Winter Coop Construction/Meet the Hens

This Wisconsin fall has been amazingly mild. Lucky us-lucky hens. They are still in their tractor on pasture-it falls into the 20's overnight but back to the 40's and 50's in the day. No snow yet.


Our plans and construction budget have changed form the original (many times) so instead of a garage with chicken coop added to the back we have a 10x16 lofted shed.
The shed will be partitioned to have a 4 1/2 ft x 10 ft insulated chicken coop on one end. We will use the other portion for storage -think rabbit and chick bedding and food, snow shovels and snowblower!


Yesterday has a work at home day for us. I felt very competent going to the big box store and successfully loading and strapping down wood and insulation in the bed of the truck. DH and I got the partition wall up and the 1 inch foam insulation glued in place -everything but the ceiling! We will put up 'milk board' for interior walls and paint the floor with a couple coats of porch paint. Run a cord for lights, chicken door and perches deep bedding and good to go!




The chicks:

Araucana-the under dog in my pen-pastel colored eggs

Rhode Island Reds-light brown eggs -shy

Welsummer-fearless! chocolate brown eggs

Leghorn-white eggs -heavy layers

Love Those Leghorns!

We have eggs! Our layers are nearly five months old and I was beginning to ownder if we would have eggs this winter or if the short photoperiod would delay onset of eggs.
The hens are in a chicken tractor which was remodeled from last year-we boarded up a few of the nest boxes since it seemed like the previous inhabitants only used 2 for eggs and the remaining as toilets :) It appears they can still squeek into those boxes and yesterday i discovered a leghorn sitting on a dozen eggs in there! I did a little dance in the field! Several were cracked but all the rest were beautiful inside and out! The girls and I had a pan of scrambled eggs which bordered on orange.
A little more about our laying hens: hatched on June 6th and purchased from My Pet Chicken-what can i say ... i wanted a few of each kind! We ordered a dozen and although they were supposed to be all hens we ended up with 2 roosters. The order was 3 each: rhode island red, leghorn, welsummer and araucana. My selection process was simple -cold hardy birds with pretty eggs. The leghorns of course are white, reds are light brown, welsummer a deep chocolate brown with speckles and the araucana are the easter eggers. Sadly one araucana chick died early on and another is a rooster. My crew consists of 3 leghorns, 3 welsummers, 2 rhode islands and one araucana.
They are still on pasture in the tractor despite some cold weather (down to 20 Thursday night) and doing well. We are working on their winter quarters now-partitioning off a 5x10 section of the shed and insulating it. We were originally going to house the 2 rabbits in their as well-we'll see.

Houses old and new

Too much to do, not much time for keeping up with my blog. I haven't been doing much online except checking the radar-feeling pretty exposed in that camper I guess. The chicks are 3 weeks old and happily (?) in their tractors on the hill. I am relieved to have them out of the coop.

Gut Check

I had a moment today. We were in our weekly Dr's meeting this morning and my partner was talking about farmland her husband purchased from a farmer in foreclosure. This is(was) a large landholder and ALL his property is in foreclosure. The parcel they purchased was 560 acres and a cabin on a lake! I had an immediate sinking feeling. 'what am I doing, rejecting that path?' Accumulation of property and power, isn't that the goal? It took me a couple hours to process the emotions that discussion brought up for me. I was such a relief to get back home to my girls (**and my CHICKS). My carefully nurtured plans tend to fade to a poorly defined image when exposed to the values of normal society. This is a big part of the reason we chose to buy property in the boonies. I WANTED the girls in a different district, I WANTED to NOT be so close to work that it was 'business as usual'. I need physical distance to help me preserve this vision and not make it too easy to turn this 'small life adventure' into just another house with a really big yard.

We are on the right path and this is a good thing because tomorrow is D-day. We sign the construction loan and move rabbits and cats into their new home. The 130 meat birds should arrive tomorrow. The 12 (now 11) egg layers have been in the basement for 2 days now and growing like mad. They will join the Noah's Ark-like procession tomorrow.

Stocking Up

With this wonderful long weekend today felt like a 'freebie' kind of day. We used the time to do a little prep work. We had 15 bantie chicken carcasses in the freezer which were looking a little freezer burned, Tom and I worked hard on those guys (see this post) and were not about to allow them to go to waste. Time for stock! These little birds could not have weighed more than 3#, feathers and all. Being a couple years old, pretty stringy, not for roasting but the flavor is incomparable for soup stock, hands down the best I have ever tasted.


Banties in the orchard -with the big beautiful rooster (unknown breed!)



