It only took a week and the chicks have their little wings!  They can’t fly yet but they can leap with great conviction.  High enough that we have had to cover the brooder just in case.  Just what we’d need, an escaped chicken convict being chased by two cats and a dog!

According to the chicken bible I have been using the second week is when they start getting their tail feathers.  As if on cue we got them a week ago tomorrow and the little buggers are sprouting tail feathers!

We have been keeping them busy turning over their litter on a daily basis.  If you give them dried meal worms they do something called food running.  Evidently chickens don’t or can’t eat something that isn’t small enough to be eaten in one peck.  If they find something like a worm, or even a piece of cooked spaghetti noodle, they will start tear ass-ing around the coop with all the others in hot pursuit.  The little chicks do this with the meal worm treats.  Just throw a small handful of them in to them and watch the games begin!  The ones who don’t get them immediately will commence to scratching the daylights out of the litter, thus turning it over and making it clean….. and we don’t have to do it!  Brilliant!

I received a call at about 10:15 am today.  It was the Post Office.  I was informed that the chicks had arrived and were waiting for me to pick them up!  I was kind of shocked actually as the tracking number said that the delivery date was estimated to be two days from now.

I arrived at the Post Office and told the attendant that I was there to pick up probably the only box in the building that was cheeping!  She chuckled and went back into the back to look.  They were making so much of a racket that you could hear them when she was quite a ways back in the sorting room.  When she brought them out it was so funny to see the looks on the city folk’s faces.  One lady standing next to me must have just come in off of the tennis court.  She was wearing all the “proper” attire and just giggled when a noisy card-board box was set next to her, peeping away!

I had called Aaron from the road and he helped get all the necessary things set up and going.  Zina even took time from work to come and see the new children.  We are brooding them in our grow room.  Once they are a bit bigger they will go out into the garage and then on out to the farm coop (where I was today when I got the call!)

The brooder needs to stay at 95 degrees for the first few days.  Once they start feathering, the temperature can be reduced about 5 degrees at a time until it is no longer needed.

Upon arrival, the box is opened and inventory is checked.  The hatchery guarantees live delivery.  We lost one but I’m not going to make a claim.  They are only 3 dollars and it seems stupid to ask them to send me one bird when they had already thrown in a free “mystery” bird (which on my first take looks to be a Speckled Sussex – This makes sense to me because it, like the Orpingtons we ordered, are an English breed).

As the chicks are only a day and a half old upon arrival, they have never eaten nor had anything to drink.  The food needs to be out and sprinkled around.  The water solution is sugar with some electrolytes mixed in that were sent by the hatchery.  To get them in the pre-warmed brooder there are three things that need to be done:  1.  Check their little behinds to make sure they don’t have Pastey-Butt (just like it sounds, Poop caked over the bun-hole that doesn’t let them defecate) 2. Dip their beaks in the water and make sure they actually take a drink (kind of like a chicken swirly) and 3. Put their little heads in the food holder so they know where the food is.

They learn fast.  They are also thirsty and ravenous.  It didn’t take any time at all and they were scurrying around the brooder.  If you tap your finger on the floor of the brooder they will come running over as they think you are another chick pecking at something fun. Then they start to do it too!

They can sleep virtually anywhere!  We had one fall asleep next to the waterer still standing up.  They run around like crazy and peck and do the little chickie dance things they do. Then all of a sudden, wham, they lay down and take a nap.  You have to be very patient with this because some of them look like they have fallen over and died.  Then, just as quickly as they fell asleep, they are up eating watering, pooping in their food and running around again…. insanely cute.

Aaron and Zina named the mystery bird, Sorpresa, which I guess in Spanish means Surprise.  I could only come up with a couple of other names: Omelette, Lunch, Dinner, and Fajita, Stew, Soup, Shish and Kabob.  Will have to work on it I guess.

They are much more alert after a few hours after what must have been a freakish ride on a Postal Service semi.  The temperature seems to be to their liking and they are settling in nicely.

The first JAZ Farm non-pet livestock are at hand!  Now its up to the farmers to see if we can keep them alive!

It has been a fabulous week out here.  Taking some time to be out away from everyone and everything has been the most relaxed I’ve been in literally years.  We were able to enjoy some navel gazing time as well as getting most of the astro-fence treated with deck sealant and getting ready for our first “star party” the weekend of the 13th (the long term forecast predicts thunderstorms…. figures).  The wheat harvest out here is in full force.  It is amazing to watch those machines. They have it down to quite a science with some of the combines actually being guided via GPS.

