Chicken run

The run is finally complete! I moved the chicks from my bathroom to the coop, but I'm keeping them locked in there for the next month or so. Next Friday I'm getting another three babies, and I'm not going to feel comfortable letting them into the run without supervision until they're bigger.

Here's their current set up:

With the door closed and locked, I feel comfortable that they're safe. There is now hardware cloth running 1.5-2 feet out from the bottom of the coop, and it's buried underneath the woodchips. No animals should be able to dig inside now.

The run makes a larger rectangle around the coop, and then runs in a corridor across the width of the yard. The right side is partially made up of a rock wall terrace, which is overrun with weeds that the chickens should take care of once they're outside. I pruned the large bushes on top of the rock wall and tossed the branches onto the floor of the coop to create more insect habitat and organic matter for future composting of deep bedding.

They have a couple of stumps set up for hopping around, and two dust baths containing diatomaceous earth to prevent mite problems.

The back corner required creative arrangement of PVC and hardware cloth. It may look like there are gaping holes under the PVC, but the "skirt" of buried hardware cloth continues there. I made sure there weren't any gaps!

This is the view standing from the far end and looking back toward the coop. The tarp covers part of the roof to provide protection from the rain. Yes, we're in a drought right now, but when the rain eventually returns it's likely to be a torrent.

The door to the run. There's a bit of a gap between the far side of the door and the frame at the bottom, due to the PVC shifting around while we put up the wire walls. I'm going to put a triangular piece of hardware cloth across that corner of the frame, so that animals won't be able to push the corner of the door in.

Cai is trying to figure out how to get inside.

There is a path going across the slope of the yard to get down to the run.

The view from up the hill. I love how the run is bordered on two sides by tall shrubs/trees, making it feel like it's inside a forest (a chicken's native habitat).

I had chosen to construct the run out of PVC rather than wood because it was cheaper, lighter, and easier for a single person to put together. It's also very easy to customize and could bend in a couple of places where rocks or tree stumps were in the way. The downside is that its flexibility meant that the run leaned downhill and we got the problem with the door no longer being aligned. It was also a huge pain to attach all the wire panels with cable ties. In retrospect, it would have been better to build the frame with wood from Urban Ore, collected over a longer period of time since they didn't have enough 2x4s or other posts at the time I was buying the wood for the coop. Besides being more sturdy, it would have been easier to attach the wire panels by hammering in u-shaped nails.

Updated chick pics

The Ameraucana's wing feathers are coming in nicely. The striping is beautiful, but will sadly fade when she is an adult. She's also developing tail feathers and some along her shoulders.

The Australorp is next in development. Her wings still have a bit more down, and her tail feathers are shorter and more sparse. No shoulder feathers yet.

The Rhode Island Red, despite being the most precocious, is clearly the youngest.

Making myself cook

A hungry friend came over on Saturday. I told him to help himself to anything in the fridge. He opened the fridge to find it almost completely empty - his options were limited to eggs or cheese sandwiches. That reminded me that I was once again due to set aside an evening for cooking.

I'm trying to learn to cook a greater variety of meals. It's a chore. But I managed to cook rice (will be used for chicken friend rice tomorrow), a lemon custard, a large quantity of garlic and parsley bread (most went into the freezer), and banana bread (my first try - it came out good, but not great).

I forgot to post last month about cooking mushroom quinoa pilaf as well as roast rabbit for the first time. They both were also in the category of "pretty good, but not great." I'll keep trying with those.

A couple of weeks ago, I spontaneously purchased a passion fruit and a horned melon at my grocery store. I'm always curious about the foods that I've never even seen before, and fruit seems like a safe bet, since you're usually not expected to cook it.

The inside of the passion fruit had only a small amount of liquid. It was mostly a dense pulp holding a large number of seeds together. It was as sour as a lemon, but had a sweeter undertone. If I had run it through a blender, it probably would have made a good substitute for the lemons in lemonade.

The horned melon had a very cool looking, dense geometry of seeds and bright green pulp. It also turned out to have a sour flavor! I ate half, but couldn't manage any more. It would be an interesting addition to a fruity dessert.

Chicks can't get no breaks

The chicks are currently living in their cardboard box in my bathroom, and of course I keep the door closed so that my own cat and dog can't get to them. But apparently this morning I didn't latch the door properly. I was in the kitchen and heard oddly loud cheeping. I dropped what I was doing and ran into the bedroom to find Jasper standing next to my bed with the Rhode Island Red in his mouth. I yelled (a very loud, dramatic "NOOOOO!!!!"), grabbed Jasper by the scruff, and scooped up the Red as he dropped her.

