Roosters are loud!

Sorry it's been a while since I wrote...

We have two roosters and we really don't like getting woken up at 4:30 every morning so we are thinking about having our first foray into slaughter. We have to learn eventually and it might be best to start with a batch of 2 before doing a whole group of 8 or more.

We are in the process of making the third deep mulch bed. I will post pictures later today. It gets a bit stinky and fly-infested, but since this tractor is too hard to move every day, we are stuck with this system for now. It is good to be making the beds as well. We plan to convert the whole area inside the chain-link fence into vegetable and herb gardens, and creating them with straw and manure is much less labor intensive than removing sod. The next bed we do we are going to put down a layer of cardboard after they eat the grass for a couple days, just before putting in the first layer of straw. We add a thin layer of straw each day. We also need to put a door in the bottom of the tractor because it is too hard to get them in and out to free range with the current design. We were using hay, but we switched to straw because it has fewer seeds and less irritating dust.

We plan to build another tractor soon with a much lighter, more portable and more highly-featured design.

More improvements

In these pictures you can see the upstairs which is enclosed on 5 sides, and the new ladder going up, and the new longer roost, as well as the temporary quarters we put the chickens in during the terrible storm. It is the dog-crate-brooder pushed up against the house, under the porch overhang, with the brooder light in it. I also included one picture of our GROW BIOINTENSIVE double-dug garden bed, in the process of being double-dug. We are doing something between sheet-mulch and deep mulch now with the tractor inside the backyard "dog" fence, and we plan to use those beds for herbs and salad greens inside the fence, and for perennial fruits like berries and grapes further out in the yard. 

We don't let the chickens free range anymore because it is too hard to catch them, and they seem to only want to poop on the porch and eat the clematis. We bring the greens to them now. We bought a bale of hay and we add fresh hay on top of the old stuff every day. Today I will experiment with giving them grass clippings, and we may try using that as bedding as well in order to reduce the external inputs and try to create as closed a system as currently possible. We don't have a hay baler (it would be impractical on this amoubnt of land anyway), and with the amount of rain we are having, I was lucky to get half the lawn mowed yesterday. I hope to rake it all up for bedding, food and compost before it gets rained on again. 

If it looks like their feeder is out of reach, that is because it is attached to a crosspiece of the lid, so when the lid is open the food and water go up with it. The food and water are both hung on carabiners now for easy removal for washing and filling. We are trying to get both placed where they can't be pooped in from the roost. I think I got the food moved far enough away today - we'll see. Washing the feeder and waterer takes a lot more time than just filling them. We do that at a utility sink in the garage. 

We plan to build a lighter tractor soon that can be moved more easily and get meat birds to live in there. 

Improved tractor

Deep Mulch

We are starting a new method with the chicken tractor called the Deep Mulch Method. Instead of moving the chickens to new forage daily, we will leave them in place for a couple weeks, adding fresh hay every day. This creates a deep layer of manure and hay which rapidly decomposes and creates beautifully fertile soil, conveniently in a rectangular raised bed. We will throw in greens from around the yard so they still have "forage" as well. 

Over the last week we have had very cool weather and severe storms so Peter made their upstairs much more secure and added a ramp and a longer better roost.  We started putting hay up there for them as well. We are studying various tractor designs at http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html in order to get ideas for improvements, nesting boxes, etc.  We also moved them back to the dog crate with the light out on the back patio for a couple nights so they could be warm and dry during the horizontal rain and thunder and lightning. We will post pictures soon. 

News!

Two of the chicks are probably boys - Juni and Rhoda, the ones we thought were underdeveloped and wierd. They are looking and sounding like boys, and the slower feather development is a boy trait. Here is the resource we used: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/sexingchicks.html

I am going to go let them out and watch them walk around the yard and read ACRES magazine. http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/magazine.htm

We had to move the chicken tractor today.

Since I was the only one home (this is Peter by the way), I had to not only devise a way to move it by myself, but I also had to find a way to move the chickens to a safe place. The large cage that we kept them in before moving them outside is now full of chicken supplies, so that was not available. The small brooders that we made for the earlier stages are just not big enough to hold more than one or two birds each, and then only for a short period of time. The solution that I found was perfect.

We have a small fenced-in area (60' X 60') directly out the back door of our house. I think the previous owners used it to keep their dog contained. We've tried keeping Clarra in there, but she is such a clever brute of a dog, that it takes her about 30 seconds to break out. But I digress.

So anyway, I closed both of the gates to the fenced in area and move the chickens over one by one. They loved it! They instantly took advantage of the additional space. They were flying around and exploring like curious children. The found lots of food to forage and seem to really like one area of the yard in particular. They truly were having a blast. They got to spend about 2 hours just playing in the yard. It was a great opportunity to take some pictures.

First Night Out!

The chicks spent their first night in the tractor. They seemed fine. In the morning they reminded me of people who had been camping, walking around on the grass, waking up, drinking water. The way they dring is so cute - they scoop the water up in their beaks then tilt their heads back to get it to go down since they can't swallow. We left some music on outside to scare away predators, as well as a lantern next to the coop. We tried to leave Clarra out as a watchdog, but at 2:30 she was whining to come in and it was keeping me up. Even though she abandoned her duties, the chicks were safe. We know there are coyotes very close, right behind the house in the woods, so we need to be aware and make sure they are secure. We want to build something with some of the features of a Henspa, but without the $1300 price tag. Check this out: http://www.henspa.com/Henspa%20Features.htm.