Rocky the Raccoon

I have named this scoundrel Rocky

One night, a couple hours after sunset, I went out to close up the chicken run, and saw something dark running across the yard.  The next evening, I was heading out for a night bike ride and parked my car in the back by the coop to load up my bike and caught the "something" in the act.  While he wasn't going for the chickens, he was going for the chicken feed.  I've heard stories of raccoons only going for the eggs, but I have also heard of the raccoons slaughtering a whole coop.  :(  I've started shutting the coop down before sunset and hope that Rocky doesn't get too hungry... I am guessing Rocky is related to these little ones from last summer... I wonder where his sibling is?

Snow Day

An early morning photo of the coop and run shoveled.

We got about 6" of snow last night.  This morning I was out shoveling the sidewalk and clearing off the cars and decided I should get some of that snow out of the way for the chickens.  I like where the chicken coop is located in the yard, but with the lower angle of the sun in the winter, the coop and run are shaded much of the day because of the garage on the south side of the chickens area.  My hope is the snow will melt a bit faster and the girls won't spend the next few days in the coop waiting for the ground to clear while the snow melts.  I never thought I would be shoveling snow out a chicken coop!  :)

Egg Dish

Fixing my car, speeding down the trails, remodeling the house, learning new programs or even controlling classrooms full of middle schoolers don't scare me, however baking does!  I don't know why but I'm pretty timid when it comes to the kitchen but up until now, I have only cooked scramble eggs, hard boiled eggs, egg sandwichs, or even exotic egg burritos. ;)  Today I would like to announce a first!  Being Sunday, I wanted to make a special breakfast for the family.  I put a layer of cooked bacon at the bottom, then a package of hash browns, and a pound of cheese with a dozen fresh eggs on top and baked for 45min. I am not a big cook, so this dish was a big step for me!  It took me a while to save up the 12 eggs and when done, we had A LOT of food for the 3 1/2 of us (we had a couple days worth of leftovers).  I don't know when I'll make this again, but I am happy to have successfully made a new egg dish!  A+ for me!  

Chicken Fan

Link smiling at the chickens and the chickens checking out the little guy!

My little son is 11 months now and loves seeing the chickens.  I take him out with me to gather eggs and when I feed them our scraps.  Here is a cute picture of him waving to the girls!  :)

Egg Info

Came across this article giving a little information about eggs.  Enjoy!

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/12/18/jane-says?cmpid=tp-ptnr-100days

Frozen Egg

Frozen Egg 

With an overnight low of 2˚F, I went out today to gather eggs and found this one frozen egg!  I never thought of freezing an egg before but I guess its possible to have a egg-sicle!

A Neighborly Gift

Happy Holidays!!!  A card and 4 pack for the neighbors....  

4 Packs of eggs for the neighbors

8 months

Princess Aurora, Belle and Ariel at 8months old

Just a photo update of the chickens.  They are almost 8 months old now and pretty big girls!  I guess technically they are still pullets and will officially become hens at 1 year old.

Chicken Run Updates

I had to move the food tube away from the back of the cage to keep from feeding the squirrels!

A couple photos of the run.  I noticed that the chickens were devouring the food.  I had recently changed from the Layena Crumbles to the Layena Pellets.  At first, I thought the chickens were eating the larger food pellets at the same rate they were eating the smaller crumbles.  But one afternoon I was watching the chickens from inside the house and noticed the neighbor hood squirrel was grabbing the food through the fencing!  The chickens weren't gorging themselves, the squirrel was stealing the pellets!  Needless to say, I now have start paying attention to how I was placing the food tube against the back of the fencing.  

