Jersey Giants in the Coop

Old bedding composted, coop hosed out and whitewashed with diatomaceous earth slurry.  The Jersey Giant chicks are in with their nightlight (heat lamp) and all snug.  I am leaving the coop closed up for a couple of days to give them time to adjust before turning them loose in the run.

Old Girls Retired

Moved on to better pastures. Time to clean everything and move the Jersey chickens outside.

Joizy Chicks are here

The next crop of chicks has arrived from My Pet Chicken.  Six Jersey Giants who are vaccinated and supposedly all female.  The current crop of murder birds, I mean Rhode Island Reds, will have to be rotated out over the next month or so.  Since the new birds are from Jersey, they may arrange for the old ones to have an "accident," probably involving dumplings.

Jersey Giant Hen

Under the heat lamp

Wadda you lookin' at?

Chicks at 2 days from John Duncan on Vimeo.

apis mellifica

http://duncanbees.blogspot.com/

Rooster gone to roost

Processed the rooster today. First bird ever processed. I thought I might take pictures, but it got visceral really quickly.

1. Catch rooster
2. Zip tie legs
3. Hang from a nail on a tree
4. Catch rooster
5. Bungee cord legs
6. Hang from nail on tree
   
7. Cut its throat
8. Bleed out
9. Cut its head off because the bleed out did not cause said rooster to expire
10. Scald
11. Pluck. Pluck, and then pluck some more
12. Eviscerate
    
13. Feet off
14. Rooster in the pot to make stock. About as far as I am willing to go with the first bird.
15. Sleep past 5:45 am
    

Spring Cleaning

I cleaned out the coop today. This entailed the following activities:

1. Build a compost containment unit for the old wood pellets. Finding four congruent spots to drive fence posts and that would result in a symmetric compost pile is quite the challenge in North Stonington. They call it Stonington for a reason. I had left over fence from the run construction and picked up fence posts at Home Depot yesterday.
2. Go to Home Depot and buy dust mask and a big ass shovel for the scooping.
3. Remove old wood pellets to compost pile.
   
4. Clean straw out of next boxes.
   
5. Liberally apply a slurry of diatomaceous earth and water to everything inside the coop.
6. Spread left over slurry on the coop floor and wait for everything to dry.
7. Spray inside of coop with an anti-parasite spray. Sprayed birds, too. They are looking mangy.
8. Add new wood pellets and straw for the nests. Place water and feeder back into the coop.
9. Open the pop door so the chickens can enjoy their newly cleaned home.

Not fun, but it was time. Next time will be easier as I will already have the compost pile and hopefully won't have to spray the birds. Chickens don't like to be caught, let alone sprayed with medicine.

Laying Schedule

The one laying hen lays her egg at ~8am every day. That is also the time the light turns on in the hen house. I hope the other four, when they start laying, will hold to her schedule. It is nice to go out at 8:15 and pull a still hot egg out of the nest box.

We got an extra large egg the other day. My son Jack took one look at the over-sized egg and told me that it was double yolked. I scoffed, having never seen a double yolked egg. He, of course, was right. Dads are dumb. :P

Nest box installed

The nest box is now in the coop and the hen that is laying figured it out in about a day.

Eggs!

Someone laid eggs in the hen house and I am assuming it was the hens :)

They are only 5 months old, so this is a bit unexpected. I will have to put the nest box in tomorrow.

Snow Birds

First snow of the winter



Some chickens like it:



Some chickens don't:

Dinner

Further research has me thinking that Dinner is probably a Splash variety of Andalusian. It has the same black feet and coloring as the four week Splash pictured here:



and will probably grow up to look like this:



Unless it is a rooster. If that is the case then the name will still fit.

Chick update

Chicks are two and three weeks old.







And the cat says, "Hi."