The most tedious and heavy work involved with the chicken coop is reinforcing it so that animals like coyotes can’t dig under the fence or barn and feast on my future eggs and stew.  Over the past week I dug an 8 inch deep trench around the outside of the fence and the building and poured over 4500 lbs of concrete into it.  The building itself had a corner that didn’t meet the ground squarely and could have easily been burrowed under.  On that corner I also put in 4x8x16 cinderblocks.  They are all re-barred into the cement in the ground.  I am pretty sure that this thing is now a right impenetrable chicken prison!

I also spent one day building and rigging the roosts. Zina painted them.  For the Chicken impaired, chickens like to sleep up off the ground.  They will seek the highest place in the coop with the dominant hens taking the prime positions.  The pecking order determines who gets to sleep where.  For heavier breeds it is recommended to provide 10 inches of roost space per bird.  This set up will more than suffice.

We are ordering our first baby chicks in about a week.  They should all be arriving sometime the week of the 15th.  Then life is certainly going to change!

I got up the nerve and tackled the chicken wire issues this past week.  The run needs to be covered in order to keep falcons and hawks from dive bombing the chickens.  Evidently out here in the plains the threat is from both above and below.  The below part comes next.

Chicken wire is infernally frustrating stuff.  It hangs up on everything and bends and then, of course, makes you bleed.  The local hardware store sold rolls of the stuff (technically I guess called “Poultry Netting” – as far as I’m concerned there is no “netting” about it) 6 feet tall and 150 feet long.  Just about right for the amount of space I needed to cover.

The first thing I needed to do was cut off the cute little decorative thingies that were on top of the gates.  They were welded on so I let the sparks fly with my reciprocating saw.  At one point the blade let loose and hit me in the forearm and BURNED me.  Gotta remember, metal on metal gets HOT!  I mounted sections of chain link top rail across the gates so there was something to tie the netting to over the gate.  The gates seem to be the weak link and are needing to be reinforced to both avoid escape and deter ground based critters.

I mounted six shelving brackets to the front of the building to use as anchors.  I needed to get the wire above the coop door in order to be able to open it and this seemed as good a way as any.  I cut a whole roll of re-bar connecting wire into 8 inch pieces and used it to tie the chicken wire onto the fence and the tick tack toe structure I put in to allow for the protective wire roof.  I was able to hang one end of the roll over the fence and then hold it over my head and unroll it the length of the run.  The six foot wide sections then needed to be “stitched” together with the wire ties.  Once done, then it needed to be pulled taught in order to avoid it all being droopy.  Most of it is fairly flat.  In some sections a little droop was unavoidable.  None of it looks like a chicken wire hammock though.

It all seems to have worked well.  We have had ample breeze and it doesn’t seem to have been bothered by it.  We will see what the first big snowstorm does to it, but so far so good.  This is one part of the construction I won’t miss.  I got all scratched up and spent three days working with my hands over my head tying the netting into place.  Need to find a good Jacuzzi.

This is one BIG birdcage.  Thanks for looking!

Father’s day 2013 is the day that marks the end of the refurbishing of the horse shed!  Its been months of weekend work and the building is now complete!  Sure there are a lot of things that still are needed to be done to make it a secure chicken coop but the building itself if DONE!!  I was getting pretty tired of being on the business end of a circular saw and drill.  I finished up the interior walls a couple of days ago. Then Zina and I spent the past couple of days finishing the priming and adding the final coats of color.  All that is left is to build the window shutters, trench and cement in the perimeter of the entire coop and run, and string chicken wire over the top of the run.  That may sound like a lot and it is – BUT!  – it isn’t nearly has heavy and awkward as heaving sheets of plywood, measuring and remeasuring everything and hauling, sawing and drilling 2×6 and 2×4 stringers.

To quote a simple half wit shrubbery:  “Major construction operations have ended.  The effort to refurbish and repurpose the horse shed  has been won!”  In other words….”Mission Accomplished!”

Here are  before and after shots:

Finally got some good weather so out I went, tools in hand, to finally get the chicken coop building enclosed.  I fixed one of my goofs, installed the automatic chicken door (it has a sensor that detects when the sun comes up and when it goes down which makes it open and close – very cool!) and built the new people door.  That kind of thing is always fun when nothing is square.  The bottom of the door jam is almost an inch wider than the top because of the pole barn posts I am contending with.  Turned out pretty fair though.  Now the “coop” stuff happens.  Vents, windows, roosts, egg boxes, all the fun stuff.  Oh ya, insulating it and putting up the inside walls.  For all this work, these little ladies better appreciate their “Hilton”.

