This is a guest post by Peter and Sammy.
Dad told you about building the chicken coop. Now we'll tell you about the chicks who live in it.
First there's Peter, a brown wells (an interesting species) chick that has a gnarly peck. It sort of hurts to get pecked by Peter, because if she pets you its like biting. She chomps down on you.
Next up is Midnight. She is a black sex-link. Black sex-links have a way to tell whether they are boys or girls. It is by their color. Midnight is all black, with some brown on her breast, and that's how we know she's a girl. Midnight likes perches. She usually hops on the one inside the coop, but also the one on the outside. This morning Midnight tried to escape from the coop while we were giving them more food and water. A very crafty chicken. A jailbreaker!
Next up is Kirby. We don't know yet whether Kirby is a boy or a girl. Kirby is a Rhode Island White. Kirby used to be yellow, when she was a baby chick, but now (he or) she is white.
Next up is Meta Knight. Meta Knight is a Lakenvelder. Meta Knight likes perches as well. She is black and white. She is a racing chicken. Very fast. She has cool blue feet. (That's all I can say about her.)
Today we gave them a huge mountain of spinach (that had gone too bad for us to eat). In no time at all, the pile shrunk. They were also really thirsty this morning. So when we changed the water, they were pecking at it before we even put it down.
They really enjoy the coop. But watch out! They really poop a lot too! Their favorite foods seem to be green leafy vegetables and bread. Every night, we see them bunched up in a corner of the coop near the door. When we turn the heat lamp on, they stand up and start walking around the coop, as if the darkness was holding them down.
Showing posts with label chickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chickens. Show all posts
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Pecking Order
We still aren't sure of the sex of the four chickens we now keep (we hope they are all hens because I doubt we can get away with keeping a rooster in this neighborhood), but we are getting a clearer sense of their different personalities.
While still chicks living in the cage, Kirby (the Rhode Island White) was the most aggressive. When we opened the door to let them out, Kirby was the first one out and the last one back in. When they first moved into the coop, Kirby would often sit apart while the other three huddled together at night. This gave her something of an independent air, a trendsetter for the chickens. As they run around their chicken run, I've seen Kirby chest bump some of the other chickens and while I couldn't tell who won the bumb, Kirby looked confident. Now as they've completed two weeks in their run, however, Kirby does not seem to be the ringleader anymore. Yesterday I saw Midnight and Kirby pecking each other's beaks. After a peck or two, Midnight stretched up tall and Kirby squatted down in what looked like a gesture of submission.
Midnight (the Black Sex-link) was, after Kirby, the chick who was most interested in life outside the cage when they were little. Open the door and Kirby would pop out followed closely by Midnight. Once in the run and coop, Midnight has really opened up. Midnight was the first, and so far the only one, to take up a post on the perch we installed inside the coop (lately, that puts her closer to the heat lamp than the others). She was so consistently interested in sitting up high that we added another perch to the run. Yertle the Turtle-like, Midnight sits on high and rules all she can see. The others look up at her and seem to wonder how she got up there. At the moment, Midnight looks like the queen of the hen house.
Peter (the Brown Well Summer) was the most timid as a chick inside the cage. She never wanted to leave and essentially had to be dragged out. She was the last to leave the cage when we transferred them to the run and coop and seemed to be nearly at a loss as to what to do in her new space. Over these two weeks, however, she has grown the most. She is now the largest (and to my eyes, the most beautiful) of all the chickens and she is growing in her confidence. Peter is the most protective of her food. If she finds something she likes, she picks it up and runs away with it (the others tend to just peck together). The other day we gave them some orange slices in the kitchen scraps. Meta Knight found a piece and followed Peter's lead by trying to run away with it. But Peter showed them all a new behavior: chase the chicken with the best food scrap. Chasing Meta Knight relentlessly, Peter gave MK no rest to savor her find. In the end, the morsel was Peter's.