We cooked the 12 chickens in 2 batches with just onion, garlic, salt and whole peppercorns, using the canner as a soup pot.




After allowing them to cool a little - stripped the breast meat and some of the bigger pieces of leg/thigh. Good enough for chicken salad or in casserole but not great as a stand alone ingredient!



The liquid was poured off through a colander to cool and
allow some of the fat to be skimmed off.



Two cups of stock to a freezer bag (one ladle = 1/2 cup for me) and out to my walk in freezer :) ** Total for the day: approx 20 two cup portions.

Thank you little chickens.

When is a Chicken More Than a Chicken?

Short story: My DH and I butchered approx 20 bantie laying hens on Sunday. We are complete amateurs and it took a long time but now we have the basis for a winter's worth of kick-ass chicken soup stock.
Long Story: After reading Salatin's Pastured Poultry Profit book my DH and I were excited. We had the opportunity to 'flock-share' my dad's laying hens. He did not have the time or energy to care for them full time this summer and had planned on giving them away or otherwise getting rid of them in May of this year. Summer was approaching, along with my reduced work schedule and extra time camping out there. We decided to go for it. We built chicken tractors and became part-time farmers (is there such a thing?). I didn't expect for my husband to become so enthralled with the chickens. I could see his brain ticking every time we cared for them; how do we make this more efficient, what do they like to eat, their behavior. My beer drinking, red-necked, wild man; recently turned yuppie desk jockey was turning over yet another new leaf-heck a whole new tree!
Unfortunately summer ends and schedules return, the chickens were back in the original predicament. We can't bring them back to the suburbs- even our 2 rabbits are outlaws. It was a great experience and has whetted our appetite for what is possible. We found a home for the 8 leghorns who were each producing a jumbo+ egg daily, but the banties were low producers-even if they were our own flock-I would not have fed them all over the winter. They had to go and we couldn't see just throwing them away because they were not convenient anymore. Their little bodies were not disposable, not just waste. Perhaps it was part penance part education, but Sunday morning (and into afternoon) Tom and I wrung necks, skinned (no scalding tanks or feather plucker's available), and eviscerated approx 20 banties and 1 very large rooster. We have their little carcasses (three to a gallon Ziploc) in the freezer awaiting chicken soup stock.
Not a fun way to end our summer of part-time farming, but it was REAL. It will be remembered for a long time. For the winter we will go back to being regular suburbanites, but now we have a vision. Next summer we will be building our own place on property adjacent to my fathers. Chickens are part of the first year plan, along with some multigenerational farming.

Storing Eggs

We are fortunate enough to have a surplus of chicken eggs this summer. Our family took over the management of my father's egg laying hens this summer. We have been camping in his woods Thursday-Sunday this summer in our alter-ego existence as country dwellers. We have two groups or chickens: 8 leghorns and around 2 dozen assorted banties. We house them in two chicken tractors, which get moved across the field daily or twice daily as forage conditions allow. The tractors were an experiment after reading Joe Salatin's 'Pastured Poultry Profits'. A way to improve the soil and keep the hens safe from neighborhood dogs, foxes, coyotes, hawks, wolves and the list goes on! It has been very cool to see the square patches of lush grass spring up where the pens had previously sat.




All these eggs! We have been selling them to co-workers-just enough to cover feed costs. My father gets all he can use and I have started freezing the extras!
It's not difficult at all. I have been freezing in baggies of 6ct, and also in smaller 2 egg breakfast portions. I also plan to freeze some in ice cube trays to give me individual eggs.





Thanks Gina for the mention of freezing eggs! This is such a baby step in becoming self reliant. Now we need to figure out how to feed these guys with out going to the feed store every month! We have been supplementing their diet with garden extras and I even planted a row of mangles with the idea of supplementing the diet with rootstock. But the real answer will be growing (and harvesting and storing) grain. We have a scythe and a whole field of peas and oats, and also some buckwheat. Perhaps we will play with the harvesting part in the upcoming weeks.

