The Big Chicken Coop is started.

When we first decided to get chickens, they were just for us...for eggs.  But out of the first 6 we got, two were roosters.  After getting so few eggs the first winter, we decided to get more hens.  We had to wait awhile, but we started getting more eggs and then ended up with two broody hens!  Well...broody hens don't lay eggs...they sit on them with the full intension of hatching them, they want babies.  I let them hatch eggs the second time my Rhode Island Red went broody.  Her name is Brown Racer, her partner in crime is an Easter Egger named Ms McCluckinson.  They were so intent on being Mothers, I got eggs from my neighbor and let them sit on them...they didn't hatch, and my hens laid eggs in the boxes, so I let them keep laying eggs after letting my Rhode Island Red out for fertilization.  After sitting on those, they both became Mothers!  Those chicks are teenagers now.  They were born just before Easter.  The same two hens are broody again...and they had just started laying!

I have made a double Decker Brooder to house the baby chicks.  I made a grow out pen to house the Teen Chicks...but I still need more places to put full grown chickens.  So, we are building an 8'x16' coop with a 16'x16' covered run.  So far we have semi-leveled a spot to build it, and made the base of the coop so far.  I do have most of the materials ready to go, but I have been getting help from my husband on this project and he only has a little bit of time working six days a week.  The materials are pretty heavy and some of the wood I just can't move by myself without my husband and the truck, there are also large sheets of decking and the siding is metal and heavy also.  

I am hoping this weekend to get the framing materials moved to the build site, and possibly getting the framing started.  Because, now I have two hens sitting on eggs, eggs in the incubator, chicks from almost 4 weeks old (19 of them), chicks 6 weeks old (7 of them) and my teen chicks are about 11 weeks old and there are 13 of those!  I need the coop built before they start laying eggs!

I am looking into selling the eggs, the chicks and possibly selling hatching eggs too.  I need to do more research on it and maybe get some egg cartons.  I stopped by the Farmers Market yesterday and no one was selling eggs!

Planted my gardens but...

I have three gardens planted now.  I started seeds thinking that if they were started the birds could not eat the seeds...I was wrong!  I lost a row and a half of corn and about the same with the green beans...they just pulled all of the plants up and out of the ground.  I bought some plants and after tilling again, got them planted too.  I have all kinds of stuff growing now, not sure how much of a harvest I will get, but I have stuff planted.  

I am going to assume that the soil is fertile in my gardens, I actually have 4 garden plots...only three are planted because when we get a lot of rain half of one floods.  Weeds grow really well in my gardens, it is hard to keep up with weeding them.  The tiller I got can go between the rows, but it has no reverse and next year I will need to remembr to leave more space between the fence and the planted rows...so I can use the tiller to weed!  

I have harvested Mexican Plums and Dewberries.  I made jelly with those, my first attempt at jelly making...so I ended up with more of a Dewberry syrup instead of jelly. After talking with a local lady, she said that it is always trial and error.  My plum jelly turned out really good, jellied like it was suppose to.  Dewberries and blackberries don't have any pectin in them so it takes much, much more...drives me crazy that none of my Dewberry jelly is really jellied.

The only other thing I have harvested is green tomatoes.  My plants got so heavy it broke the metal tomato cage on one.  I also saw a number of tomatoes with blossom end rot an deformed tomatoes from the way they laid on the ground.  I have a bunch sitting on the counter now some starting to ripen.  I dried my eggshells and ground them up to a powder and added some Epsom salt to an old huge Parmesan Cheese shaker and mixed it up really good and sprinkled the mix around all of my tomato plants.  I hope the calcium and magnesium works wonders and fixes the problems.  I need to apply fertilizer to the rest of my gardens, that is where my chickens come in handy.

Fenced and Ready to Plant!

I know I am running way behind on getting things planted in my gardens...but, after being tilled we had rains and freezing temperatures.  My 4 garden areas had to be tilled again and I ended up buying a rear-tine tiller to help with weeding and small areas.  I also had to fence the gardens so the dogs would not have access to them.  The dogs would follow behind me as I tilled, and they ate all the grubs!  Really gross, but I would have collected them and given them to the chickens.

I got my highest garden plot planted with purchased tomato, pepper and brocolli plants.  I have started more seeds since my original plant starts were frozen to death.  We had eight inches of rain and everything is like a marsh that is on the lower area of my pasture.  My land is on a hill and only parts are semi-terraced.  I went ahead and am starting some corn plants and green beans in starter pots again.  I am going to have to till again!  Weeds grow really well in tilled soil.  My husband and I got the two largest gardens fenced weekend before last and yesterday I tilled (again) and fenced the smaller garden.  One side I sunk up to my ankles in mud...but the blueberry plants I put in it seem to like the wet ground.  With the 8 inches of rain I have decided I need to create a collection trench to control the flow of water through the garden.  I will probably have to mound dirt up too.  I will have to keep in mind the swampy areas when planting and make sure only the higher water requiring plants are planted there.  The smaller garden area will be for blueberries, strawberries and herbs...maybe asparagus and onions if there is room.  The bigger gardens are for corn, green beans, sunflowers and then one for vining plants.  Walt at Tractor Supply informed me some people have planted seed three times because of the late freezes, so I am doing pretty good...I didn't loose but one batch and they weren't planted yet.  I just need to realize that the temperatures on the news are for Shreveport...and we are always cooler in our area.

I have harvested wild blackberries from around my house and backyard, and Mexican plums!  Making Jam or jelly is on my to-do list.  But so is getting the two large garden areas tilled and planted is my priority now...or it will get to hot for some things to produce well.  