A quick examination revealed nothing but a couple of wet spots around her neck. When I returned her to the box, she immediately resumed her usual scratching and pecking activity.

I handled the death of the first Ameraucana with calm pragmatism. These things happen. But being responsible for a second tiny chick dying by cat would have been too much.

Second Ameraucana

Can you see what's different about the Ameraucana?

That's right - it's a new chick. One of my housemate's outdoor cats found the spot where the woodchips were piled up a bit deeper to make a level area for the coop, and dug underneath. I had initially blamed it on a racoon, but then I found the partially-eaten carcass inside the house. (Let me just take this moment to say how much I am NOT a fan of letting cats roam outside.)

Of course, that was a glaring weak spot in the coop's construction, and in hindsight I can't believe that I forgot to put a hardware cloth "skirt" around the coop to prevent animals from digging underneath. The chicks are now in my bathroom until that is fixed. (Actually, I'll go ahead and keep them indoors until they get old enough that they start kicking up dust and stinking.) I'm counting my lucky stars that only one chick met a terrifying and painful end.

At least the new Ameraucana is not terribly screechy like the old one. I'm enjoying the quieter state of the chicks.

Having them indoors makes it easy to remember to not just check on them regularly, but also handle them at least three times a day. They are going to be very mellow about people by the time they are grown. Even the Rhode Island Red, though she still tries to escape the Giant Hand from the Sky, now just settles down on my palm and lets me check her vent, gently raise her wings, and stroke the top of her head and back. Over the next few days I'll start handling their legs, toes, chins, and beaks, and carry them around a little.

Three tiny chicks

I picked up the first three chicks this morning! The other three will be arriving in March.

This was one of the bins of chicks at Pollinate. "Take your pick!" said Birgitt. But they look identical! But I did end up favoring an Ameraucana with a darker stripe down the back and a darker red Rhode Island Red. The two pale ones in this bin are Buff Orpingtons - popular layers, but did not make my list.

The Black Australorp is my favorite so far. She is the most quiet and comfortable with me. She also likes to cuddle up close to the others when sleeping. However I saw her getting pushed away from the water by the Red and from the food by the Ameraucana. Her docile personality might make her the lowest hen in the pecking order.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Rhode Island Red is the most active and does not like being held. She pecks at the other two the most.

The Ameraucana is so cute with her chipmunk striping. Her comfort with me and energy level are at a pleasant middle between the other two. She is by far the most vocal! She is also a tad larger - perhaps a day or two older?

They tend to hang out together.

Lunch time...

And then naps.

Chicken coop

On Saturday I had a number of friends come and help me start building the coop. It was wonderful to have all those extra hands (and company!). We were able to cut nearly all of the pieces of the coop. Other than two 1x2s I had to buy at the end at Home Depot, all the rest of the wood and the roof pieces were purchased second hand at Urban Ore. This saved me a lot of money and was more eco-friendly, however the downside was that some of the coop walls had to be pieces together from multiple smaller pieces of wood. But we made it work, and it's totally sturdy now that it's all put together!

This is the view as you come down the hill toward the coop. The chicken door and the nest box access window are dark red.

Here's the back of the nesting boxes.

Moving to the left side of the coop, there's a window covered with half-inch hardware cloth for safety. The fact that the roof is corrugated plastic and isn't flush with the top of the coop also adds extra ventilation.

Most of this wall opens up as a large door so that I can climb inside for cleaning. The bottom lip is one foot tall in case of deep bedding, although that's probably excessive.

The view inside the big door. Right now it won't open farther because the PVC is in the way, but I'll adjust that so that it can be wide open. The PVC structure is forming the outside of the run, and will be covered with a combination of hardware cloth toward the bottom and chicken wire above that.

Looking toward the left are the nesting boxes, level with the second roosting bar, and with a wide walkway in front.

Toward the right are the three roosting bars.

The only big mistake I made between designing and building was that when I calculated the measurements for the nesting boxes, I put them flush against the back wall without accounting for the corner stud. Because of that, the box is a few inches away from the wall, it doesn't line up perfectly with the window, and I had to wedge and extra piece of wood between the wall and the 2x4 that holds up the front of the boxes. Oh well, it works.

The thing that didn't work out was that I had planned to turn the little space above the nesting boxes into a shelf that was walled off from the inside and accessed via the nest box window on the outside. However due to the way that was all pieces together from multiple pieces of wood, we couldn't make the window tall enough - as you can see above, it stops right at the top of the boxes. I will probably put in chicken wire to keep the chickens from roosting on that shelf, and rig it up so that I can pull the wire back and use it as an indoor shelf.

I give this coop a B+ (in the category of "regular coop, not a super-coop"). Not bad for a first try, and building it by hand (with help!) brought me immense joy.