Meta Knight (the Lakenvelder, named, by Sammy, after a character in the Kirby video games) was supposed to be the chick that would run the most. "This is the one that will need space to run," we were told when we got them. But Meta Knight has been a pretty timid creature. Not as afraid as Peter when they were in the cage, but definitely hanging back out of suspicion. Once in the run, Meta Knight has slowly been gaining her legs. Looking outside just now as I write this, I saw all four hens tumble out of the house and head for the far end of the run. Meta Knight sprinted the distance and won the race. Midnight (typical) flew (it is all about the height with her). Meta Knight is also the only other chicken to challenge Midnight's monopoly on the perch (at least the outside perch).
So far I'm enjoying the chickens more than I would have predicted. They are kind of like an outdoor fish tank, in that I'll sometimes look up from my work (I work on the dining room table, next to the glass doors leading to the backyard) and just watch them strutting about as I would watch fish in a tank. The boys love them and, so far, they are paying them their due attention everyday. Around 8pm every night, the boys head outside to plug in the heating lamp so the still young chicks won't freeze at night. The first thing every morning, they head outside to unplug the lamp and check their food and water. Several times during the day, they give them kitchen scraps or pulled weeds. The other morning I woke up before the boys and was there when their alarm went off. Rather than whining about getting up, both boys popped up and marched out of the room, Sammy, bringing up the rear, observing, "Time for chores!"
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| (l to r): Midnight, Kirby, Peter, Meta Knight |
While still chicks living in the cage, Kirby (the Rhode Island White) was the most aggressive. When we opened the door to let them out, Kirby was the first one out and the last one back in. When they first moved into the coop, Kirby would often sit apart while the other three huddled together at night. This gave her something of an independent air, a trendsetter for the chickens. As they run around their chicken run, I've seen Kirby chest bump some of the other chickens and while I couldn't tell who won the bumb, Kirby looked confident. Now as they've completed two weeks in their run, however, Kirby does not seem to be the ringleader anymore. Yesterday I saw Midnight and Kirby pecking each other's beaks. After a peck or two, Midnight stretched up tall and Kirby squatted down in what looked like a gesture of submission.
Midnight (the Black Sex-link) was, after Kirby, the chick who was most interested in life outside the cage when they were little. Open the door and Kirby would pop out followed closely by Midnight. Once in the run and coop, Midnight has really opened up. Midnight was the first, and so far the only one, to take up a post on the perch we installed inside the coop (lately, that puts her closer to the heat lamp than the others). She was so consistently interested in sitting up high that we added another perch to the run. Yertle the Turtle-like, Midnight sits on high and rules all she can see. The others look up at her and seem to wonder how she got up there. At the moment, Midnight looks like the queen of the hen house.
Peter (the Brown Well Summer) was the most timid as a chick inside the cage. She never wanted to leave and essentially had to be dragged out. She was the last to leave the cage when we transferred them to the run and coop and seemed to be nearly at a loss as to what to do in her new space. Over these two weeks, however, she has grown the most. She is now the largest (and to my eyes, the most beautiful) of all the chickens and she is growing in her confidence. Peter is the most protective of her food. If she finds something she likes, she picks it up and runs away with it (the others tend to just peck together). The other day we gave them some orange slices in the kitchen scraps. Meta Knight found a piece and followed Peter's lead by trying to run away with it. But Peter showed them all a new behavior: chase the chicken with the best food scrap. Chasing Meta Knight relentlessly, Peter gave MK no rest to savor her find. In the end, the morsel was Peter's.
Meta Knight (the Lakenvelder, named, by Sammy, after a character in the Kirby video games) was supposed to be the chick that would run the most. "This is the one that will need space to run," we were told when we got them. But Meta Knight has been a pretty timid creature. Not as afraid as Peter when they were in the cage, but definitely hanging back out of suspicion. Once in the run, Meta Knight has slowly been gaining her legs. Looking outside just now as I write this, I saw all four hens tumble out of the house and head for the far end of the run. Meta Knight sprinted the distance and won the race. Midnight (typical) flew (it is all about the height with her). Meta Knight is also the only other chicken to challenge Midnight's monopoly on the perch (at least the outside perch).