On the baby front...my Toulouse Geese and Roeun and Khaki Campbell Ducks are almost completely feathered out now.  My 14 baby chicks are growing out of the brooder, I have 7 smaller chicks in the inside brooder that after being over the hatch date a week, hatched!  I think because that area of the incubator did not get as hot...it is the only thing I can think of.  I waited several more days to see if any more would hatch but I believe because that side of the incubator registered 105 degrees after our power came back on, they must have cooked inside the shell.  I opened the remaining eggs...all but one had fully formed, but dead chicks in them.  So I don't think them dropping down to 80 degrees before they hatched hurt them...I think it was when it came back on and the fan stopped working that did it...and the the humidity getting up to 80% after the 8 inches of rain.  I think hens hatching eggs is the best way to go, especially with the Sprng storms and erratic electricity in our area.  But, I may have My hubby show me what to do to hook up the solar for use in those situations...because it went out for about half an hour yesterday and it wasn't even raining!

No Chicks Hatched!

Well, hatch day was suppose to be yesterday.  I have no chicks running around, no happy peeps...no sounds from any eggs or pips seen.  I have consulted with members of Backyard Chickens, they told me to give them additional time...don't give up yet.  I had already ordered some chicks though.  I may have more chickens than what I know what to do with by the end of the month.  But, I ordered some of the same kind I was trying to hatch, Easter Eggers and Silver Laced Wyandottes...and additional Buff Orpingtons...and Blue Andalusians.  They call it chicken math, it is kind of like Lays Potato chips..you can't stop at just one!  Oh, I ordered a Dominique Rooster and roosters of those kinds too!  

I picked up cement and posts and some of the floor joists for my new coop, but it has rained a lot since I got them, so no work done on it yet.  It will be tall enough for me to walk in, crawling around in a chicken coop or run trying to make repairs, fetch eggs, or clean is no fun!  I am going to make an attached covered run too, so the chickens can be out even when it rains.  I hope to have windows for ventilation and a solar attic fan to help with cooling.  Maybe a skylight, so I can see in the building.  I ordered a six bin nest box, but I may need more, it is suppose to be good for 24 hens to lay.  I have 7 hens now, 14 chicks that I don't know the sex of and will have 15 more hens coming with my order of eggs.  I can make a few more I suppose.  Oh yeah, and even if I don't think any of the eggs in my incubator are going to hatch, if they do...there is the slight possibility of about 15 more.

I am looking forward to getting more eggs, I am hoping the Easter Eggers will lay different colors.  I already have a Rooster for the Easter Eggers and a Rooster for Rhode Island Reds, of which I have at least two of now, along with 2 chicks that could be hens.  With the addition of the Dominique Rooster, I should be able to breed chickens and keep them pure.  The chicks I have now are Rhode Island Red and Dominique's mostly...not pure bred, but they may be meaty egg layers...lol.  I will probably get mostly brown eggs.

On another note, the wild blackberries are getting ripe now and I have collected about 6 1/2 pints in the past few days.  I am putting them in the freezer for now, but blackberry cobbler may be just around the corner!

The Pen and the Brooder

I was not really prepared very well when I got the baby ducklings, I had to use things I got for the chicks I was assuming would hatch from the eggs my chickens were sitting on.  I have gone back and gotten more supplies for each week.  I had 8 chicks hatch and left them with their Momma's for their first week of life.  On one of my trips to get supplies I heard of another feed store and went to check them out, there is where the kind lady talked me into buying a couple of her baby Goslings.  I kept the ducks and geese in the guest bathroom for a couple of weeks, but I had never been around baby waterfowl and did not realize how quickly they grow.

The baby chicks that Ms McCluckinson hatched followed Momma's lead and decided to leave the nest box and go into the general population...this was not good.  The chicken tractor's ramp was to steep for them to get back up the ramp by themselves to get back into the coop.  The wire on the bottom of the chicken tractor was too big, being 2 inches by 4 inches, to keep the chicks contained.  I figured that the dogs would get them, or a hawk, or some other animal.  I had to do something quick.  So, I made a double decker brooder box.  I put Ms McCluckinson in a very large dog crate with her two babies as a temporary solution.  The bars, I soon found out, were still not close enough to keep the chicks from danger...they could run straight threw them!  I found this out when the dogs came out the door and frightened the Momma hen, the babies ran out the side away from the dogs.  Once I got the brooder box completed, I moved both Mother hens and their chicks into the separate brooders.

My mistake was getting some new chicks from Tractor Supply and trying to put them in the same box with my Mother Hens.  That was not good, they pecked the poor new chicks...so I took the Momma hens and put them back into the coop without their babies. So now I have 14 baby chicks in the brooder box and have eggs in the incubator due to start hatching tomorrow.

I made the ducks and geese a new pen because they had grown out of their tub, their tub is what they have as a swimming hole now.  I made the duck pen so that I could take it apart to move it fairly easily.   I put a dog house as their shelter and have shade cloth across a bit over half of the pen.  If you know nothing about geese and ducks, they poop a lot...a whole lot.  They ate all the grass within a couple of days and the poop got thick on the sandy soil, I thought I would be able to rake it up, but ducks and geese keep everything wet with all of their splashing around and dipping their food into the water.  I had to move the pen, two days later it is again a mess...but over 5 inches of rain may have something to do with that.  