Kris

Changes

Sorry for the erratic posting schedule--lots of things on my mind, I haven't felt composed enough to put together a coherent post.
We just returned from another long weekend in the country. I have to say -hot running water is one of the seven wonders of the man made world!
The time we spend at the camper/ArkWork Farms has been changing us. Externally we are browner from the sun and the dirt which has become ground in-but not leaner yet (too many steaks and brats-not enough homegrown veggies-but that is changing). Internally we are changing as well-more thoughtful and less reactive-its hard to put a finger on but I like it. It has been so cool to see my DH return to the man I remember-creative, resourceful, (and sweaty!). He has spent too much time behind a desk it the past 10 years.
This weekend we (mostly he) built the second chicken tractor. The banties in the apple orchard need a new home-the apple are growing on the baby trees and I don't want them to eat those precious apples. The plan all along was to get them into a tractor so they can fertilize the grass. Once the second batch of meat chickens (the Nuggets as we like to call them) are done the hens can go back to the coop. (Or we will be living next door and we will take them)




The garden is looking great! I had no idea I could create something so beautiful! we are currently harvesting radishes, lettuce, some bolting spinach, swiss chard and peas. The pepper plants are struggling a bit-they are puny but starting flowers, the turnips continue to be eaten by a tiny iridescent bugs which eat holes in the greens-but they continue to grow and I can see nice purple skinned tubers in the ground. The show stopper in my garden are the four rows of potatoes. They have such beautiful flowers! I should have planted them further apart, we were not able to hill them very well, so i just filled the trench between the rows with old leaves-it's all an adventure!

I was very disappointed on the 4th, I discovered my children do not know how to spit watermelon seeds--I mean really, what is the world coming to? They have never had a watermelon with seeds-it was fun to see them try to spit those buggers out.

I will leave you with a view from our (camper) front door: ArkWork Farm on the right and the adjacent old farm (future home??) on the left.

A Taste of the 'Good Life'

We are three days into our first four day 'weekend' at the camper. Our camper sits in the woods near the rear of my father's 40 acre farmette. My garden is finally looking less like a patch of dirt. The potatoes have taken off, the pole beans are up and the peas are begging for a trellis. I finally planted the peppers and tomatoes which have been adorning my deck for so long! Tom and I planted a 40x60 (?) foot patch of peas and oats yesterday in the hopes that we can use them for chicken feed-either scythe and store them or turn the girls loose in the patch. My girls were riding their bikes everywhere! We were all very tired little campers last night!

The laying hens are back to full production: 8 eggs/day from the 9 leghorns and 19 eggs/day from the 25-ish banties. They were improving within 4 days of moving them into more spacious quarters.
Tom and I have been able to sell eggs to co-workers. We can't market them as organic because of their feed (Purina-Layena) but I think they are better than commercial organic!

Queen Elizabeth and 'Cluckingham' Palace

This is my 6 year old daughter Elizabeth (Lizzy), in front of our first attempt at a chicken tractor. I say first attempt because this is all new to us and what crazy person (me!!) expects the first attempt to turn out perfectly or even adequately?! These chickens are at my Dad's place 30 miles away, the site of future home (keeping fingers crossed!). The laying flock needed a summer home while their coop was borrowed by the Cornish cross meat birds. Tom and I had read Joe Salatin's Pastured Poultry book and were excited to try it out. We made some modifications and ended up with something with a smaller square foot footprint, but taller and heavier (Tom can pull it, but us less gifted mortals have to use the garden tractor to move it!). It currently houses one rooster 9 leghorns and approx 20 bantams. They have been in there for 1 week and egg production has dropped off alot. The production of the chickens left behind in the orchard has also dropped. I think they are all stressed. I know next to nothing about chickens, but now my real education begins. I will keep you all posted as to what we figure out.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

View of barn from ArkWorks Farm, the farm needs lots of TLC. Lots of junk laying around and outbuildings (like that corn crib) which are dilapidated. The barn is still in good shape-structurally.



My garden-raised beds approx 2 1/2 feet wide x 15 ft long with lots of lawn clippings in the walkways the rest of this fenced area will be sown in cover crops-the soil is very clay-like.



The laying flock temporarily housed in apple orchard. Banties and leghorns. Any idea what the big black rooster is? He is very mild tempered toward people, and has this beautiful green sheen. He was included as a free 'rare' breed with last years cornish cross meat birds.

I Need Chicken Help!

There is a story behind this request that I will not go into completely here. DH and the chicks (all 3 of us) will be taking over ArkWork Farms egg flock for the summer. The coop and yard they currently use will be given over to the Cornish cross meat birds in May. Currently about 30 hens and 4 (?) roosters (correct me if I'm wrong Stoney), approx 1/3 of the group are leghorns and the remaining are banties. I am looking for an 'Eggmobile' type portable chicken coop. I believe they cannot be allowed free range due to the hawks, family of fox and neighborhood dog around the farm. But I'm just a green horn-what do I know?! I am finding lots of very cute little backyard tractors for 4-6 birds. Any suggestion from the homestead crowd for a movable coop for 30 birds? that we can build in next 2 weeks? We can thin the flock if needed and some predator loss is acceptable -the alternative is the entire flock ( and the source of my egg supply! ) finds a new home.

Kris