So far I'm enjoying the chickens more than I would have predicted. They are kind of like an outdoor fish tank, in that I'll sometimes look up from my work (I work on the dining room table, next to the glass doors leading to the backyard) and just watch them strutting about as I would watch fish in a tank. The boys love them and, so far, they are paying them their due attention everyday. Around 8pm every night, the boys head outside to plug in the heating lamp so the still young chicks won't freeze at night. The first thing every morning, they head outside to unplug the lamp and check their food and water. Several times during the day, they give them kitchen scraps or pulled weeds. The other morning I woke up before the boys and was there when their alarm went off. Rather than whining about getting up, both boys popped up and marched out of the room, Sammy, bringing up the rear, observing, "Time for chores!"
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Our Chicken Coop and Run
It took us a few weeks, but we recently completed construction of our chicken coop and run for four chickens (hopefully hens) that Peter's teacher, Wendy Treat, gave us.
The chickens are named Peter (a Brown Well Summer breed), Midnight (a Black Sex Link), Meta Knight (a Lakenvelder breed) and Kirby (a Rhode Island White). Not the best names if we are trying to nudge the cosmos toward making sure they are all hens, but they certainly reveal the boys' passions at the moment of naming, earlier in the fall when the chickens were palm-sized morsels. Peter named Peter and Midnight. He had long wanted a black hen, according to Wendy, and the name Midnight is nicely evocative. In all the time they've named their mountains of stuffed animals, they've never named anything after themselves. So while I haven't asked Peter why he named the Brown Well Summer after himself, I'll just take it as a sign of how attached he is to these animals. Sammy named Kirby and Meta Knight after two characters from a video game that he is learning to play. While we know that at least Midnight is a hen, we're still waiting on the other three. I feel hopeful, but if one of them turns out to be a rooster, we'll have to find it another home.
We built the coop following a design in use at the Life Lab on the UCSC Farm program. It features a main room with an elevated perch and a nook in the rear with nesting boxes. The roof is hinged so we can raise one side and look in (in the picture, it is the side on the right) and there is also a hinged roof over the nesting boxes (the lower portion sticking out on the right as well). We also have a door on the side that we can open to clean out the inside of the coop (and harvest that reputedly fertilizer-iffic chicken poop).
I was slow in building the coop because I was feeling unsure of my very rusty carpentry skills, and because I wanted the boys to help out as much as possible. As I noted in the previous post, they used all the tools, except the circular saw, including the power drill and staple gun. I had them measuring and marking and talking about how and why we were doing everything we did. Their attention spans were often short, but managed to get it all together somehow.
Noriko and I decided to build the run around our existing planting boxes. This hadn't been a great year for our vegetable garden, mostly because of our extensive travel and Noriko's stretch run on her book manuscript. But I think the final determinant in our decision was the convenience and security. Behind our chicken coop is an area of dense over-growth at the property line with our backyard neighbors. The ancient fence there has fallen over (into our side) and has been covered over in a thicket of blackberry brambles and ivy. Underneath that fallen fence is now a tunnel that I call "Raccoon Highway." I've been trying to convince our neighbors to go in on a good neighbor fence with us so that we could deprive the raccoons of their refuge, but so far I've had no luck. So that meant that we had to build the coop with the expectation that a family of raccoons live right next to it and would surely attack. As I worked on the coop and run, my mental image of these marauding raccoons grew and grew until they appeared in my mind as evil super criminals with adept human-like hands and acute puzzle-solving brains.
As you can see in the previous post, the construction of the run was really worrying me. But the planter boxes were lined with chicken wire on the bottom (to defend against gophers), so by stapling the chicken wire for the run to the outside of the boxes, I had a fully enclosed wire box for the chickens without forcing them to walk on wire all the time. The loose soil of the boxes also allows us to easily harvest a season of chicken poop for other parts of the garden.