Today is Mother's Day, everything is just sopping wet still.  My husband and I went and raked up a bunch of pine needles and put them in the duck pen and the chicken tractors run.  There is a high probability of more rain the next four days and today it has showered on and off a few times.  I am hoping the pine needles will help keep the chickens, ducks and geese a bit dryer this week.  We need more time for it to dry out, but...we needed the rain too.

Nasty!

Yesterday was the day I had to perform the lockdown procedure on the eggs I am hatching.  I took the egg turner out and set it down and candled each egg to make sure they actually had something in them.  I put all of the eggs that I could see completely threw into the sink and all the others payed gently into the incubator.  One egg stuck to the turner, so I figured it was cracked and not good.  I took the egg turner into the kitchen to run some warm water on it to see if I could get the egg off without breaking it.

When the water hit the egg, it basically exploded!  It smelled so nasty, I was gagging.  So e of the stuff that came out of it looked like hard boiled egg yolk, some was greenish black nastiness.  The smell permeated the whole house.  It was pretty gross.  I put all of the egg shell outside in the trash after rinsing it off.  I scrubbed the kitchen sink and washed up the egg turner trying to get the broken bottom of the shell off.  11 of the thirty eggs were not fertile and are sitting in the bathroom sink as I write this.  I am afraid to touch them again.  I should have candled all of the eggs earlier in the process, but I only did a few.  I guess I will need some rubber gloves and a container to put them in, I am hoping no more eggs explode.

We had bad storms roll through the area two days in row.  Our house experienced a lot of power surges, but the lights stayed on and just flickered during the surges.  I was afraid the incubator would go off and I would have to figure out a way to keep them warm, I got lucky.  I think I like broody hens a whole lot better than trying to incubate eggs.  You have to make sure they eat and drink, but you don't have to worry about the eggs too much.  The hen takes care of the temperature and humidity.

Time for Lockdown!

Today is the day that I am suppose to take the eggs in the incubator off of the egg turner and stop turning them altogether.  I have candled a few eggs and it looks like there is something on there...just a couple more days until they start hatching (if they will).  Monday is 21 days, so maybe I will get to see my first chicks hatch out from the incubator.

I bought hatching eggs off of eBay, Easter Eggers and Silver Laced Wyandottes.  Since my hen poofy face died I have been missing the bluish green egg I use to get every day.  I am hoping that some of the Easter Eggers will lay some eventually.  I would have liked some Marans for their chocolate colored eggs, but I will have to wait and see what happens with these.  It is tough trying to keep the humidity and temperature correct in the incubator, so I am not sure anything will hatch.  I still have not started on the new chicken coop, and my other chicks are getting pretty big for their brooder...so if I get a good hatch rate, I will have to see how quick I can get it done.  I have to have a place to put all my chickens soon, the chicks can spend the first week in the house, but then it is out to the brooder boxes on the back porch.  I am hoping that the ducks and geese will be fully feathered by the time the older chicks get too big for the brooder, then I can move them into a fenced pen and use the duck pen for the older chicks, and put the new chicks in the brooder on the back porch.

It has been a juggling act the past month, and I have been really busy trying to take care of all the babies, building pens and brooders, yard work, tilling, planting and trying to take care of the normal household chores.  I have neglected a lot of chores and myself, somewhat...been working outside a lot and not drinking enough water, now I may have a urinary tract infection.  So, today I am going to the doctor for a test.  I am too busy for this mess...but I will try and do better taking care of myself.

How Big of a Garden?

Our first year moving to the country, I wanted a vegetable and herb garden.  We didn't actually get moved into the house until late May.  I made a quick raised bed garden that was only about 8'x10' and I used the cinder blocks we brought from the house in Sachse.  We bought plants, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe and a couple of pepper plants.  It was really too late for the watermelons, but the tomatoes, cucumbers and cantaloupe did well.  I want to be able to can enough to supplement our groceries about 8 months of the year and eventually not have to buy fruit and vegetables from the grocery store.

This year, trying to figure out how much garden space we need...and what I want to plant.  I actually have to large garden plots that are about 65'x25' and two smaller ones about 30'x30'.  How did I come up with that?  Well, I want some separation of vining plants, tomatoes and peppers, corn and beans, fruits and herbs.  I expanded my original garden and planted tomatoes and peppers in it....so far.  The other smaller plot I am planting blueberries, strawberries, herbs and onions/garlic.  I got both corn to eat and corn for feeding the chickens, and sunflowers...and will plant green beans with those.  Then cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and squash in the other.  We will see how that goes.  

I actually had dug one of the 30'x30' plots...broke my pitchfork trying to turn the dirt over.  It is the only spot I have cleaned all the rocks out of.  I still need to rake and clean the others.  I picked up a lot of rocks out of them already...but have not raked them yet.

I am late doing all this, but my neighbor said they would till for me...and didn't.  Then my husband traded another neighbor, computer work for tilling...that is how I got the other three plots.  I let them sit too long and he came and tilled again.  We had a late freeze and my plant starts were on the porch and all died.  So I am planting some plants I bought, and trying to plant from seed on the ones I know will grow quickly.

We have not had much rain the past few weeks and we have very sandy soil.  I will have to water a lot if it doesn't rain.  We have planted fruit trees, peaches, apples, pears and plums.  Because of the late freezes we will get no apples or plums.  But I also planted blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries.  So, I figure if I plant enough of a variety, we will have something in the way of fruit.  I want to get pecan trees too.

We Have Babies!

