the coors light)




You can see in this picture on the right what the inside of the little baby brooder chickie thing is going to look like. You can also see the freezer we have for our raw dog food. (really, my family should have seen this stuff coming a long time ago when we got the raw fed great dane puppy, it was only a matter of time before I would want chickens - working on Dave for the goats).

So for about $40 we made a brooder and the chickens were like a buck each so we are doing all right so far!

Really, I would pay anything and everything I had to be able to live the lifestyle that I crave.

Stay tuned for next week, I am sure, Dave is going to come up with some sort of critter cam rigging.

:)

Coopy-wood

Come on, that's funny! I can't take the credit for the title but I still chuckle over it every time I think about it. Ah yes, the point of my story. When I posted earlier I was fretting over the possibility of the new chicken coop being 800s.f. I am here to tell you however, that this is not going to be an issue. Dave and I were discussing today all the necessities of the coop, electricity for light and possible heat, perches, nesting boxes, etc. You name it and we were talking about it. I think all this enthusiasm over raising animals stems partly from learning to take care of ourselves and being more self sustained, but part also goes to boredom.

Funny thing about all this conversation today is that this whole time that we have been trying to design the coop, there was actually an already made (but needs work) coop in our back yard that we are already paying taxes on! Oh sure, it isn't technically a coop but it could be and much faster than building from scratch!! It needs repair work and rearranging and it desperately needs airing out, although I doubt that the chickens will care much, but its a good size and its already here. Its Dave's playhouse that he used to play in as a child.

All of our research was not made in vain mind you... we have to build a Coopywood at Shmoopywood.... *couldn't resist.

So here she is... Coopywood




(where would we be without a gratuitous "Lisa" shot :)

bawk bawk balk

Eager... Thats the only word that describes Dave and Me. We want to get this party started. As if we did not already have enough to do, we have also thrown ourselves an interesting curve ball.

I am not sure if this has come out of complete boredom of winter or just insanity, but we decided to get... chickens. Please keep in mind, we know nothing of it. We tossed the idea around a little. I got a chicken keeping 101 book and then we took the leap.
They aren't here yet, they are coming via mail order from Ideal Poultry and our due date for our little miracles is 3/18. In the mean time, we scramble to prepare. Dave has a coop to build and me, well I am in charge of research and making lists of things we need.

Here is what we have coming:

2 Buff Brahma's - they are just so darned cute
2 New Hampshire Red's - how could I not?
8 Gold Sex linked pullets - these are not all for us, I split the order.
3 dreaded "filler" roosters - gah!

I have a little brooder and we are making a tub for when the babies get too big for my little brooder. Dave is working diligently on a coop that will hold 10 birds. Well thats not true, we have not gotten beyond the design step. Remember folks, S-wood was supposed to be 800 square feet tops. When my beloved got done with his design's and we put it out there for the builder, it inflated significantly to 2,200 sf.

I just hope we don't end up with an 800 s.f. chicken coop.

Stay tuned!