CompostaBlog

Barred Rocks

By now, you all know that we are raising our own chickens in the backyard. The idea is to gain more self sufficiency and “buy local”.  It is important to know where your food comes from. Some are unfamiliar with the concepts, but for those of you who do and think you are living in solitude, think again. There are many beginning to understand the changes that are going to have to take place for this world to go solidly forward…

Here is a new article found in the Chicago Tribune, Chickens earning their keep in Chicago backyards according to the article…

More urbanites have animals for their eggs and
companionship. “It’s exploding all over the country,” said Martha Boyd, program director for Angelic Organics Learning Center in Woodlawn, which offered a workshop on basic backyard chicken care for Chicago residents last month.

Great news! And more people are fighting the chicken rules that say they can’t have chickens in town.  Like Tim Jurik of Huntington Station, NewYork. At this website, there was a poll and a full 18.8% of those voting were against it saying, “NO! Chickens belong on a farm.” At the rate farms are dying out these days, there will only be factory manufactured eggs to eat in the future.

I don’t know about you but … ONE) I don’t want to eat eggs from these chickens.  I want to know what is IN the food I eat… and TWO) I don’t want anyone dictating to me the kind of food I eat. Forcing us toward industrial raised animals  (see Sustainable Table to review the issues) I wonder if these voters are thinking this whole thing through?

If you want to know if your state allows it, check out  Chicken Laws if your town and state are not listed look up your town/city online. Most towns (even small ones) keep this information online.

If this topic interests you, google “chicken laws” and you’ll find a lot of good reading.

I came in tonight to check on everyone and found one tiny little girl kicked off to the side, weak and COLD. I knew the first thing to do was warm her up, but I wasn’t quite as certain about what to do about her obvious dehydration, so I consulted the internet. I found  Save a Puppy’s Life and  Treating a Sick Puppy What GREAT advice. I’m still not certain that little Bitsy is out of the woods, but thanks to Ed Frawley at http://leerburg.com/ she’s got a lot better chance!

You can see her here with her spotted brother, “Bonzai” Bitsy is the little black and white on the left. The bottle is four inches long. Bitsy was the first born and Bella chewed her cord off WAY too short. This may have set her up to be weak too, she lost more blood than would be normal. While she was born the same size as Bonzai, she is now, three days later, half his size.

We have been alternating siblings to stay in her box with her so she will won’t feel isolated and we put her alone with Bella six times a day. She is getting stronger by the hour!

We foster dogs for many local rescues. If you love dogs but don’t want the long term commitment, you should consider Foster Care for Dogs Anyway, this girl came to us three weeks from delivery. We had no idea what the father could be. The mother is part corgi. We call her “Bella”.

Bella Starting Labor

And we went from that to this ….

Half Way Point

in two hours. Who could know a little bitty welsh corgi could have SO many. Our highest guess was eight and even that was said with a tongue in cheek. And the total count (as far as we know) is ten. TEN little balls of fur!

Roof Going UP!

From the chicken run side closest to the house you can see how much progress we’re making! I will be able to go in the gate and be out of the rain and they will have some shelter from the rain and still be able to be outside… so long as the rain is not blowing sideways. LOL

We’ve stacked so many things off and on through the time we’ve been working on it that the wire is starting to sag in the middle, Errrr. But I think I can run some wire through it and it will be alright. Remind me, if I EVER build another chicken coop to NOT use ‘chicken wire’ it is a pain in the BUTT. Baby chicks get right through it, animals can push right through it.. it’s sort of good for nothing.

Ryan thinking out the chicken coop roof.

I rather liked this photo of shadow, thinking, trying to get things right. NOT being a carpenter I can only appreciate knowing how to build something like this easily and without SO MUCH EFFORT. Ryan had one semester of carpentry in high school VoTech and he’s done a fabulous job. I will be proud to say he built it for me for a very long time…

This weekend, at the beginning, when we thought we were going to be finishing up (ha ha!) he said… “I wish this could last a lot longer…” Awww… I’m such a lucky mom! But I quickly informed him that I had PLENTY of indoor projects to keep us busy over the winter!

This was WAY weird.  I came out to get tools going for about three hours we came up with in the middle of the week to work on the chicken coop and there was squeaking and squawking going on. Mr. Red was jumping up and down, carrying on something fierce. But let me give you some history about that…

The night before, I went in to make sure the babies were tucked in nice and sound. It was only their third night outside alone with a sole heat lamp. And while the night temps were hanging in the mid 50′s, I didn’t want to take any chances. So about three in the morning, I went out to make sure the light hadn’t burned out or anything terrible, they still don’t have all their feathers in… Once a mother hen, always a mother hen I suppose…

Anyway, I found four of the chicks had squeezed through the ‘chicken’ wire. They were in Red’s little makeshift house (and old dog crate with a large black plastic trash sack wrapped around it to keep out the rain. I thought, awwwwww… he’s lonely. So the next morning, I move his ‘bed’ in with the girls and put him back in the chicken run. Fast forward to six hours later and I come out to all the comotion and seeing him jumping up and down like a crazy red rooster.

Ryan drove up just as I was realizing that there was a HAWK in the run with all the chicks and Red. This is what he was going nuts over. He might be a big tuff rooster, but he is not much of a match for a young chicken hawk… even Red is less than six months old! So, below see the sort of motions sickness evoking film we got of the chicken hawks and his narrow escape….
There was a small opening, around eight inches high and around four feet long where this bird got in. And here I was blaming the loss of two chicks on the cat or possibly the dogs…

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