Evidence of the chickens escape attempt by digging a tunnel under the coop!  ;)

Another note about the chicken run is the bottom of the run.  When I built the run, I placed stapled wire fencing along the bottom of the frame and under all the rock.  Click here to see the buried fencing.  After reading about several people who did the same kind of thing to keep predators from digging under the coop IN the run.  I noticed today, that the chickens were actually digging inside the coop!  I never thought the wire fencing would be used to keeping the chickens from digging OUT of the coop!  ;)

Chicken run upgrade

Mermaid spreading some hay in her new run

Being a bit new to home ownership and yard responsibilities, I asked around for advice on what I should do to the grass for the winter.  The advice I received was to aerate, fertilize and over seed.  So, I called a guy for yard aeration, and ran to Home Depot for grass seed and fertilizer. Once I got all the seed out, I was about to let the chickens run the yard like normal...  then I Googled "chickens + grass seed" and found out that chickens LOVE grass seeds.  The only thing they love more then the seed, is crisp green baby grass.  

So.... with that info, I realized I needed to quarantine the chickens for a while the grass comes in and get established.  I didn't want to keep them in the coop all the time, so I ran back to HomeDepot for some lumber and hatched a plan (wink wink) to open up their run a little.  I build a short fence along one side of the coop to the fence.  Then I took one of the wire walls down and built a door the same distance to the fence.  When the gate/door is opened up, it allows the chickens out of the smaller run but closes them into the larger fenced in run. 

I'm sad to have to keep the chickens from grazing the yard, but hope the it doesn't take too long for the grass to grow in.  I'll keep you updated on how they like the bigger run and how long they are kept from the yard. 

New coop/gate door opened

New coop gate/door closed

New shorter fence

Winterizing

Little man helping me get the chickens ready for the cold.

This weekends forecast had some temperatures in the teens overnight so I started getting the coop and chickens ready for winter.  The first thing I bought was a Thermocube which is an electrical outlet that turns on at 35 deg on off at 45deg for $11.  This thing is so simple but I was surprised that this was the first time I had seen it.  I'll be using this to run the deicer but you could also use this to run a heat lamp as well.

I got the De Icer for $29.99 from Amazon.  Another simple thing that I have never seen before.  Other then purchasing these two items and plugging em in, there is not much more to do to winterize the chickens.  As long as they have warm water, they are good to go in the cold.  I even got 4 eggs on Sunday!  I'm still trying to figure out how 3 chickens laid 4 eggs in one day...

The deicer in the water bucket

Fall Season

I was raking the leaves this afternoon and Ariel Mermaid thought she would helped me out.  :)

Coop Door

So... when I built the coop in June, I still needed to put add some sort of way to raise and lower the coop door.  Having 98% of the coop done, and being summer and I was a little lazy and just screwed the door in the up position for the heat and didn't think much about it, until this week. The snow came and temps at night were getting as low as 27˚.  The last week of October, $1.79 of hardware and 5 minutes of time, I FINALLY got the coop door hook latch pulley thing done.  I go out around 7:00pm and shut the chickens up for the night, then in the morning, I go out and open it up.  I hope that keeps them warm enough through the winter nights.

Belle checking out my handiwork

3 Eggs

Egg shaped eggs

So, its been a while since I have updated the blog.  School has started back up and with the little bit of time I've had, I have been trying to ride my bike, get some cross racing done and spend time with the kids.

While I haven't written about the chicks, they are doing really well.  They consistently give us 2 eggs a day which is about perfect for our family.  When we get eggs out of the nest box, Lucy says "Thank you for the eggs chicks!" By Sunday, our egg basket in the kitchen is empty and we start another week collecting eggs. The other day I surprisingly found 3 eggs which will be great when my little boy starts eating real food.

When I get home from work each day, I let em run about the yard until dark.  By then, they have returned back in the coop and nested for the night.  One day, I came out back like normal after school to run the sprinklers, and I freaked out as I saw the chickens door was wide open! Someone forgot to close the evening before.  The chickens had put them selves to bed, woke up and spent the day in the yard all on their own! Thank goodness there were no animals to grab the chickens.

The girls carefully check out the lettuce tetherball before demolishing it! 

Water Heater

With the snow coming down, I was kindly reminded of the de-icer I have been meaning to buy for the chickens water for the last 2 months.  $30 through Amazon.  A friend steered me this way from a youtube video he found.  I'll write more later when I get a chance to see how it works in the sub freezing temps.  I just hope the girls will be ok through this late October storm.