Last of the Chicks Arrived

Four new ones that hatched Sunday or Monday and arrived via mail today:



And these guys are a week old:



The new guys are Blue Andalusians and will grow up to look like this:



Except for that yellow one. I think there was a mix up at the chicken factory. I have named him "Dinner" because that is what he is going to be when he grows up :)

Woodshed Site Excavated

The battle with the roots and rocks has ended. I consider it a draw with the rocks because the shed will end up positioned around some of the ones that wouldn't move. The site is approximately level. The next step is to fill the area with a couple of inches of gravel. There is rain in the forecast for the next couple of days so I threw a tarp over the woodpile and we will just wait it out.

The house is almost cool enough to build a fire in the wood stove. Last time we had a fire was May. Has it been four months already? Global warming is a lie. :)

Update: fire is going in the wood stove. Mmmmm, toasty.

More Chicks!

New chicks arrived in the mail today. I ordered 3 and I got 4, all supposedly girls. They probably hatched Monday or Tuesday.

Here they are awake:



The scroungy looking one in the middle was mostly dead when I picked them up from the Post Office but has managed to pull through.

And here they are 30 seconds later sleeping:



They will grow up to look like this:

The Cat

The cat is a Russian Blue - Siamese Mix. It is called Кошка (Koshka). That means "female cat" in Russian. It's not like she would listen to anything else that I called her.

I found her an internet site that aggregates listings from Animal Control offices. This one comes from New Haven, CT via the Haddam Pound.

At six pounds, she chases the 105 pound Rottweiler around the house.

Woodshed

I have a wood pile in my front yard: two cords of seasoned oak. For the last two years I have been stacking wood on pallets at the edge of the woods, as had the previous owners. In order to keep the wood dry it has to be kept covered with a tarp. That is an ass pain. Once again the interwebs came to my rescue or to my demise depending on how you look at it. Mother Earth News* has an article on traditional woodsheds. The article uses expensive and hard to find materials like 8x8 and 6x6 timbers for framing. I am going to use 4x4 timbers and adjust accordingly.

*Yes, Brian, I read the king of all hippy magazines. I also subscribe to the RSS feeds.



This is the site where the woodshed is going to go. It will replace the pallets. I started clearing the leaves and pieces of bark from previous loads of wood and running said debris through the wood chipper. This turned out to be such fun that the minions and I proceeded to shred the tree limbs that were left over from last falls tree cutting. No further work was done on the construction site.



Excavation resumed this afternoon. I actually managed to move some dirt. Mostly I pulled, dug, cut, and otherwise destroyed roots. There were also rocks. Lots of rocks. Big rocks. The above picture shows my favorite rock. His name is Dammit. Seeing as how Dammit required my truck to remove him from the ground, I figured that was enough for the day. I are tired.

Also, I have turned over the day to day ruling of the house to the creature pictured below. She was also found on the interwebs.

News Update

The chickens are growing. Only one rooster. The hens are getting fat. I switched them over to layer feed, which they do not seem to love, so I put the chick starter out during the day for them to snack on. The are scratching up the run for bugs and grass shoots. I mowed the front yard and caught the clippings. I dumped the clippings into the run and the chickens are quite please with that.

Names so far:

Priscilla - the baby of the bunch
Nine-Ten - She's big fat hen
Red Rooster - probably not his final name

Gate installed

All that is left is trim, touch up paint, and chicken wire over the run to keep the hawks out.



The chickens spent their first night without a heat lamp. Nobody froze to death. The coop light is on a timer that turns it off before dusk to give them a chance to settle down before dark. It seems to be working.

They got their first chance in the yard last weekend. They did not exactly run out given the opportunity. Once the came out, they figured out they could scratch up bugs and that grass sprouts are quite tasty.

Fence Finished

It still needs a door and the posts need to be cut down to size. I ran out of nails in the middle of the last 2 sections, so yet another trip to Home Depot. Luckily the kids were available, so I picked them up on the way. They so love the Home Depot. :) They got dinner out of the trip.