No Dumb Clucks Allowed

At the end of June my mom came to visit.  Heavens praise my mom.  I say that because my chickie mama neighbor, Stayc informed me during mom's visit that the chickens might have to vacate her premises. See, Stayc and I have been sharing a flock.  It has been great; she would take care of their daily needs, and I would eat eggs.  And they stayed over at her place in a coop built in the 1800s.  These were classy digs, I tell you.

But for some reason I cannot fathom, Stayc's husband, Deek, disliked driving like a hundred miles every day to work up in Lindon and Salt Lake.  Something about never seeing his children and gas bills that exceeded his mortgage bill.

Whatever.

The point is, they bought a house up north and abandoned me and our children...I mean, chickens.

So, mom being the resourceful soul that she is and afraid of nothing says, "well, I guess we know what we are doing while I'm here!"

And like anything worth doing, it required a trip to the lumber yard. And a big red truck.

This is the first of many trips to Woodchcucks lumber yard. I don't really know if that is what it is called, but Joe the lumberjack has a picture of a big smiling woodchuck lumberjack on the side of his building and he (Joe) has a sunny disposition. 

I should have broken this up into a series of posts about building the coop.  But I didn't, so now I'm stuck with a ton of pictures and a somewhat fuzzy recollection of the last two months.  This means that you are getting a photo documentary of this project.  I will interject, but you can fill in most of the narration yourself.

These 4x4s are sunk 2 feet in the ground.  In holes.  I dug.  With a shovel.

 

We leveled the sills on concrete paving slabs.  Just little ones.

 

Mom insisted on 11 inches between rafters. Nice and sturdy.

 

I love this rough cut wood.

 

It goes perfectly with the rustic fence behind the coop.

 

I'm hoping the siding will fade to match it.

 

I hate insulation.  With passion.

 

Jon did the electricity, bless his soul.

 

Did I mention that I hate insulation? I did? I still do.

 

I understand from the farmers around me that this is a good sealant.

 

Jon and his dad helped me put up the siding.

 

We had a little bit of trouble getting the drywall ceiling up.  It came to blows.  We won.

 

And some of the boards didn't line up quite right, on the inside.

 

This might have something to do with it.

 

But I made this door on my very own and everything.  And it fit.

 

Felix seems to like the roosts.  The others aren't quite sure yet.

 

Isn't she purdy?

 

I don't know about all this, ma.

And presenting an almost all growed up Piper.  He isn't sure about his place in life.  I'm not either.  I don't think I can handle three roosters and I'm sure my neighbors can't.  I'll decide what to do with him when he starts crowing.

Maybe I'll put him with the chicks that are hatching under the broody hen that is hiding in the barn next door?

Babies!

Baby chickens, that is...

Some of our hens have gone broody. We left them alone, trusting that their instincts and natural acumen would take over, and believed we'd have chicks in no time.

No dice.

Chickens are not the brightest bulbs in any pack. Other hens were still laying in the nests of brooding hens, who were either getting up to powder their beaks or were getting shoved off the prime coop real estate. So the eggs piled up on nests that we were leaving alone, older eggs at the bottom. These eggs started to die or would hatch and these brilliant creatures would kill the new young. And, let me tell you, the coop smelled just lovely. Eau de rot.

We decided we needed to isolate the brooding hens and have done so, but had about two dozen eggs left over that no one would claim. So, Stay and I did what we do best: research.

We built incubators out of styrofoam coolers and low watt bulbs.

I started monitoring temperature and turning and adjusting and one afternoon, just a day or so after we put them in, when I peeked in to check the temperature (yet again because I was using the wrong bulb at first and couldn't get the temp right, it was too hot or too cold) I heard a distinct peep.

Who knew chicks started peeping in the egg?

Sure enough, one of the eggs had a "pip" or crack and a baby trying to emerge. But here in Utah, humidity, essential to proper chick hatching, is hard to come by and the humidity in the incubator was too low, making it difficult for the chick to turn around in the egg...got all gummed up and stuck to the inner membrane. Hours had passed and the chick had made no progress. So again, I turned to Google.

Turns out you can help a chick hatch if you do it carefully. Again, who knew? I did it carefully, puncturing the shell a little at a time around the circumference of the egg. And look who decided to join us!

Sleepy little fella, tell you what. It was a rough day.

Finally, he pushed out of the shell completely and laid there for a long time under the warm light. It takes a lot out of a body, being born, you know.

World, meet Piper.

So far, he's the only one to hatch. I have no idea if the other eggs are viable, but I will keep turning and adjusting for another week or so, candling to see if there is progress, chucking out the bad ones and hoping none explode.

Last one out's a rotten egg!

Death on the Farm...

Over General Conference weekend, we were blessed with a delivery... a semi-Leah-inspired delivery...

17 Buff Orpingtons (16 egg-layers and one rooster) and,

21 White Cornish meat birds

They're growing like weeds (the meat birds grow more like our rhubarb... the end result is beautiful and delicious... in the meantime, you have a plant that can't GET enough food and that, if eaten in it's current state, would kill you. Eek.)

