Coop Tour!

Well...the coop is not finished, but it's pretty darn close, and I have a feeling there will be lots of little adjustments and additions here and there for a long time. So without further adieu let me take you on a coop tour. This picture was taken on July 10th. In the background you can see an empty space behind our neighbor's house. That empty space used to be a garage, and that is where the majority of our building supplies came from. Our neighbors were constantly bringing over useful pieces and letting us dig through their waste piles, it was very good timing for us both! Aaron dug out a 4 x 8 foot outline for the coop, although we ended up shifting it out a few feet as per our landlord's request. I'm glad we did, it gives a wider pathway behind the coop.


Let me preface this tour by saying that this whole thing came out of Aaron's head. Sure we looked at pictures and got ideas. But no where could we find complete measurements. And we were working with recycled materials, which required even more thought and planning. He made it up as he went, and did a fantastic job.


I'm going to skip over a lot of construction here and get to the goods. Starting to look like a coop!



Putting on the roof. This panel obviously came from a frat. We got it from an apartment dumpster and Aaron pulled three of them hinged together out over his head at the same time. This picture doesn't really show how large that wood is, or how heavy it was!


The tin roof is on, the tin was from the neighbor's garage. I think it's charming. And it makes me want to call it the Chicken Shack.



Okay fast forward to present day. This is the inside of the roost and nest box area. They sleep on those two bars and will lay eggs in the nest boxes to the right. The door opens completely for easy cleaning.



Here is a closer view. I painted the boxes black because they like dark areas while they lay. All paint was free and rescued from the garbage minus the blue which we had leftover from painting beehives.


With the door closed and latched.


If there is ever a security breach we can still lock them up tight while they sleep with this door. Otherwise we leave it open and when they wake up they can go downstairs for breakfast until I let them out into the run.


The nest boxes are set outside of the main area to add space. There is a door that opens from the outside for easy egg collection.


This is the view from the run. I want to add some more trim to the top to finish the look and we need to devise something for getting in and out of the run. Dealing with that roll of wire is a pain.



Aaron thought and thought about how he wanted to do the chicken door. He finally came up with this system. A pulley allows the inset door to slide up and down.


We lock the door open by looping the rope over a pin.


When we want to close them in, we pull on the rope to release it from the pin then allow the door to close. The pin is pushed in, locking the door and a piece of wood goes over the pin to keep raccoons from figuring out how to open the door. Genius!


Here is a side view. The front isn't done yet, we are still waiting on the right piece of plywood.


My favorite feature has to be the flower box. I can't wait to get it planted earlier next year and have nice flowers in it. They are a little scrappy this year.


Ta da! This end is pretty much finished, and definitely the cutest side. I can't wait to get all of the little details finished! I want to make a sign and Aaron wants to put gutters on it. It may be a while before it's all done, but for now I'm satisfied. I love our little coop!


I was keeping very careful track of how much we spent on this - until it got hectic at the end and I was running to the store constantly to pick things up the day before the chickens arrived. We mainly bought hardware, we had a lot of screws and wood from dorm loft kits, but that ran out. We also had to buy the hardware cloth to cover the walls. Most of the trim is from the neighbor's and also from a set of Ikea bed slats found in the garbage. A friend gave us the flower box. The window was from Habitat - $3, and the people door was free from next door. Like I said, I lost track, but I'm pretty sure we kept it under $200. Making this with all new materials would have been so expensive, I am so thankful for all of the free materials that we got.

Spoiled Chickens

The chickens have quickly become pets and we are both having such a fun time with them. I find myself wanting to go out to the backyard to see what they are up to and finding treats for them to eat. Lately they've been getting cabbage butterfly caterpillars everyday. Those things are relentless on my cabbage and broccoli. Those white butterflies with the black spot that you see flying around, are the devil. I pick off the caterpillars (I don't know where they are all coming from!)



And the chickens run over excitedly. It's very satisfying to feed a garden pest to a predator. I was feeding slugs, but read somewhere that slugs, snails and earthworms can all give parasitic worms to your chickens, so I don't intentionally feed those to them anymore. I did put a large snail in one day, they didn't seem to know what to do with it. Camilla - more on her below, in her curiosity pecked off one of its eyestalks and that was it. I found the one-eyed snail in the coop later that day.



We've also been blocking off half of the yard and an hour or so before chicken bedtime (they put themselves to sleep as the sun goes down) and letting them run around.
Here is Glinda getting her first taste of freedom.