Ok, I will admit it.  I love having baby animals.  So...it started with the ducks, then I found some Toulouse geese at a new feed store, then just before Easter, some of the eggs my chickens had been sitting on started to hatch...and now I have 30 eggs in the incubator!  We have 8 baby chicks that hatched out of our eggs, that our hens sat on...then I passed by the baby chicks at Tractor Supply and they talked me into taking 6 home with me at a discount.  Well, hey...they wanted me to take all of the chicks in one bin for half price, so I got out light with just the 6.  

I really am going to have to come up with a plan for a chicken coop, the 14 baby chicks will only be about 4 weeks old when the eggs in the incubator start hatching.  I did make a double decker brooder box, but I can tell right now that many chicks are not going to fit in it for very long.  The ducks and geese grew so fast, I had to make a pen for them pretty quickly too.  I got a 368 gallon cattle tank for them to swim in, but that won't get filled until we move it to it's permanent area.

We had a tradgety occur too...my favorite hen Ms Poofy Face died suddenly.  I am happy that one of her eggs hatched and it looks like her offspring may have a poofy face too!  It is a cross between an Easter Egger and a Rhode Island Red and at the moment looks more like a Rhode Island Red.  Maybe, just maybe she passed the blue egg laying gene onto her baby.  My Rooster, Mr. Poofy Face...the one I loaned to a neighbor was brought back to me in rough shape.  He was attacked by another Rooster and had a good cut on his comb and would not open his eyes, eat or drink for days.  I forced vitamins, electrolytes, antibiotics and VetRx down him and he has made almost a full recovery.  He still will not open one eye, but that doesn't stop him from doing what roosters do.

I have been busy

I am sorry I have not updated my blog in awhile.  It is hard going back in time trying to remember everything that has happened.  Needless to say it is Spring right now and I have been super busy trying to get a bigger garden dug and ready, plants started, trying to have some baby chicks, putting up fencing, planting fruit trees and bushes...and yesterday I bought some baby ducks.

I am going to have to build a permanent chicken coop soon, if the eggs hatch I will have the possibility of 20 more chickens.  The eggs are my neighbors though, and I think they are past their due date.  I have two broody hens, I had loaned out my favorite rooster to the neighbor so they could have some diversity in their flock...they were hoping to have broody hens but their hens would not sit on the eggs...mine have, but it may have been to late to save the babies that may have been forming inside of those eggs.  I will give it a couple more days, but I don't have much hope.  I will try and break the broodiness of at least one of the hens...they get weak, don't eat enough and so on.  My other chickens have been getting in the nest with them and laying eggs though.  I decided to let the rooster out, so I could have some babies if they will rotate duties.  I have a lot of extra eggs right now, so even if they don't hatch those...we will try again in a month or so.

The baby ducks are cute, only a day or two old so far.  I am keeping them warm under a heat lamp in the house for now.  They are 4 Mallards and 2 Khaki Campbell, I haven't got a clue as to if they are male or female, but time will tell.  I will have to build something for them soon, they grow fast and will start laying eggs around 5 months old.  My husband would like to get a turkey too!  I am game...just make the coop area bigger and divide it into sections with separate runs.

That is all I have for now.  I have planted grapes, raspberries, blackberries, blue berries, apple trees, pear trees and peach.  I have a lot more to do, I want some pecan trees and some plum trees, although we have some Mexican plum trees on one side of the yard...growing wild, they aren't good for just picking and eating...you have to make jelly or wine out of them.

Looking at Tractors

We wanted a tractor, we needed a tractor, my husband did a lot of research on tractors...all kinds of tractors.  We have a pond, we new we wanted to be able to expand it or make it deeper, so we looked at attachments for that.  We wanted to fence the property so we looked at a post hole digging attachment too.  The ground is soft in a lot of areas and when it rains it causes it to wash out in spots and makes the ground very uneven, we wanted a way to be able to smooth it out or level it.  When they constructed the pond, they pushed dirt into piles and covered the bases of a lot of the trees around the perimeter of the pond and shooting range, we wanted a way to move the dirt away from the trees.  A lot of the trees they removed were piled up and we wanted a tractor large enough to drag them out or put them on a trailor.  When we went shopping for a tractor, we kept all these things in mind...oh, and I wanted to be able to till a garden plot too!  You might be surprised how expensive a tractor big enough to do all that is, how much the attachments are.  My husband went by a couple of places to look at tractors and priced them out, but he wanted me to be able to use the tractor and change out the attachments by myself if needed.  He though that a John Deer tractor would be the easiest for me to use.

We drove up to Texarkana to a John Deer dealership?  I don't know if that is what it is really called, but they sell tractors like a car dealership does.  We talked with a salesmen and went out and looked at a few models that he thought would do the job. I must say, I talk with a Texas drawl and I know that I don't talk real fast and some people may think I talk really slow.  I met someone who has an even slower speech and more of a drawl than I do!  It seemed like it took him forever to get his words out and there were a few times that even I wanted to grab him by the tongue and pull the words out for him!  After everything was said and done we got a quote on what we thought we would need.  After our heart attacks were over, we decided to leave and discuss if we should even bother trying to qualify for a lone to get a tractor.  We decided that we would have to make do without a $30,000+ tractor, and on the way home went and bought a John Deer lawn tractor instead...at least that way we could mow the yard without killing ourselves.

We have been keeping our eyes open for a good deal on a used tractor though, so far any of the ones we could afford are so old that it has not happened yet.  We do have several neighbors with tractors and one neighbor who is willing to dig a garden for me.

