I painted a quick roadside sign, made with materials we had on hand (an old sawhorse and particle board), to settle in at the end of our driveway!
We put it out yesterday morning, just in time for a snow storm to cover it up! Oh well. Jorn's volunteered to dust it off each morning for us!
I cleaned 66 eggs today (not counting the few that I broke)! They were laid over the course of the past two days. So, I would say we easily have more than half of our ladies laying now!
There is one thing (probably more to come) that I failed to remember about chicks and chickens - dust. Chicken dust is something uniquely generated by them and because the quantity is so much more now, 61 not 8, the garage they were placed in now has a thick layer of the stuff.
This is no big deal as I own a shop vac and there is nothing really of value in there (except the Wrangler, thankfully with windows up). Still, it is annoying and I will modify the arrangement for the next batch. Most farmers have a barn and not a garage so it is not an issue. What I do have is a decent coop and since they are 4 weeks, and they were starting to get a little crowded in the brooder, they have moved to larger quarters.
Now, I do have one full grown Americana from the 'prototype' batch. Chippy is from the good old days when we named our chickens and acted more like people from Brooklyn & Long Island (where we are from) rather than Vermonters. Bears, Bald Eagles, Foxes, Bobcats, Raccoons, Hawks, books, and interaction with 'real' farmers have changed most of our naive idealizations of chickens and livestock in general. Notice I say most.
Chippy must be left in the run outside the coop during the day and be supervised out and in during the dawn / dusk periods. She has a quite natural tendency to dominate the chicks, especially their expensive organic starter and their water. If left alone with them there is the very real possibility she will peck very hard at them. If she draws blood there could very well be a little mass of feathers in the morning.
At dusk she has been flying right up to her perch high in the coop, her favorite spot, and staying there until the morning. Cannibalism is a real possibility as chickens are a textbook example of pecking order in an animal society, pun intended.
Add keeping her in line until the chicks are bigger to my daily to-do list ...
Today the kids helped me finish the brooder. Simonne wanted to be helpful, but she let her brother Jorn take center stage. The chicks will spend the first 6 weeks of their life in this structure, give or take. I had some really, really crappy (8' x 4') plywood / pressboard stuff hanging around from a retailer infamous for sub-par wood. I don't like to name names, but lets just say it sounds like “Chrome Despot”.
I used as much as possible from existing 'inventory'. I wanted to make it large enough to accommodate greater numbers of chicks that may arrive in the future and possibly be rugged enough to have a dual use as a chicken tractor, allowing the chicks to forage safely on the grass. One side has wheels (large 40's era dense metal) and the other handles to lift to get it to roll.
On the underside are screw-in hangers for the water and food, which will be raised higher as they get older. I needed to “double bag” a few other pieces of lumber across the center and around the sides. The pieces I used for the main box had crooked cuts in them, were warped, had holes, etc...
There will be two heat lamps shinning through the chicken wire doors. This will keep them warm, plus they will be able to get away from the heat if they wish by going to the centermost covered area. Simple cardboard will be used as a floor, with shavings on top – easy to compost or recycle.
My initial intention was to make it twice as high, with levels, but my wife informed me that I did not work in Jurassic Park and these were young chickens, not Velociraptors.