And then picking the flowers off of my bean plants




They had a blast digging around in one of the garden spaces. I wish they weren't so destructive, it was nice picking beans and having them hang out and talk to me.


This is Camilla, our favorite chicken. She is a banty light brahma, and is as big as she is going to get. Somewhere around 2 pounds. She has this deep little voice and is always the first to greet us and come over to us. For this she is constantly being given special treats on the sly. We didn't name her after Prince Charles' girlfriend.


We named her after this character. Does anyone recognize her?



Maybe this will ring some bells. Camilla is Gonzo's love interest, if you remember he always had a flock of chickens following him around. I just found this on the internet: "Gonzo loves Camilla, but sometimes he chases after other chickens, because he's not always sure which chicken is which. After all, "they all look the same." However, Camilla can be identified by her blue eyelids." These action figures were made by a company called Palisades, which made almost every Muppet character into a figurine. Unfortunately this company went out of business and now a Camilla figurine is spendy!


And then I found this:



Camilla's house! Called Camilla's Place...hmm we might have just found the name for our coop! Speaking of the coop, it will be unveiled shortly, I know you all have been waiting patiently...

Mites!

We try to use as few chemicals as possible in our hives, while still doing our best to maintain health and numbers. We have a screened bottom board that is too small for bees to fit through, but it does allow varroa mites that fall off the bees to pass through. Normally these mites would just crawl back up and onto the bees. But we keep a sticky paper below the screen to capture these mites. It also allows us to count how many mites are coming off the bees. We have a chart we use to determine if our numbers are normal or too high that factors in the size of the hive and the time of year with a 24 hour count. I don't always use the chart because I check them enough to know what's good and what's not just by looking.
This is a fresh sticky paper I put in a week ago. The lines are formed from the frames - the debris falls where the frames are not, in between them.


After a few weeks the paper is really full of stuff - wax, pollen, bee parts.
You can see those nasty little mites here: They are the mini crab looking things.



Our neighbor just had two hives up and vanish recently. By the time he found them their honey had been completely robbed and not a single bee was in the hive. I'm not completely sure why this happens, but I think every beekeeper has a story like this. It's probably just a matter of time, but that is another reason why we got the second hive, you can keep everyone going easier when you have another hive to borrow from. Spring will tell how our hives did over the winter, but hopefully we have done everything we can to ensure their survival.

Treatment

We made the decision to treat our hives for mites. Aaron picked up some Miteaway II from Glory Bee while it was on sale. I was still unsure if we should use it or not, I did a lot of research on the product (65% food grade formic acid, not a nice thing, but it is relatively safe and leaves no residue in the hive). Then we randomly ran into a local bee expert, we talked to him for a long time. I didn't realize who he was until he handed me his card and I recognized his name. He's kind of a big deal, although his website doesn't seem to reflect that. He told us that if we don't treat our bees, we will lose 50%. He does not treat his bees because he is selecting for the strongest ones. I went home and checked the sticky board under the hive, which I hadn't done for a few weeks, and one of our hives was infested badly with varroa mites. I'll try and get a picture up of what they look like. Time to treat! We did a quick inspection to see how honey stores were and how everyone looked. Then Aaron put on gloves, a respirator and goggles.


We set the acid pads on some small pieces of wood to keep them off the top bars and then put the lid on. Super easy.


Then he taped up the hive to turn it into a "fumigation chamber" according to the manufacturer. We leave the pads in place for 3 weeks then remove them. If during the first week day time temperatures go below 50 or over 80 the pads must be removed. We hit 80 on day 7, and got lucky since it is so warm this week (please keep growing garden!!).



The dead mites are falling down onto the new sticky paper - success! When the 21 days is up we will put the hives on lock down for the winter - adding ventilation and putting a mouse guard on the front entrance.

Mabel

Two weeks ago we got our final chicken (for now). I ended up getting her where we got 2 of our other girls, and I wish that we had just gotten her at the same time, because adding just one chicken isn't pretty. I was going to get one from someone else, but it fell through. She had a rough start, it's always best to add chickens in pairs so they have at least one ally. She is settling in well though and running around with all of the others.


I didn't think I wanted this breed, but she is very pretty. She's still not too sure about us, but I think she will tame down quite a bit in a few weeks if we keep working with her.

Preserving

We are wrapping up summer over here by preserving the last of the harvest. We picked peaches and canned them up.





