Chicken Tractors and Overwrought Neighbors

Apparently my chicken obsession has gotten out of control. Here's how I know: this was a conversation I had with my son, Harland, after informing all the children I was off to pick up some free chicks--
Harland: "Mommy, how many chickens do you want?"
Me, a little embarrassed: "Why? How many chickens do you think we should have?"
Harland: "As many as you want."

Obviously even my children have learned not to intervene in my chicken obsession....

But, in my defense, I was on Facebook trolling around when I saw this posting for free chicks. FREE CHICKS, people! Not just any free chicks, either: 4 week old free chicks from a local hatchery! I mean, the poster had me at "free chicks" so I private messaged him/her and asked if I could have five, thinking that was a pretty reasonable number. I figured we had lost two from our original brood and I was going to order Easter Eggers, Wyandottes and Buffs in the spring when I had to cancel my plans due to a family emergency (there are some things that are more important than chickens). And this person was giving away guess what? Easter Eggers, Wyandottes and Buffs! I felt as though God Himself was giving me a little mid-June present....

"You're only going to get three, right?" Jim asked me as I put the rubbermaid chicken transporting contraption in the car.

Sometimes it's best to let these things be a suprise.

Here's one of my problems, though: I have a hard time containing my joy. Especially on social media. So of course I posted about the free chickens and my complete and utter excitement. Unlike some people who use social media, I don't have hundreds of friends I don't know. Most of the people on my Facebook page are family, close friends and then somewhat distant friends. I talk to them all, and most of them I see on a fairly regular basis. And the chicken obsession is not something I can hide: my chickens are often the topic of conversation and the subjects of photos on my Facebook page.

All was well until a neighbor posted a comment about our local zoning ordinances. This wouldn't be so odd if this same neighbor didn't have chickens herself--she does! Not only that, it was her coops I visited before building my own. I have consulted her all along the way as I planned for my own chicks and even invited her over to inspect my coop after it was built. In fact, it was awe-inspiring how many chickens she had when I first met her: by my own count, there were more than 20! And a rooster! Only a couple blocks from my house!

So I found her comment odd...and was further flummoxed when she messaged me later, saying, "Please be careful with quantity...Don't get all us chicken owners in trouble." Wait! This was the woman whose brood had at one point eclipsed mine by more than 15 chickens telling me to cool it? Whoa. I had to take a moment and pause. Perhaps my chicken obsession was out of hand....

That moment passed. I brought my five beautiful chicks home--two Easter Eggers, two Wyandottes (so gorgeous!) and one Golden Buff Orpington. I had just finished transitioning some pullets in with the bigs and these chicks were just too small to go in with all the others. For a week they were inside, but I quickly realized they needed a more permanent solution, one that did not make my house smell like a barn.

Hence the chicken tractor! I cajoled Jim into helping me build yet another chicken coop, albiet a smaller, more portable one.


Chicken tractor in process

They call these things Chicken Tractors, even though they aren't tractors in any way. Small coops of this size with open bottoms usually have wheels and can be moved around a yard or garden to allow the chickens to fertilize the land. They may have gotten their name because farmers use tractors to move the portable coops around. Ours (above) has a small coop with roosting poles on one end and a fenced run on the other end. (Finished pictures to come!) I could not be more happy with it! And we built it for less than $50 in materials.

The little girls are now in their lovely chicken tractor and very happy, pecking and clucking away. The brood has grown, but not out of control. And I am learning to temper my chicken obsession: the final number of chickens has been reached.

No more chickens! At least not for a while....

Bloody Chickens: The Week From Hell, Monday

This was the week from hell. It started last week.

Last week some woman crashed into my van with her car. We reported the accident to our various insurance agencies and I thought it was behind us. The van is banged up but drivable and no one was hurt.

Monday morning, Harland was home with a croupy cough. I knew the day would not be productive: the only thing I could hope to do with two toddlers at home is prevent them from breaking things or injuring each other.

That same morning, I brought the chickens their water, opened their coop door and was horrified to see a Leghorn emerge with blood all over her face, comb and no-longer pristine white feathers. In a panic, I scooped her up, toted her inside and began cleaning the blood off her face and comb. While I cleaned her, she pooped all over the kitchen floor.
Harland, who had been watching the whole scene, remarked on his way out of the kitchen:
"And THAT is why you shouldn't have chickens in the house!"

I was able to clean most of the poor chicken's face, but blood was coming out of the tips of her comb so that with every shake of her head, blood spattered all over her, me and the kitchen. What to do?

I pulled the dog crate out of the basement and made a quick chicken home for the two bloody Leghorns. (The second Leghorn was just as bloody as the first.) Each time I would get one chicken cleaned up and the bleeding stopped, she would rub her head against the cage until the comb started bleeding again! Argh.

Why were these chickens' combs bleeding? It appeared that the tips of the combs had frostbite--despite my best efforts to prevent and treat it--and the bleeding was coming from areas where the frostbite was not too bad or where a patch of skin had been scratched off. And the blood started to flow more freely once the chickens warmed up: very soon I had a six-foot diameter blood spatter pattern on the floor around the cage due to the vigorous and constant shaking of bloody chicken heads.

It was traumatic. At one point I was crouched on the ground near the cage, talking to the chickens in an attempt to calm them and convince them to stop shaking their bloody heads. Harland came over and informed me:
"Mom, you're standing in blood. Can we make jello now? I want the red kind."