The coop project is coming along steadily.  Zina finished priming it so the new paneling wouldn’t get weathered while we build (we are actually expecting snow again Wednesday – it was 75 degrees today! – no global weirding involved! ; )  )  I have begun framing the interior.  While it is much less heavy and awkward than hanging the new panels, I have been reminded of what squat-thrusts were all about in high school PE:  “Up, Down, measure, lift, move, cut, haul, squat, nail, drill, up…. repeat”.

In between homework assignments Aaron came out and assembled a bench for us.  It will be used to while away the hours at the Chicken Hilton watching the entertainment  (of course, Basil tried to help!)

I was wounded in action today!  It was kind of like being shot with a BB Gun.  I had to pull out an old nail with a crowbar and in my not so subtle and gentle fashion I pulled the head right off the nail!  It sparked as it left – indicating it was hot – and lodged itself in my forearm.  Chicken battle wounds.  What one won’t do for their hobby!

The big project other than the farmhouse remodeling projects has been turning an old horse shed into the future JAZ Farm chicken coop.  This is an attempt to use what is already here rather than build something new.  The shed was essentially a structure that the animals could come into in order to escape the elements.  You’ve probably seen them on any trip to the country.  The front is open and has a sloped roof to channel water from when it rains or snows and can house a manger and water trough out of the baking sun or the severe elements of winter.  The shed on the farm also had, on its southern end, an enclosed tack room.  While the whole thing was well worn and used, the tack room had a professionally poured cement floor!  Perfect for a coop.  The big issue with any chicken keeping operation is to keep predators out of your coop and chicken run.  It seems that not only does everything taste like chicken, EVERYTHING likes the taste of chicken.  I believe in sharing, but coyotes, foxes, badgers, falcons, owls and hawks, tend to take more than their fair share!  The cement floor provided the space for a roosting and laying coop that can’t be burrowed into or flown into by said critters.

This is what it looked like:

The big plus, of course, is that there is water right at the coop.  The big negative is that the horses had kicked in the paneling and chewed most of the rafters and stringers that hold the paneling.  While the cement floor is solid, it wasn’t too terribly critter proof with all of the holes in the walls.  Also, the shelter part of the building did not meet the ground solidly all the way around.  So while it is an existing structure with support posts and a solid roof, the entire thing needed to be rebuilt.  This is a very BIG Chickie Hilton!  Also, you might have noticed that there is no fence around it to keep the birds in and the other diners out!

So as Zina took over the interior painting jobs and with the dog run finished, I have set to transforming the old horse facility into the JAZ Farm chicken coop.  We plan on raising 15 to 25 egg layers (probably a combination of Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, and Barred Plymouth Rocks).  We know this will give us far more eggs than we could use, but I have also had indications from clients and neighbors that they would happily receive fresh eggs from us!  The layers will get the cement floored coop.  On the other side, because they don’t need nearly as complex a coop, we are going to raise 25 – 50 meat birds a year.  If one goes with the Cornish X hybrid, they grow to slaughter weight in about 8 to 10 weeks (its almost like somebody blows them up with an air pump they grow so fast) so they won’t be around long.  They also don’t need laying boxes, insulation, electricity, or all of the creature comforts the more spoiled layer women require.

As of this writing, I have replaced the old horse chewed stringers and replaced the paneling all the way around.  Zina has finished the interior farmhouse painting and came out yesterday to help prime the plywood.  As you can see below we had a fencer come in and build a 25 x25 foot chain link fence for the chicken run.  If we really wanted to go all out it would be possible to house up to 100 chickens in this setup.  Considering how much bedding and feed that would take, don’t hold your breath – unless we find a lot of eager customers!

There are several tasks yet to complete.  The fence needs to be covered with hawk proof material, the entire perimeter needs to be made burrow proof to keep out the four legged hunters. The feeders, waterers, chicken doors, roosts and laying boxes need to be installed.  There will also be windows and screen vents for proper air circulation.  This will take some time but the pictures below show the stark contrast of what was and now what is.

Chicken coop face lift

Chicken coop

We are anxious for the day that the construction comes to an end and the squawks, cooing and crowing replace the noises of the air-compressor and circular saw.