Our little John Deer lawn tractor

Oh my! There Is Something in The Kitchen

I told you before, I am new at living in the country.  Well, there are a lot of animals and bugs out here that I am not use to having around.  We never exterminated when we bought this house, I am not sure how much good it would do anyway.  I don't like using a bunch of chemicals, we have cats and dogs and I am really trying to phase out as much poisonous stuff as possible, for not only the animals sake...but ours too.

When we bought the country house, we had a lot of cleaning to do.  There were signs of a variety of bugs...OK, dead carcasses of bugs all over the place.  There were also mouse droppings.  We thought they may have exterminated before they started showing the house, but then didn't clean afterward.  After out first trip out here I brought bug spray with us, lots of bug spray.  We found big rat traps out in storage, there were traps under the sink...there was a reason for those traps.  I did not like the idea of having rats or mice in the house we were going to move into.  We didn't see them at first, but every once in awhile we would see a flash of something out of the corner of our eye.  We had cats at the other house, but we weren't ready to bring them to the country house.  We could not leave anything out without mice getting into it.  They ate our cereal, they got into the bag of dog food...they stole it and hid it actually.  How do I know?  When we moved the cabinets to rearrange them...there were piles of dog food underneath them.

We made a trip into town and bought mouse traps, I don't like traditional mouse traps...don't like to take dead mice off the nasty things.  We got glue traps and little traps that you can throw away...we caught several mice using both.  I think the mice got wise to us though...we didn't catch any for a long time.  But after we got totally moved in Prada, our Bengal cat, still sits and waits in the kitchen for them to come out.  Prada will stay in the kitchen for hours, I don't know what she hears in there...but my husband heard a commotion one night and went in there and Prada had a hold of a mouse...in her mouth.  I guess she had never caught one before, or she thought she was in trouble...she dropped the mouse when my husband walked into the kitchen and it ran away.

Do we still have mice?  I am pretty sure we do...but I think they pretty much stay in the shed now.  I had some sunflower seeds for the birds stored out there in a bag and went to the shed to get the seed...and the bag was half gone and there ere sunflower seed hulls in a big pile next to the bag.  I guess I am going to have to get some more traps.  

This is Prada, maybe she will get better at being a mouser...but she is really good at catching bugs!

My little Garden

One of the reasons we wanted to move to the country was because we wanted space for a big garden.  Living in the HOA had been the biggest challenge for me, I was suppose to ask permission to plant things, come up with a detailed plan and submit it to the HOA Board for review and approval...did I?  No, I thought it was silly...I planted what I wanted to plant and got compliments on the yard on a regular basis.  Hardly anyone planted anything in there yards, there was very little landscaping in any of the backyards on the walking trail.  I got in trouble numerous times with the HOA, and, well I was tired of dealing with their rules.  We kept our property looking very good, but getting ticketed for having empty pots on the back porch really pissed me off!  They weren't really empty, they had perennials in them...and I had to move them, they were heavy.

I wanted to plant at least a few things the first spring we were in the country house.  We had been working a lot on the inside of the house so I knew that it would have to be kind of small scale the first year.  We had a number of cinder blocks from the rain barrels at the Dallas house, we used them to make a small raised bed.  I dug out the grass and we got some garden soil and compost and mixed it up.  We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, and peppers to start.

My little garden, freshly planted

I ended up using a variety of materials to try and keep the dogs out of it, they really liked to lay in the fresh dirt and dug a few things up.  I selected an area that got morning and some afternoon sun but not a lot of sun late in the afternoon.  It need up being a really good spot, the plants did really well.

A few weeks later

The plants were really doing well in the chosen spot...so well that it got crowded really quickly.  We did get a lot of tomatoes and several cantaloupe, enough cucumbers for salads...and a lot of watermelons on the vine.  I never grew watermelon, they started splitting before they got ripe.  I am going to try a different spot this year...far away from the tomatoes! 

Ready for the Chickens

After much research about chicken breeds and local availability, we chose Easter Eggers and Rhode Island Red Pullets to start our chicken adventure.  These breeds are both suppose to be egg-cellent egg layers, cold and heat hardy, friendly and will free range or stay in a coop without a problem.  We found a local source for the hens...took a large dog carrier and met the man selling the chickens at his roadside place about 13 miles from the house.  I was really worried about raising chickens in the beginning.  I still have a lot to learn.  One of those things was what a striaght-run of chickens is.  What Crosses are.  And how long does it take for a hen to mature enough to start laying eggs.  I still need to learn about illnesses and wound care.  But we have had the original chickens for almost 7 months and they are doing well.  In other words, I have not let any of them get eaten by the dogs, the hawks or snakes...and none of them have had any illnesses that I am aware of.  The blue legged chickens are the Easter Eggers, and the Rhode Island Reds have tannish legs.  But, after wanting 6 laying hens...we only got 4 and 2 Roosters.  So, when you get chickens, don't get straight-run if you want all hens...there is a good possibility you will get a few roosters in the mix.  I am OK with it now, but was upset when we got 2 out of the 6 in the beginning.  It is hard to tell until they mature if they are males or females.  But the boys are pretty good looking and having the 2 roosters I will eventually be able to have fertile eggs and raise baby chicks of my own.  

The Girls in their new home

Bailee is interested in what we put in there

Big Red checking out the coop area

Poofy Face

Learning to go down the ramp

Food in the feeder and checking out the run

Nest boxes are filling up quickly

Curious about the camera

Big Red and Red Racer

We are little, but we CAN get on the Roost in the Run

The Finished Monster

When I started the Chicken Tractor, I did everything by hand.  I was using a hand saw, a hammer and a tape measure.  The electric table saw and miter saw finally came out when my husband started helping, It made it a lot easier to cut plywood.  I just had a problem getting it out of our garage shed...going up and down stairs with equipment is a bit of a problem for me at this point, they are kinda of heavy and my knees were still bothering me from going up and down the ladder when we painted the inside of the house.  We did use a wireless hand drill and screws to put the chicken tractor together, it makes for a very sturdy structure.