Here they are as chicks... Adolescent pictures soon to follow...

The egg-layers...

And the meat birds...

Now that I've successfully digressed on my digressions, back to my original thought...

I have been concerned about introducing our new herd with the old. We have (or should I say had) five Rhode Island Red hens and one feisty Banty (miniature) Rhode Island Red rooster named Hercules. (Side Note: "Herc" marches like a German General. No joke. It's hard to take him seriously while he's attacking you.) Anyways, I've been worried about melding the two herds into one. I would love to kill Hercules. He's attacked me one two many times when I've had eggs in my arms, and he comes after D any chance he gets... once he spurred him right in the back of the neck while D was bending over!!! He fights d-i-r-t-y. But mom has more of a heart than I do, and so he's still around. Our hens are getting older, and as I've mentioned three times already, I've been apprehensive... well... nature took it's course last night I'm afraid.

I got a call from mom this morning that began with four words you never want to hear at 6:30 a.m.

"Death on the farm."

Uh oh.

Sure enough, a raccoon got into the coop last night and drug away two of the hens. A third was left dead under the laying boxes. She'd been sick, and even coons don't like dirty meat. Needless to say, Hercules' harem just got smaller, and if this keeps up we won't have to worry about what to do with the mingling of herds.

There was another death on the farm. Names are being withheld for now until the deceased's family can be notified... more on that soon. Ugh.

***Just to lighten things up a bit - mom went to the store this morning to buy milk. She reached into her pocket for her credit card and pulled out two fresh eggs instead. The lady behind the counter just looked at her and said,

"Uuummmm... we're ALMOST to the point of bartering again, but not quite yet!"

Oh if only things were that simple. ***

Chickens and Cheese...but not in the same dish

Sugar came home!

Again.

Turns out she hadn't gone far though...had hunkered down on a nest in a corner of the big barn. I've got pictures to prove it. Ready to point at Lu and laugh, Angela?


Seems the coop just didn't afford enough privacy for her taste. Now we're just hoping for some Australorp or Buttercup/Speckled Sussex mix chickies to appear in a couple of weeks. We're worried about her safety because she is not in a very secure area of the barn, but she has managed to survive for a couple of weeks, so we're going to leave her be.

I also finished my cottage cheese experiment. It took longer than I anticipated because I had to throw out the first batch of milk. It didn't clabber quickly enough and I decided that maybe the bacteria had died because it was too old or something. So I got fresh and started again.

After 36 hours, though, the new batch still hadn't done anything but get tangy smelling. I looked on the trusty internet to figure out what was wrong, but didn't see much to explain the problem. So, what do I do when I'm stumped and even Google can't help?

I called my Mom.

Poor mom got to spend two weeks with me recently...three, actually if you count the time she was here for spring break before she came back to take care of me after surgery. I say poor mom not because I'm so terrible to hang out with, but because it was snowing and we keep our house at a crisp 60 degrees most of the time. She froze.

"Your house is too cold."

You read it right. My house is too cold for milk to clabber. I hope Jon reads this.

So, I turned on the oven for a couple of minutes and then stuck the pitcher in the oven. When I got home from school, lo and behold: curds and whey!


After a few minutes on a warm burner, it separated a bit more.


I poured it into a cheesecloth line colander and then hung it up to drain some more while I went back to feed my chickens some kitchen scraps and get some photographic evidence that Sugar isn't dog food. Also took the first pictures of my chickens as adults. I'm living on a veritable petting zoo, I tell you.


Side note: my neighbor is raising two bummer lambs for the neighbor on our other side. They are cute as, well, lambs...


Back to the cheese. When I returned from the photo shoot, this is what was awaiting me.


Mixed in some kosher salt to preserve it, poured some fresh cream over it, put some on a salad and the rest in a jar, and stuck it in the fridge. Texture is grainier than most cottage cheese, but it is sweet and flavorful. And it took care of two quarts of milk that would have otherwise gone bad.


Mozzarella, here we come! Which is good, because this


is our Friday night tradition and what would go better with an already stellar pie than to top it with homemade mozzarella?

So far...

So far I've come to the conclusion that...

... Sugar is a chicken, and a damned one at that.
... there are actually people out there bored enough to read what shenanigans we're up to, and...
... Leah may be the only one who actually contributes to this thing.

Oh wait.


Crap.


Laura

Damn Chicken

Chicken's gone again.

The Prodigal Chicken Returns!

A week ago, my speckled Sussex hen, Sugar, disappeared. I was so so sad. She is one of my favorites. I was sure that she was fodder for stray dogs, or that someone had assumed that she was homeless (she doesn't like to be cooped up and so escapes the enclosure regularly) and had taken her home though. I couldn't blame them; she is beautiful. But lo and behold, this morning when my neighbor went out to feed the bummer lambs, who saunters up to the gate, requesting entrance? I just hope she has had her fill of the wide world and is ready to settle down on some eggs.

The moral of the story? Never give up hope on the return of one whom you love.

I'll take a picture and post it when I get home to prove that she's back...just because Lu doesn't believe me.