Chicken coop #2

My cousin got chickens a month or two before we did and recently discovered that one of them was a rooster. Well where we live you are allowed to have chickens but not roosters, inside the city limits. There are basically two options eat him or give him away. Well, his daughter is quite attached and just couldn't possibly eat the little guy so he is coming to live with us. I told her she could always come visit him. She still wasn't happy to see him leave. They named him Shy.

Well Shy is quite a bit bigger than our other rooster and I don't want to have to worry about them getting in fights later so we decided to build another coop.

We decided to try to do this one cheap and use as much recycled wood as we could. We have lots of random boards of different sizes in the barn, we just grabbed all the 2x4s that we could find.

we also had chicken wire so we stretched it across the bottom and I used wire to tie it together and make sure there weren't any gaps that other animals could get through.

Something we did buy was hardware cloth for the sides of it. I have read some horror stories about hawks and coons grabbing through chicken wire and getting to the flock. Chicken wire is really meant to keep the chickens in more than it is to keep the predators out. So we forked up the extra money to protect them. We attached them with fencing staples which are a pain in the butt and now I truly understand why someone invented the staple gun.

We didn't have any plywood big enough in the barn so we bought 2 pieces of that for the roof.

This is the door before we attached the hardware cloth.

The finished product. Right now it is more of a run and we put the old "duck house" in it for him to sleep in, since it wasn't being used at the moment.

Patrick has been talking about getting another flock of chickens anyway so this just gives us the option. We don't want Shy to be lonely.

Something got into the Chicken Coop

The Devastation Continues...

We lost all of our chickens, in two nights. I have never been so determined to find the culprit and exterminate.

Well we lost the babies in two batches 5 the first night and 2 the second.

Night 1: We thought it was the neighbors dog, it has been on the property a lot lately and I have had to chase it off. Well we had animal control talk to the neighbors about keeping the dog supervised when outside. We also fixed the latch on one of the doors of the coop. I was devastated but hey i still had two ladies to concentrate on.

Night 2: Not a dog! We are now thinking it's a raccoon. There is this little storage area above the coop, where we put bug spray and some chicken food etc. Patrick got there to find the door of it unlatched, open and the floor ripped out. At this point I am angry, I figure it has to be a raccoon what else has thumbs so they can open latches, and quite frankly I think we should exterminate them all.

There are so many emotions first I knew this was a danger getting chickens to begin with but of course you never think it will happen to you. we raised these girls from babies and I want them back. Then it hits me. How in the world are we going to tell the boys? They love the chickens. This is going to be tough.

Patrick did some predator proofing, he put pad locks on all 4 doors and put chicken wire on the bottom of the coop so nothing could dig into the coop. We decided that the coop was safe for chickens again so he went and picked up some new babies for us this time we have 6 hens and 1 rooster.

We put up a trail cam pointed at the coop and put out a trap to see if we could catch the critters. Well they ate the bait and didn't get caught which was discouraging but now we know what we are dealing with and when they come around. From what we can tell there are at least 6 raccoons and they show up around 2 in the morning.

The hunt begins...

Gardening

Let's see what else does a semi self-sufficient homestead need? A garden! Home grown fruits and veggies. Like we have already told you we are wanting to get away from fast food world and eat healthier.

So what all did we decide to grow our first year at this? Corn, Okra, Peas, Green Beans, Cantaloupe, Watermelon, Peppers, Tomatoes, 

Cucumbers, Strawberries, Spinach, Dill, and Lettuce.

I am pretty new to this whole gardening thing, I always enjoyed taking care of the garden with my dad. Watering them taking care of the flowers and of course picking the fruits and veggies; however I never went through the process of planning it, my dad decided what we would plant, where we would plant them and when. 

Well now that we have our own garden I am working on figuring all that out. With the move we really pushed back the garden and I think that has taken its tole on some of our plants. Some of our pepper plants are a little stunted and I'm not sure what to do about it. also our peas grew up to maybe 4 or 5 inches and just stopped. I talked to my dad who told me they are really more of a spring plant, I think this heat is killing them, I will have to keep that in mind for next year. 

On the other hand our strawberries are producing and our cucumber plants have lots of flowers so hopefully we will have lots of cucumbers soon.

A sad day at the Homestead

Well I have been concerned about this sweet girl for awhile now. She has always had a twisted beak which has proven to be really hard on her. She had trouble eating and drinking and has always been smaller than her sisters. Today she passed. She will be missed dearly. 

If this wasn't bad enough for one day our mallards have disappeared, I just pray they flew off by themselves and their disappearance doesn't have anything to do with the dog across the street. I just keep listening for a quack.

The next day their Pekin friend decided to leave as well. :(