I put the cage wire on with large fence staples by hand.  Later on we got out the compressor and my husband showed me how to use the stapler for that.  I put additional staples in with it...yeah, it was much faster, and yes...it takes less time.  So I started tacking down the wire with it and using the fence staples for extra strength.  My husband made the large four foot by four foot door on the front of the chicken tractor. I made a smaller door at the rear under the coop section while he was doing that...I had a different vision for the front door, but so as not to use as much wood, he made it differently.  I am glad it is larger now, the only problem I have with it, is that the ground is so uneven out here, the door is hard to open at times.  The door does make a good fence when open, I can use the door and put the additional run I made up to the open door to give the chickens 8 more feet of space to semi free range.  I can drag the run around the yard to green areas for them to clean up...they eat everything in an area, every weed, blade of grass, grub, grasshopper and whatever else there is.  It is great for clearing garden areas.

Chicken Tractor getting it's wheels

The run roost, it is a closet pole!

My husband made the front door

Plenty of venting for hot Texas Summers

Polycarbonate tinted roof on the run (leftovers from another project at the old house)

Sliding door for coop access to the chickens

The rear door to the run

Nest box access door

The ramp to the coop

Nest boxes before pine shavings

The Completed Chicken Tractor

Our dog Kensie is wondering what this is

Large access door for cleaning the coop

With the door open you can get to the whole coop inside

The Monster Chicken Tractor

Coop side view of nest box door open

Ready for Chickens!

My Crew, Bailee and Kensie

Nest Boxes, Roosts and Floors...Oh My!

It took longer than I planned to "create" a chicken tractor with a coop on it. Heck it is mostly framing and wire.  Who would have thought it would take ten days once we started on it.  Part of that was because I did not create a proper materials list.  I do suggest that you come up with a definite plan and create a detailed materials list if you ever decide to make a chicken tractor.  You can use pressure treated wood, don't let anyone tell you different, and I suggest that you do...chickens poop all over it, so it needs to be cleaned often, to keep chickens healthy. If you like to have an easier time of it, make sure you create it so that the poop will wash out a door or hatch of some sort.  I highly recommend using sheet vinyl on the floor of a raised coop...and running it up the wall a bit, 6 inches is probably good.  Make sure you use the best material for the job or you will be fixing it often.  If you don't use pressure treated wood, you may get mildew or mold...and that is not good for chickens.  Yes, I do speak from experience.  I wanted pressure treated plywood, but the people at the store must have pulled a fast one on my husband because I have black mold growing on the outside of the coop now and the plywood is de-lamenating on the ramp up into the coop...so I will have to fix that.

A chicken roost is suppose to be 2 feet off of the ground or floor...that is the recommended height.  It is also suppose to have two feet above the roost so that a chicken can flap their wings while on the roost.  So I calculated that the coop part had to be at least four feet tall.  Chickens sleep on roosts...at least mine do, so you have to keep that in mind when you place the roost, because everything under it will get pooped on.  You also have to take in consideration the weight of full grown chickens, when building a roost...lets say 8 pounds, that is very heavy for most chickens...but it is better to calculate on the heavy side.  Lets say you have a 48 inch roost, each chicken needs at least 8 inches of space to roost...they do bunch together.  So, you could have 6 chickens on a roost that is 4 feet long...so that is almost 50 pounds of weight on the roost at any one time.  I used a 2"x2" piece of green or pressure treated pine...it bows slightly now that my chickens are grown and I may need to put a support in the center of it...or switch to a 2"x4".  If you have never built a chicken coop, it is a learning process.  Oh, and don't use cedar wood on any parts that a chicken might chew on, the oils can make them sick.  I have also learned that cedar shavings are not to be used in the coop either...I had thought about it to keep insects down to a minimum, but again it will probably make them sick.  I use pine shavings in the coop and have put dry pine needles in the run at times, but mine has a wire floor...it helps when it rains and keeps the chickens dryer.

My husband went and bought additional wood for me several times, he brought back vinyl flooring for the coop floor.  It was peel and stick tiles and I do not recommend putting them on rough plywood, if you want to use peel and stick you need a smooth surface to have them adhere well.  We put the nest boxes on top and those are screwed into the wood, so they have not lifted from that area and I got the extra large kennel tray and put it on the bottom under the roost.  The vinyl on the side walls did come off, but I didn't bother trying to put them back on after the first few attempts. That is why I recommend using sheet vinyl, it can by glued down and the upper edges tacked down.

I have found out that hens like to lay eggs in the same nest boxes other chickens have lain eggs in.  But you need to provide at least 1 nest box for every 3 or 4 hens or they will lay wherever they want.  Since my coop is 4 feet wide we made 4 nest boxes by basically putting plywood dividers one foot apart in between 2"x2" strips on the outside wall and placing a 2"x4"  on edge in front of the nest boxes to keep the bedding inside.  We were building our chicken tractor for six hens...or so we thought.  We didn't even know what kind of chickens we would find in our area, at least, not yet.

