And Now for something completely different – Video Blog #1

I have been basically sitting on my hind end all day feeling sorry for myself that my vacation is over. I hate that I have to wait another 6 months or so until I get to do the things that I love to do… you know, sleeping in etc. SO in protest of Monday, I have done nothing all day long. Then I decided that I wanted to blog. I love blogging but sometimes I just have trouble with content.

I headed outside with my camera and hoped for inspiration. Then, suddenly, it came to me! A video blog! Well, I guess I thought that maybe trying something different around here would be kind of fun? I dont know how many people are really reading me anyway so I am not shy or embarrassed about having my voice heard. Its actually what I do for a living! lol  So I thought I would start off with a tour of the chicken area. In this tour you get to meet all the girls (and the rooster) plus you meet Frankenstein and Noah. Django could not be reached for comment (he is napping).

There are 10, but they are 10-20 seconds each. The first video, the one that showed the front of the chicken yard was corrupt so we start off with “this is the rest of the chicken yard” lol sorry.

The New pen

The old pen

Inside the coop

 

 

 

 

 

So that our backyard chicken habitat and 2 of 3 Great Danes. Feel free to post comments or whatever if you think that this post sucks or if you loved it :)

 

L

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 :)

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?

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.