In the end, I scavenged posts from an elevated bed frame someone had given us (elevated so that we could place a desk underneath), which you can see as the blue corner posts on the run. That determined the height, just over four feet, which is just perfect for making the boys the appropriate people to clean it out.
Given the time it took to make the coop and the frequent fall rains that interrupted our work, the back part of the roof warped a bit. That annoys me a bit, but it is working out fine for the moment for it gives us enough room in the gap between roof and side wall to run a wire into the heat lamp we have inside (the coop glows a beautiful and expensive red all night long).
The first night the chickens spent outside, I was a nervous wreck. Almost immediately after the sun went down, the raccoons came out and began their inspection. Fearing that the boys would wake up to find shredded chickens strewn about the run, I kept going outside nearly all night long in a pointless attempt to convince the raccoons that I was watching them. In the morning, we found muddy footprints all over the coop, but the chickens were safe.
One week in and the chickens remain healthy and happy.
The chickens are named Peter (a Brown Well Summer breed), Midnight (a Black Sex Link), Meta Knight (a Lakenvelder breed) and Kirby (a Rhode Island White). Not the best names if we are trying to nudge the cosmos toward making sure they are all hens, but they certainly reveal the boys' passions at the moment of naming, earlier in the fall when the chickens were palm-sized morsels. Peter named Peter and Midnight. He had long wanted a black hen, according to Wendy, and the name Midnight is nicely evocative. In all the time they've named their mountains of stuffed animals, they've never named anything after themselves. So while I haven't asked Peter why he named the Brown Well Summer after himself, I'll just take it as a sign of how attached he is to these animals. Sammy named Kirby and Meta Knight after two characters from a video game that he is learning to play. While we know that at least Midnight is a hen, we're still waiting on the other three. I feel hopeful, but if one of them turns out to be a rooster, we'll have to find it another home.
We built the coop following a design in use at the Life Lab on the UCSC Farm program. It features a main room with an elevated perch and a nook in the rear with nesting boxes. The roof is hinged so we can raise one side and look in (in the picture, it is the side on the right) and there is also a hinged roof over the nesting boxes (the lower portion sticking out on the right as well). We also have a door on the side that we can open to clean out the inside of the coop (and harvest that reputedly fertilizer-iffic chicken poop).
I was slow in building the coop because I was feeling unsure of my very rusty carpentry skills, and because I wanted the boys to help out as much as possible. As I noted in the previous post, they used all the tools, except the circular saw, including the power drill and staple gun. I had them measuring and marking and talking about how and why we were doing everything we did. Their attention spans were often short, but managed to get it all together somehow.
Noriko and I decided to build the run around our existing planting boxes. This hadn't been a great year for our vegetable garden, mostly because of our extensive travel and Noriko's stretch run on her book manuscript. But I think the final determinant in our decision was the convenience and security. Behind our chicken coop is an area of dense over-growth at the property line with our backyard neighbors. The ancient fence there has fallen over (into our side) and has been covered over in a thicket of blackberry brambles and ivy. Underneath that fallen fence is now a tunnel that I call "Raccoon Highway." I've been trying to convince our neighbors to go in on a good neighbor fence with us so that we could deprive the raccoons of their refuge, but so far I've had no luck. So that meant that we had to build the coop with the expectation that a family of raccoons live right next to it and would surely attack. As I worked on the coop and run, my mental image of these marauding raccoons grew and grew until they appeared in my mind as evil super criminals with adept human-like hands and acute puzzle-solving brains.
As you can see in the previous post, the construction of the run was really worrying me. But the planter boxes were lined with chicken wire on the bottom (to defend against gophers), so by stapling the chicken wire for the run to the outside of the boxes, I had a fully enclosed wire box for the chickens without forcing them to walk on wire all the time. The loose soil of the boxes also allows us to easily harvest a season of chicken poop for other parts of the garden.