Monster in the Making

I wanted to make sure that the chicken tractor I was building would not fall apart, the frame is pressure treated wood, the bottom part of the frame I used 2"x6"x 12' pieces for the long sides...I originally planned to make it more like a sled so that I could pull it to different areas.  It really ended up being too heavy for that, so we decided to put wheels on it...I ordered some 10" never flat wheels thinking I could make the chicken tractor something like a wheel barrow...using handles to lift and move it, but...my husband built the door on the front in a way that it was not possible.  The chicken tractor is six feet tall at the tallest point, 4 feet wide and 12 feet long.  The coop section is built 2 feet off of the ground and is about 4 feet square with the roof at a slant so water drains off toward the back.  I changed up my plans and modified the design a few times, part at my husbands urging...partly because I had only an outside view drawn and forgot a few things.  Hey, I had never built anything like this before...and sometimes you have to be flexible.

I made the sides first, 2"x4"'s for the main parts of the frame, 2"x2" for the stays to staple the wire mesh for support.

We used what we thought we pressure treated plywood on the coop section, but I think part of it was regular plywood, I have not painted it because I thought it was pressure treated...I will have to do something about it soon.  We used 3/4 inch plywood on the bottom of the coop and I think 1/2 inch plywood on the sides trimmed with cedar we had to because the door was warped and the additional wood straightened it out.  We used vinyl flooring inside of the coop and nest boxes, but I got a plastic tray that I can remove to make it easier to clean.  I believe it is for an extra large dog crate.

When you build a coop or tractor, you have to have plenty of access to all areas.  You need to be able to get to the food and water easily, you need to make it easy to clean out...chickens poop ALOT, chickens like to roost when they sleep...I thought they slept in the nest boxes, nope.  You also need to be able to get to your chickens if they are hurt or sick.  You also need to protect them from harm, they dig...and so do dogs, so it is a good idea to use a sturdy wire mesh instead of chicken wire.  I used 1/4" mesh on the sides of the chicken tractor, because I have dogs...and I didn't want them getting ahold of the chicken by the toe and biting off parts or pulling them out of the holes.  In hind site I wish I had used 1/2" square mesh so grasshoppers could get in the tractor easier and if I wanted to throw mealworms or scratch grains in I could.  We used 2"x4" welded wire fencing on the bottom of the chicken tractor, so nothing can dig up underneath and have a chicken dinner.

In Texas, we have very hot summers.  We wanted to try and give the chickens plenty of shade and didn't want a metal roof on the coop part.  We used something called Ondura, it is a lighter weight roofing material that does not transfer heat...or so it says on the coop roof.  We had some leftover smoke polycarbonate that we used on top of the chicken run to protect them from too much sun and the rain.  I have heard that chickens can drown from standing in the rain...I am not sure about that, but better safe than sorry.  I don't want to contribute to any chickens death because we didn't build something properly.

To Build or Not to Build?

We knew we wanted to raise chickens, but...well...we didn't know a thing about them.  I mean, other than my next door neighbor having a few in her backyard when I was a kid I had not seen chickens except at the stock show.  So we had to do some research and figure out things like a coop, what kind of chickens would be good in the Texas heat and humidity, what to feed them, how many we wanted to try to raise, should we raise them from chicks or just get adults, what about heat lamps and brooders?  How many should we get to start with?  What kind of chickens would be good for egg laying?  We really didn't want them for meat, not yet anyway...we wanted to make sure we could handle a few before we got too envolved in chickens, what if we were bad at taking care of them or the dogs ate them?  We also needed to figure out where in the world to get chickens.

We read a lot about chickens and coops trying to figure out the best coop to build or buy. I read about a variety of chicken breeds trying to find good breeds that could handle the hot weather of a Texas Summer and the cold we have in some of our Winters.  I didn't want chickens to die from heat stroke or freeze to death on my watch.  I looked into getting chickens on line, but it didn't seem like a nice thing to do to them...mailing them in the heat of summer?  I figured we are in the country we should be able to find some chickens close to us for sale.  My husband put me in charge of animals...and their housing.
So I got to work figuring out a plan for a chicken tractor/coop...he did some research and told me that chicken tractors were healthier for the chickens, you can move them to fresh areas so the chickens can forage for food and it cuts back on feed costs.  It also helps improve the soil by fertilizing it naturally and they turn the soil by scratching and eat the grubs and other insects that might otherwise eat crops or flowers.

First I looked on line at chicken tractors and coops to see how much they cost, and how big of a coop would hold 6 chickens?  They are expensive and most of the reviews for the less expensive coops and tractors were not good, they fell apart quickly...I figured if I built my own, it would be sturdy and last longer.  I didn't figure it would be that hard to do, I could use tools...I just needed a plan and to figure out the materials.  I read a lot, height requirements so they could flap their wings, how high a roost needs to be, access doors for cleaning and retrieving eggs, that chickens are pretty stupid...and would stand in the rain and drown sometimes.  What kinds of materials are dangerous for chickens, how to build a ramp to access the coop, nest boxes and how many and the size, and more.

So, I found a picture of a chicken coop that I liked and I modified it a little and tried to come up with a materials list.  I ordered a few things on line and then my husband and I made the drive to Texarkana for wood, roofing and hardware like hinges and galvanized hammer in staples.  Little did we realize how many trips we would make to get more wood...

Some of the materials for the chicken tractor

I started on the chicken tractor and things sort of evolved, so that we could have a bit better access to clean and to keep the floor from rotting.  We wanted to use pressure treated wood but when my husband went to get plywood he came back with other than pressure treated wood and some of it was too thin.  We needed to protect the chickens from coyotes with this coop.

One side with the wire on it, I decided to use 1/4 x 1/4" wage wire instead of chicken wire.

