I loves my precious, yesssssh...

Dogg, lower right, watching her favorite TV show.


At the risk of getting creepy, I have to tell this story.

Last week I had a horrible nightmare that someone had -- through shocking negligence -- killed several of my chickens.
I chalk this up to my hyper sense of responsibility for these birds. They depend solely on me for their well being. The most basic elements of their health -- food and water -- not to mention other niceties like cleanliness and fresh air... all dependent on me. Big responsibilities.

I've always maintained that I would have been the mom who left the baby on the top of the car and drove away.
I only just last year decided I was responsible enough to get a dog. (That's when I started referring to the cats as "training wheel pets.")

The nightmare left me shaken and angry. I actually had to get up, in the middle of the night, and go check on the girls to make sure that they were okay.
Since then, I've been even more concerned about my ability to butcher these chickens when the day comes. Last night, I seriously considered taking them to a butchering house. And -- to my surprise -- I immediately rejected the idea.

I've been to butchering parlors. They're not all a house of horrors. The small local butchers in our area are clean and efficient, their outfits are well run, and I'm sure that they're not at all cruel or malicious.
However, there's no way that I could drive up to the loading dock, hand over my chickens, and let anyone else do the dirty work for me.

No, when the day comes, it will be me that has to look them in the eye and then kill them.
God, that sounds creepy even to me.

Coop heaven

New pictures.

This first one, on top, with the flash on, gives you a pretty clear picture. The shed, of course, is completely made of concrete block and poured concrete.
The floor is covered with a thick fluffy layer of wood shavings, and I've started bringing in bales of chopped straw for them to roost on, and eventually to shred apart for the floor.
In the top picture, in the far right, you can just see the corner of the old oak dresser that will eventually be their nesting box.
The lower left panel of the window that they're sitting in front of will eventually be replaced with a removable plexiglass window that will serve as their gateway to the yard.
I piled the straw bales in front of the window so that more of them could get up there and enjoy the view. I'd noticed that several of them had taken to sitting in the sill of the window and wanted to make it a little more accessible. Sure enough, this morning the top of the bale was covered with chickens.
The rest were happily sleeping in the thick bedding of wood chips and straw on the floor in front of the bales.
Like so...



















They're so happy in their new coop. They make pleasant trilling noises, like tree frogs. And they love the new organic feed (which actually smells quite appetizing to me), which I augment with treats from the garden and kitchen. Broccoli leaves, pigs weed, borage leaves and flowers, fennel fronds, daylilies, monarda blossoms, a cut up peach, small dandelion spears, arugula blooms, tomato ends -- they love it all, and come to the door to greet me now when I come in, expecting snacks.

The book tells me that I should start augmenting the feed with oats at about 8 weeks, gradually replacing fifty percent of the feed with the oats, until they're about to start laying. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on some organic oats, too.

I love the smell of oats. When I was just a little kid, I remember that my Grandpa Miller had a horse, and so there was an oat bin. I was fascinated with the oat bin. I'd scoop handful after handful of oats out and then pour them back in, just to see the changing designs that they'd make. And the smell of oats takes me right back to that barn and the horse stall. Later, and not much later at that, the horse was gone. I'm not even sure why he had a horse. He might have been boarding it for someone else, because he didn't use it to plow or haul things, and he didn't ride that I know of. His brother Vern was the horse man, and maybe the horse was his.

I wonder if that barn is still standing.

Sigh.

Chick flick

Hmm. Apparently my camera makes the wrong kind of movies. I'll have to figure that out later.
For now, here's a still of the girls in the coop.
The screen is kind of annoying to look through, isn't it? I'll take a better shot when I get back down there.

That was then, and this is now...

The coop is functional. Finally. And the chicks are on their new organic feed, augmented with garden scraps and forages. My forages, not theirs, for now. Next I'll work on the pen outside the coop, but the main thing was to get them out of the brooder.
It was getting much too crowded there, and I was concerned that they were starting to get irritated and hostile with each other.
They're much more docile and playful in the new coop. And they come running up to the door when I come in. It's adorable.

These two pictures above show pretty well how quickly they're growing. The first photo was taken June 30th. The second photo was taken July 9th. Just nine days later. I couldn't take the lid off the tank because I was afraid they'd fly out, but I think you can see well enough to get the idea.

I'll go out now and take a picture of the girls in their coop. Hang on, I'll be right back.

Okay, I'm back. And I shot a little video of them in the coop. I haven't loaded video before, so I'm not sure if this will work. Keep your fingers crossed.

Doggie loves chickens

Dogg is my chicken helper.
She's leaning, I think, toward the hovering protective role, as opposed to the "can I jump on them and eat them?" role. Even though she does seem to be drooling a tiny bit in this shot above.
Yesterday we glued the top and bottom sills of the coop to the concrete floor and ceiling. The fumes were so strong that I'd moved the chicks out of the coop and into the basement. Much complaining about this on the part of the chickens, but they settled in quickly.
This was a heavenly situation for Dogg, who suddenly had all the access to the chicks (well, most of the access anyway), that she'd been dreaming of.
She eventually just laid down next to the brooder/horse waterer and went to sleep. That's where she's spent most of her time since then. Hanging out by the chickens.
Not pushing the screen away, not barking, not even whining. Just hanging out by the chickens.
What a good dogg, eh?

They're getting so big! And feathery! And they fly all over!
And they eat a lot! They eat as much in a day as they used to in a week. It's very impressive.

There was a (weird) item in the right leaning press deriding backyard chickens, that seems to be polarizing pro-chicken folks with those people who hate, well, everything wholesome and good (bicycling, organic food, the environment, brown-skinned babies, compassion... etc.)
Whoops, guess it worked on me. I'm all polarized already.

Today I work on the coop, again. We had a couple of setbacks partitioning off the back of the garden shed. The concrete floor is so dense that we can't drill into it to anchor the concrete nails. Therefore we can't nail the framing lumber to the floor. After talking to a few construction experts I'm going to try "Liquid Nails."
I expect that that means moving the chicks out of the shed while the air clears. They may end up in the basement for a day or two. :-)