In the end, I scavenged posts from an elevated bed frame someone had given us (elevated so that we could place a desk underneath), which you can see as the blue corner posts on the run. That determined the height, just over four feet, which is just perfect for making the boys the appropriate people to clean it out.
Given the time it took to make the coop and the frequent fall rains that interrupted our work, the back part of the roof warped a bit. That annoys me a bit, but it is working out fine for the moment for it gives us enough room in the gap between roof and side wall to run a wire into the heat lamp we have inside (the coop glows a beautiful and expensive red all night long).
The first night the chickens spent outside, I was a nervous wreck. Almost immediately after the sun went down, the raccoons came out and began their inspection. Fearing that the boys would wake up to find shredded chickens strewn about the run, I kept going outside nearly all night long in a pointless attempt to convince the raccoons that I was watching them. In the morning, we found muddy footprints all over the coop, but the chickens were safe.
One week in and the chickens remain healthy and happy.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Chicken Coop
Back in August, I wrote about a little construction project with the boys, a bookcase for our CDs. The result was pretty crude, but functional. At the time, I mentioned that our next project would be a chicken coop. That, indeed, has been the project of the last several weeks.
Peter has a teacher at school who raises chickens and often brings chicks to the classroom. She has told us for over a year now that Peter responds to the chickens far more than any of the other children. Together, she and Peter have been plotting to bring chickens into our lives. At the end of this summer, Noriko and I finally acquiesced and the teacher, Wendy, went out and purchased four baby chicks for us to raise. We are hoping that all four are hens. The chicks are a Rhode Island White (named "Kirby" by Sam), a Black Sex Link (named "Midnight" by Peter) a Brown Wellsummer (named "Peter" by Peter) and a Lakenvelder (named "Metonite" by Sam). They were tiny a few weeks ago, but as you can see in this picture, they are now teenagers. Until now they've been living in a cage, both at school (weekdays) and in our house (weekends), but soon they will be big enough to spend all their time outside. And so the urgency of building the coop has increased.
We're working on a design we saw at the Life Lab on the campus farm. It is a nice little house, with a space for nesting, a nice perch bar, windows and, most importantly, two hinged roofs that allow us to both peer inside and collect eggs for breakfast. The folks at the life lab generously gave us the plans for free, so it isn't quite right to complain that the directions are poorly written. So I'll just say that I'm grateful for that carpenteering experience over 20 years ago (dimly, but just sufficiently remembered).
We've been going at it a little bit at a time: making the cuts one weekend, assembling the basic frame another. At this point, we're only one or two weeks from the time when the chickens will be able to take occupancy. Unfortunately, this weekend has been nothing but rain and next weekend I'll be in Chicago. We still have to attach the roof and legs, which won't take that much time. Painting it will take up another day, at least. But the thing that really worries me is how long it will take to build the chicken run. They don't just need a coop, but also a space to roam around safe from nighttime predators (mostly raccoons). That's going to take time and another round of ingenuity (dig a one foot deep trench to bury the poultry wire low enough to prevent digging entry? build the run as a fully enclosed chicken wire cube?).
Like the CD bookcase, this is not the prettiest thing I've ever built. But it is an improvement over the first. With luck, this will be another link in a series of construction projects with the boys. I'll post photos when the whole thing is done.
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| Peter corrals the chicks. |
We're working on a design we saw at the Life Lab on the campus farm. It is a nice little house, with a space for nesting, a nice perch bar, windows and, most importantly, two hinged roofs that allow us to both peer inside and collect eggs for breakfast. The folks at the life lab generously gave us the plans for free, so it isn't quite right to complain that the directions are poorly written. So I'll just say that I'm grateful for that carpenteering experience over 20 years ago (dimly, but just sufficiently remembered).
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| Stapling on chicken wire for a floor. |
Like the CD bookcase, this is not the prettiest thing I've ever built. But it is an improvement over the first. With luck, this will be another link in a series of construction projects with the boys. I'll post photos when the whole thing is done.
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