Armageddon of Snow

An Armageddon of snow (2 inches on the grass, slush on the roads) hit Portland last night. Our first (and likely only snow) this year. We have closed everything to celebrate (officially schools are closed for safety).

Our kids have had no problem figuring out what to do. In fact, friends were calling our house at 7:30 this morning. They have been outside all morning making the best of it.

Our chickens, on the other hand, are not so sure about all this white stuff.

Posted by Nathan, 2/24/2011

No luck mixing chickens

We decided to separate our two groups of chickens. The older ones just picked on the younger ones too much. Our Blue Andalusian named Dorian got the worst of it. You can see the blood on her comb in the picture below.




Our youngest boy wrote this note to tell Dorian that we are sorry.



Here is a video clip of the big chickens doing what we hoped they would do under the trees; looking for bugs. They have been very active scratching and pecking. Hope it helps the fruit this summer.



Posted by Nathan 2/2/2011

Chickens

Today we put all of our chickens together in one big space with a fence around them. This is the first time our two groups of chickens have been together. We are putting them under our fruit trees. We hope they will help control the bugs that got into our fruit last year.




They will all shared the big chickens coop because it is big enough for all 9. When we first put them together, the older chickens pecked the younger ones on top the head and chased them around. That didn't last too long. They spend most of the day scratching and looking for bugs. They seemed happy. Tonight the little chickens seem nervous about the new coop. They keep going in and out. Hopefully they will get used to it soon.


On the positive side. With 9 chickens all laying eggs we have more than we can eat. They are producing over 2 dozen eggs a week. It is a nice problem to have. Our friends are very happy to take some eggs off our hands.


Posted by Nathan 1/29/11

New Chickens.... what to do with the old ones?

Eat them of course!

So I had a birthday back in June and my children got me four new chickens. As we watched the babies grow we debated whether to eat the original 5 that are now just over a year old. We considered putting the new ones in with the old ones but ruled that out. A friend gave us a magazine with recipes for "Tough Old Birds." I bravely maintained that I would be able to "harvest" them. I still maintain that I will be able to but we decided not now.

In the end we decided to keep them all and build a second coop/tractor. This one is made almost entirely out of old palates that a construction site near us was giving a way for free. This time I build a light coop that sits on top of the tractor. The coop can be lifted off to make moving easier.


The top opens like so for cleaning.

We used an old plastic tub to make the nest boxes. It can also be lifted off.

We just take the lid off to check for eggs.

And here are the new ladies.
Posted by Nathan.

Eating Eggs

Our chickens are very bad. One of them ate the eggs. Maybe because it was too hungry.
We read a book that said if your chickens ate the eggs then you should put mustard in it so the chickens wont eat eggs anymore. I guess they hate mustard.

The place we found the eaten egg was in the nest box so we're putting it in the nest box. If the chickens don't stop eating eggs then we might just kill them. I hope the plan works.

Broken Chicken Coop

The boys were playing outside and I guess one of them bumped into the door of the chicken coop. As you can see, it broke.
The screws got ripped out so we couldn't put new screws in. We decided to put a piece of wood on the back so we could put longer screws in.
Right here the coop door is almost fixed. I hope the kids won't break it again.

Old cabbage

So I went to the Korean Grocery store near my house the other day and asked the manager if I could have left over produce. Understand this is a supermarket sized store. The manager was thrilled to give me stuff and told me to come every day. At first he would have 15 boxes of cabbage leaves and other vegetables that were starting to spoil waiting for me. It was way too much for my five chickens. Right now we have settled into a rhythm where he saves two boxes at a time for me. I go by about every other day to pick them up. It is almost always something in the cabbage family. So lately my chickens have been eating a lot of it.


Lately I have been feeding them a little feedstore chicken food (in the red cup), kitchen scraps, oyster shell, water, and all the cabbage leaves they can eat.

Our little chickens have grown quite a bit. They eat a lot of chicken food and they are starting to love eating greens like the dandelions below.


Watch them eat.

Goodnight

Every night at dusk (about 8:30 this time of year) the little chickens climb into the coop for bed.


The chickens all want to sleep on top of the nest boxes, which means I have to clean this space off every day. (This picture is just after cleaning.) I'm not sure if I should try to stop them from sleeping up here. They make quite a mess and there is plenty of room on the roosts. It's not hard to brush it off once a day but if I ever miss a few days I'm sure it will become intolerable.

Building the coop

Our chicken coop has evolved over the last month.

Here is Nathan building the coop the the Saturday before we picked up the chickens. It was not quite done in time but close enough. Once we got them home there was still time to finish up the last little bit. They spent their first few days in here.


A few days later we finished the tractor. Here is the whole set up as it was about a month ago. The coop and tractor are separate pieces. At this time they had to stay together because one end of the tractor was open. One of the flat sides of the coop opens up like a cupboard for cleaning. There is also a door on the back side for gathering eggs. (We are supposed to have our first eggs around Halloween.)


Here we have finished the door for the tractor. It slides completely on and off. It is off here. We have also started covering half of the tractor to give the chickens shade.


A view from inside the tractor. Notice the chicken's door is at ground level. At this point that is fine but we want to do deep litter inside. A door this low will not work for that.


This picture is from July 3rd after some reworking and painting. Notice the door is about 10 inches up from the floor now. The chicken latter can come off and on.


Here's a picture with the cleaning doors open. Under the nest boxes is just storage.


Here is the whole set up in the back corner of our yard where we will probably keep the chickens most of the time. It is easy enough to move the tractor wherever we want. We can also move coop but that takes a little more work. We move the coop with a hand truck. The chickens love it when we move them on to a new patch of ground.

We've never had chickens before....

When we first decided to get chickens, there was a nice list of things to worry about....For example, the smell and sound pollution issues, keeping them healthy....Turns out, it hasn't been that bad. Mostly, they make soft chirps and feeding is as simple as putting the store bought feed in the feeder we made.

我們決定養雞的時候，我們擔心了好多事。 譬如說。。。他們會不會太吵或臭。 目前為止，他們還蠻好養的。我們的雞蠻安靜的。。。餵他們也很容易。

Getting Our Chickens...

We recently acquired five new chickens. We got them from a farmer on June 7th this year. We plan to raise them for eggs. When we (our family) visited the farm, the owner showed us around and we were introduced to the farmer's sheep, dogs, turkeys, and bees. It was very fun.

我們家現在養了五隻雞。我們是六月七號買他們的。我們要養他們因為我們要他們生蛋。他們以前的主人有讓我們參觀他的農場。 他有給我們看他的羊，狗，火雞，和蜜蜂。我們大家都覺得非常好玩。