Right, so, onward! Onward to the red jello project, with clucking, blood dripping chickens in the background.

But the problem was nagging me: if these chickens had frostbite, what was to prevent the other chickens from getting it? Obviously the coop was not warm enough.... Once the jello project was over, I began Operation Heat the Coop, something I swore I would never do. (Read too many stories about people who lost an entire flock when the heat lamp went out one night. But the way these Leghorns were bleeding, I was afraid I was going to lose them for lack of any heat source in the coop.)

Armed with a ladder, screwdriver, hammer, heat lamp and copious amounts of outdoor extension cords, I trudged out to the coop. An hour or so later, a heat lamp had been MacGyvered in the coop and was radiating warmth. I covered the roof of the coop, too, hoping that extra insulation would help keep the heat in. But the poor Leghorns were still bleeding: they needed more time in the house, time for their combs to heal and their spirits to calm. I decided they would stay the night...and maybe the next day.

Now that the chickens had been taken care of, I moved on to the laundry. Five loads in, the washer began making a terrible grinding and banging sound. Five loads of laundry is enough, right? We'd make it the rest of the week....

When Jim came home I told him about the washing machine's horrible noise. We both looked at each other with dread. The previous owners of our house must have done home improvements when they were drunk because they literally built the washer and dryer into the bathroom: the only way to get either one out is to break down a wall. No joke. Not an exaggeration. There was no way to pull the washing machine out from the wall even an inch. Before a repair man can take a look at it, we'd first have to take a sledgehammer to the wall. And neither of us have the energy for that.

"Here's what we're going to do," Jim told me. "It still works, right? The thing still turns? Great. We're going to use it until it doesn't work at all, until it's totally broken. Then we'll take it out in pieces and throw it away."

I didn't want to point out the obvious flaw in his plan--how would we get the new washing machine IN?--so I kept quiet. The day had been bad enough.

A banged up car, bloody chickens and a broken washing machine--and it was only Monday!

Hello, Week From Hell.

Found Out

My husband found my blog.

I knew that day would come, but I had been hoping for a year at least before he discovered it...or even thought of looking. But as we all are when it comes to people talking about us, we MUST know what is being said. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's funny.

So he found my blog and here's what he said, "You have to put up pictures of the coop! It almost ended our marriage and you haven't even told people it's finished?"

He also demanded I take more and better pictures. Really I should but right now I don't have time. So you will have to be happy with these pictures of the finished coop that thankfully did NOT end our marriage:

From the front, with the door closed

From the front with the door open

Rear right-hand side with hanging feeder and egg boxes to the right

Chicken entrance to the coop

Side, with egg boxes. Sweet roof, eh? 

And, like children who are more thrilled with the huge box the toy came in than the toy itself, the chickens love being out of the coop perhaps more than they do being in it. Here's a picture of them dust bathing under the bushes:

I have the chicken coop of my dreams! That is something I never thought I'd say.... 

Now to get some eggs from these hens, which will happen sometime in...November. 

*sigh*

What I've Learned About Coops

It has been four weeks now and our chicken coop is not finished.

Chicken coop frame

The old adage that everything takes twice as long as you think it will is wrong. In our case, everything takes five times as long as we think it will. 

Despite good directions, adequate materials and basic skills, we have run into constant problems. Digging out for the concrete piers we ran into large roots and at least one electrical wire. We also discovered how difficult it is to get a nine foot by six foot coop frame onto seven sunken concrete blocks so that the frame rests perfectly square on the blocks. Difficult? Try impossible. Then we discovered that poultry staples are bastards. They seem more perfectly designed to ensure smashed fingers than securing wire placement. I learned that when Jim says his saw is dull at the beginning of the project, he will forget that by the middle of the project and will be cursing and swearing and wondering why the #$%@^ he can't make a straight cut. A new $5 blade could have saved us hours of heartache. 


I also learned that I need a great deal more patience than I have: more knitting is in order. 

And now that I think of it, I probably could have knitted this coop a lot easier and faster. Something to remember for next time.

Here are a few other things I have learned:

When Jim says, "Wash that linoleum glue off your hands right now while it will still come off," he is only being hopeful. The linoleum glue will never come off. Or at least not until I get in the shower: then it will come off in my hair.

It is not easier to shovel wet dirt. Our dirt turns into clay when it gets wet. Evil, sticky, world-domination type clay that sticks to everything: rakes, shovels, hoes, picks, shoes, crocs, socks, tools, cords, netting, fencing, pencils, grass, fingernails.... This clay takes days to remove. Best not to bother the soil. Ever. Again.

Tool belts are handy things.

The directions are always wrong. At least once. Maybe more.

Lumber is not cheap.

The people at Home Depot and Lowes will laugh at you when you tell them you need linoleum for a chicken coop. Then they will regale you with urban farming stories of their own. Good times!

It might not seem like there's a deadline, but when the chickens are flying and the bathroom stinks like chicken poo, the deadline is real and it has already passed.

Here's the #1 Lesson I learned from building this coop--and the one I most want to pass on to those of you thinking of starting your own backyard flock:

Buy the pre-fab coop online! Pay the $500 (or more). It will be cheaper in the long run. And it will probably save your marriage.