And pears...Aaron's favorite



Except I messed most of them up by leaving too much head space unfortunately. I didn't release all the air bubbles trapped in the pears as I added the syrup. They will still keep, but will get brown on the tops.


At 1:30 am we made an executive decision to dry and freeze the rest.


Earlier in the week I made cinnamon apple pear freezer jam with some fruit given to us by a friend. I think it will be good in oatmeal and on pancakes.





Canning is a lot of work, but it's so nice to have good food throughout the winter and to share with friends and neighbors. I can't wait until we have a nice, cool basement and a chest freezer to store all of this stuff!

Farm City

I read the book Farm City about a year ago, and LOVED it. A great story about a woman living in Oakland, CA. Her apartment has an abandoned lot next to it, which she adopts and transforms into a true urban farm. Novella Carpenter is her name, and her writing is hilarious and smart, and also easy to read. Aaron just finished reading it and also really enjoyed it.
I was reading her blog last night and saw that she will be in Portland speaking AND there will be demos and talks on all sorts of cool stuff - like bread making, raising meat chickens, making cheese and composting. We are so there! We picked up our tickets today from Grand Central Bakery, all of the baked goods we got there were delicious too!

Here is a link to all the goings on:
Grand Central Bakery Fair

Pickles!

We found a farm in Albany with several U-Pick options. They had pickling cucumbers for $1.20 a pound, but the woman offered to let us pick our own for half price. Sold! We picked all of the small ones they had and got about 10 pounds.


Firming up in an ice bath


The set up


Dill


Cukes stuffed in with garlic and dill. We were in kind of a hurry so I didn't get any pictures of Aaron ladling on the caustic brine.


Boiling water bath for 13 minutes


Pickles! Aaron used the garlic I grew this year. He also made one spicy jar with a hot pepper in it. I chopped the pepper for him and didn't wash my hands. Stupid! I rubbed my nose and it felt like it was on fire for a while. My finger tips are actually still feeling warm over 24 hours later! I learned my lesson on that.


We only got 7 quarts, but that should be enough. I have a feeling they aren't very good after a few months anyway.

Poop Post

I'm going to guess that 99% of my readers will not want to hear about or see pictures of chicken poop. But I have just gone through an ordeal, and I wish I had known this stuff, so I am posting about it anyway. If you don't want to see gross poop pictures, skip this post.

Our buff orpington was sick about a week and a half ago. I immediately treated her with Corid, a drug for coccidiosis. She responded well and within 3 days was back to normal. No one else showed signs of illness, except every morning I would find bloody poop on the roost. I talked to the man at the feed store, Del, who told me if that continued to switch drugs at the end of the first course. So I did switch drugs. But the bloody feces continued. After 10 days of this I was starting to panic, thinking I had a drug resistant strain and I was going to lose all the chickens. After getting no where by trying to call people and do internet research, I joined the website www.backyardchickens.com This website has so much information, and has a forum for chicken emergencies. I posted my situation along with this picture:

You can see why I was concerned! Several people responded that day and referred me to this poop page. They told me that chickens sometimes shed the lining of their intestines, and that this is normal. My picture matches the last one under "normal" poos. I am SO relieved. What I can't find online is why this is happening so frequently. Do they not have enough grit? Did the sulfa drug I just gave them wipe out their gut bacteria (they are getting yogurt daily for this)? Most chicken owners don't know that this happens - I guess they aren't out inspecting their poop everyday! I still don't know the answer to this, but for now knowing that everyone is going to be okay is good enough for me.

Oh you can see a picture of what coccidiosis poop looks like on the poop page, nothing like what their's looked like. It's quite alarming.

Birth!

We opened our hives this weekend to see how much honey was stored up. We are feeding our weaker hive and wanted to see how much longer we need to feed them. This picture is blurry, but check out those full pollen baskets!


I'm not sure what plant is producing this gorgeous pollen right now, but it reminds me of the color that Thai monks wear.


I love it when they do this:


Do you see what's going on here?


That is a bee emerging!!!


There were actually two coming out at the same time. We watched them for a few minutes and I was gearing up to capture the whole thing. Then suddenly Aaron put the frame back. I think he was done holding it and got impatient. I'm bummed because this is not something you see everyday! It was kind of taking a while, but I would have liked to see the wet bee come out and see how the others react.


Until the next time we see a bee emerging...these pictures will have to do!