Our To Do or Wish List...

We really would like to build a storm shelter/root cellar, produce at least half of our food from a large garden, have enough solar and or wind energy that if our regular power goes out we can still have electricity, fence our property so that the dogs can run around on it without going on to other people's land, raise enough chickens that we have meat and eggs from them, raise a goat or three for milk to make cheese, build a goat pen and shelter, build a large chicken coop and fence off a free-range area for them.  We would like to plant a multi-fruit orchard and vineyard, have a large herb garden, plant pecan trees or other nut bearing trees and flowers to attract bees.  I want to build a top bar hive and raise bees...of course a lot of this will be way in the future and I will have to learn how to do much of this.

Our house actually needs more work too, we painted the whole house, but...it needs a lot of touch up work done.  I would like to replace most of the ceiling fans and light fixtures. We have bare bulb fixtures in the closets that have light, and there are two closets that need lighting.  Some of the light fixtures have one bulb capability for a large room and they need two to three lights, the rooms seem really dark even with the light on.  There are some walls that could use electrical outlets, we have had to run extension cords to plug in lights or a TV, and we need electrical to the sheds.  The kitchen pantry needs to be expanded, I am not sure what they were thinking when they built it, the good news is that  the room next to it has a weird area that we could expand into...it may have been for a desk or bookshelf, but it is behind the door when you walk into the room.  We need more plumbing work done, to what extent I am not sure...I don't know why they used irrigation pipes for the plumbing when they built the house, but I do know you have to run the water for awhile before it tastes decent.  So, we will have to do something about that eventually...right now we filter our water.

We still need to level the cabinets in the kitchen and attach the countertop to them.  We need to level the range after that.  We need to re plumb the dishwasher and patch the wall behind the dishwasher and the kitchen sink.  Get two more toilets bolted down, they tend to move.

We want to redo all three of the bathrooms, we can use them, they are functional...but they all have issues.  We would like to change out the spa tub in the Master Bath and walls to a large walk in shower, it is just so big and doesn't work right anyway...it would be nice if the bathroom was larger too, and two sinks would be nice.  I would love to replace the flooring in the bathrooms, and change the bathtub and shower combination in a guest bath to something a bit nicer, same in the other bathroom...I am not liking the fiberglass or acrylic that is in there, it must have been damaged and they patched it, when I cleaned it, chunks came out of the bottom and I can see cracks.  This is a partial list, but it is things we have discussed...just need the money to do the projects and time.

The big ugly tub/shower combination in the master bathroom...it needs to go!

Preparing For Storms

Multiple people told us that sometimes when it stormed and was windy, a lot of trees would fall and the power may be out for several days at a time.  We have a lot of trees out here in the Piney Woods, we are also in tornado alley.  We were in tornado ally in Dallas too...but, the trees in our yard were small and the power lines were under ground.

We are in the country, in a rural area if anything happened we would be on our own for awhile.  In Dallas we were subject to rolling blackouts during the summer at times, we thought it might be good to get prepared for the possibility of being without electricity for awhile.  We bought a generator so that we could have power for the fridge/freezer and lights.  We also have electric for our heat, but we have hookups for propane heat, so we bought a propane heater in case it goes out in the winter.  Crew also wanted some solar power, we thought we could get in on rebate programs or get in on special deals...those types of things are not available to rural areas like they are in large Metroplexes.  But I will get to that later...the solar project.

When we moved in and started cleaning up the yard, we found a bunch of gutters laying out back almost buried by pine needles and dirt.  We had some pretty bad storms and had discovered that the drainage was not good around the house...we needed to install the gutters.  We had some issues though, we found a bag of brackets but no fasteners to put them up with.We had to figure out what to use.  Normally...with a normal house screws or nails would work, but we have a metal house, so we had to do some research.  We tried calling the number on our building, but the lady that answered could not answer the question, and we left our number but no one ever called us back. Finally my son found some information about using pop rivets.  So now we needed the equipment to attach the gutters.  I order a lot of things on line these days, so I started looking for a pop-riveter and rivets too.  It didn't take but a few days for them to arrive.  Trying to get them attached to the house was another story...they are on, but they are not exactly on straight.  Crew and I worked on them for a few days and we couldn't put one section up because there was no real way to attach it to the house.

The back porch after screening and getting the gutters put up with gravel put down for drainage

We had storms that made the Gazebo lean way over so we had to basically strap it down, it rained so hard a few times that the water gushed over the tops of the gutters and made  deep indentations and holes in the ground around the house.  We have bought a number of bags of gravel to fill in the holes and to help with drainage, but one of these days we may have to put in some French drains to move the water away from the house better.  It is not uncommon to get 4 inches of rain in a day.  We have had up to 8 inches in a 24 hour period.  We have very sandy soil so it washes away easily. 

Fall and Winter are the rainy season in this part of Texas, or so we are told.  We have had a lot of rain.  This Summer our pond lost at least 2/3 of the water if not more...we could walk across the center of it and not get wet, we actually were afraid that the fish might die if we didn't get rain soon.  We didn't have to wait to long after we became concerned though we got the 8 inches of rain, and a few days after we received 4 more inches of rain...the pond filled up and the creek left its banks.  I actually had a river running at the edge of our cleared area that we call the back yard.  We have been fortunate that we have not had to much bad weather, although we have lost power several times the longest outage so far has been 20 minutes.

We really want to build a storm shelter, but our metal house is suppose to be able to withstand 160 mile an hour winds...so for now, we will work on other projects.

Storm clouds rolling in from the South