Howdy y’all, and welcome back!
Since the title of this blog is “the Coop”, I suppose I
should at the very least mention the chickens. My wife and I decided to start
raising chickens last spring and began heavily researching (and by that I mean “Googling”)
information on the subject. Ah the dreams of the ignorant. We bought our eight birds
as day old chicks from Tractor Supply and brought them home to the brooder box
we had set up in the garage according to the internet gurus. The brooder box
consisted of an old particleboard bookshelf with the shelves removed, and about
4 inches of pine shavings (also from Tractor Supply), an old screen door screen
to prevent the adventurous chicks from escaping from the open top, a feeder,
waterer, and a heat lamp. That one gave me pause; why a heat lamp in South East
Texas you ask? Well, apparently chicks like it warm, and these were no
exception. We purchased four Production Red chicks and four Buff Orpington
chicks and introduced them to their new home. We sat for hours watching them
run around and peck at anything and everything that they thought might be even
remotely edible, and listened as they peeped their little chicken hearts out.
As I watched the children (and my wife) fall in love with these birds, I made
it very clear that they were “working” birds whose job was to grow up and lay
lots of eggs for us to consume, and then when they reached the end of their
usefulness as layers, they were going in the stew pot and new chickens would take
their place. I strongly advised my family against naming them to keep from
getting too attached and treating them like pets.
It was amazing how quickly Mudpie, Professor Fluffypants, Tiny
(that was the fat one), Spike, Gomer, Lou, Sleepy, and What’s-her-name grew. In
no time at all, they sprouted wing and tail feathers, and had the tiniest
little combs you could imagine. And these chicks could eat. They would go
through a one gallon feeder a day, and true to physics, what goes in, must come
out. Had I collected all their droppings and sold them as fertilizer, I would
be a millionaire, or at least be able to afford another Coke.
Fast forward eight weeks, and the now “teenage” chickens
were released outdoors into their coop/run that I built with my wife’s help,
meaning she kept my son from running off with my nailer and other power tools
while I tried to build a coop for the first time. Despite a couple of setbacks
and three extra trips to Lowes above the original plan, the coop was complete.
The coop itself consisted of a 4x4x4.5 doghouse that our blood hound refused to
even sniff, let alone enter, and a 16x4x4 foot chicken-wire run. It took about two
days to realize that a four foot tall run was not a good idea, seeing as I am 6’02”
tall, and not of a small stature (Heck, I’m not even medium stature!).
Regardless, that coop and run combination served us well for about two weeks
until our lovely hound, who had never hurt a fly, found that farm fresh chicken
suited her particular palate. In fact,
the laziest of lazy dogs, whose idea of hard labor included moving from one
shady spot to the next, suddenly adopted a course of action that left the yard
around the coop with a strong resemblance to a Case backhoe that came to life
and was looking for revenge. There were trenches into the coop deep enough a
small horse could have trotted through, and our chicken population dwindled to
only four birds very quickly. Us being the quick learners we were, we returned
to Google and learned several ways to break a dog from killing and eating
chickens. We dove into these methods whole heartedly finally found one that
worked. We put 1 foot square pavers all the way around the coop so she couldn’t
dig in. And we called the dog dumb. I’ll
bet she was shocked when we didn’t simply remove her access to the chickens in
the first place, and figured the punishment was worth it for all the fresh
chicken she could eat.
Anyway, hardest lessons are best lessons learned, and we
bought more birds to replace those that were recycled into doggie bombs in the
back yard, and have rebuilt our bird population. We introduced two Barred Rocks
and two new Rhode Island Reds to the flock and everyone seemed to get along
with each other. Everyone that is, except the one remaining Buff Orpington. And
not that she didn’t get along with everyone else, the problem was they all
ganged up on her! And that is how my father-in-law also became a chicken farmer….(the
Buff is doing great there, by the way…)
We now have eight birds again, seven of which are laying
large to extra-large brown eggs and getting along just fine. I have built a new
run that is 16 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet tall, which makes it so much
easier to access and care for the chickens. Our goal is to eventually have two
coop/run set-ups; one for laying birds and one for meat birds, and for each
coop to house around 50-75 birds. It should continue to be an interesting
journey that I hope you will continue to take with us. And for you ladies, my
wife has her own blog full of recipes, ideas, and good ol’ down home country
livin. You can follow her at http://acountrychickinthehenhouse.blogspot.com/
and hopefully we all live and learn together.
Until next time,
the Coop
