Big Island Chickens

Butchering Day Or, the last supper for the Cornish Cross Eight weeks ago, to the date, we picked up our fine yellow feathered chicks. Tiny little balls of fluff, we couldn't have known how much these chicks would affect us. we purchased twelve of them thinking that we might loose one or two, but hoping for the best.   New house for the Chicks, a brooder really, we named it the Mini Coop and I added an R in parentheses to make it sound smoother. So it was dubbed the Mini Coop(R) Though the front looked similar to the Big Brother coop, the back was plain chicken wire so we could be sure they were cool/warm enough. Chicks don't need much space at this age (so we were told from the feed store guy we got them from) since they like to huddle to feel safer. By the next day, they were looking bigger and there seemed to be less space between the chicks. Nah, that couldn't happen over night! Well, it was. It took exactly three days for the chicks to out gro

Update Chickens are growing Big news, right? Well, it has been a while since I posted here and a lot has happened. Yes, the chickens have been getting bigger; the Cornish Cross are insanely huge and the Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rock hens are now officially old enough to be called pullets.  Their Foster Moms have abandoned them, meaning they are no longer protective of them and instead are making sure they (the hens) are getting the pullets inducted into the flock's 'Pecking order'. The pullets are basically on their own, though chickens really don't need to be taught much. The pullets are finding a pecking order of their own, fussing at and with each other as it should be in the natural order of chickens. The Cornish Cross are amazing. We purchased them three weeks after the pullets and they caught up in size in just two weeks. At three weeks old, the Cross chicks were taller than the Pullets at 5 weeks. Tomorrow they will be 7 weeks old, and they are

Hurricane Alley Madeline and Lester Since they are named in alphabetical order as they get to hurricane status, I'm not sure why the hurricanes came at us out of order, but there you go. We actually got hit with two hurricanes in three days though it wasn't bad where I am sitting. Though Madeline swung close to the island she missed us to the south, however the storm did unleash a lot of rain. 20 inches or so on Wednesday; enough for some localized flooding and sandbagging. At our house there was not much more than the usual rain with some gusty winds above 40 mph, but no tree damage at all. Coop wise, after the last big storm I made sure the nest boxes weren't leaking and sure enough- dry as a bone. We tarped it just in case.   We ordered some Cornish cross chicks about three week ago to start our meat side of the coop, so of course they'd arrive just as the hurricanes did. We had them in a box in our kitchen (I swore this would NEVER happen). When Madeline

Growing Fast or, Life Can Be Hard We have had some storming rain the past two days, Hilo Airport reported 9+ inches for just yesterday. We have been worrying about the chicks getting back into the coop which means we have been doing a nightly chick check, well, yesterday we went to the movies and had dinner out, got back after dark but with the rain, we thought we'd check them again. We pulled out back in the Jeep (we didn't want to get wet) and used the headlights to see that there were no hens out. There is usually one roosting on the roof gutter, but not this night. Because we didn't have a flashlight, making sure everyone was inside was a bit tougher.  Well, we must have missed a couple, perhaps hiding under the ramps, but this morning JoAnn found one chick very wet and dead and another one that was shivering but alive.  She brought the live one in and found a box for her, towel dried the feathers while I set up a light to warm her by. JoAnn had a class to

Is there a Rooster in our Future? or, Hey! What happened to Chicken Math? Okay, two subjects in one post this week. JoAnn and I noticed that we had two chickens that wouldn't leave the nest boxes after laying, they were getting a bit sassy and even belligerent.   I looked it up and found out they were just broody. Meaning they were wanting to tend to the eggs they laid, not just drop and run. Since they had no rooster, they were in for a long wait. JoAnn thought it was sad that they would never be mom's with out a man in their life so we started thinking about how, where and when we could get a rooster. after thinking a few days, the girls weren't getting any less broody but we decided that we wanted our neighbors to stay friendly so no rooster crowing for us. We knew our Mealy Worm lady also had lots of chickens(100 by her count) so a few of them would be fertile and we called her to arrange buying a dozen fertile eggs that we'd slip into the nest boxes a

Water Collection And trying to train the girls to use it. This is the idea. Using the natural rain water to provide for the chickens needs. The Coop is roughly 300 feet from the nearest hose bib and if you've ever tasted summer hose water, you'll know that it's not the tastiest around.  JoAnn and I wanted better for the chickens. We started the system by putting up standard gutters, the PVC material allows for some easily glued up modifications.   I found and up-cycled a 20 gallon HDPE barrel. It was originally a worm tea composter. I cut off and plugged old fittings. Scraping and sanding took off the old paint. A new coat of paint and then my drilling started.  I wanted to be able to see at a glance how much water was in the barrel and from the corner of the coop.  I planned on making a set up similar to the glass tube on an old fashioned coffee urn. I have a scrap section of clear 3/4" PVC pipe left over from another project that fit 3/4" CPVC

DIY Gravity Feed Station OR My lazy way to free feeding for the girls This is a quick drawing mock up of the feed bin I planned to build by recycling a water pressure tank that we had left over after changing out our whole house water system. It holds about 20 plus gallons of water, I am hoping at least 2 bags of feed. It has one opening at one end, and two mounting options, though it turns out I had to go with the hanging mount on the right but that will be explained later in the post. This collage shows the starting look of the tank with the pump fitting on top (pic upper left), with it removed, the standard floor toilet flange (new) and once mounted. (lower right) I did have to modify the bolt pattern a bit in the flange ring to get the standard 6 corner hex pattern. The flange comes with 6 bolt holes but they are not in a true hex shape to allow for toilet bolts. I also had to add an adapter to go from waste pipe sizing to thin wall water pipe. I used a 4" flange,

Okay, The Mealy Worm Condo Tour! And Mini Rant- Grrr.... As promised, this post is about the 'Condo' we made in anticipation of getting our long awaited meal worms! First, I had two orders of meal worms cancelled because it turns out neither of the "quality" meal worm breeders I ordered from ship to Hawaii! And of course, they didn't bother to say anything in their ad on Amazon, nor in their check out process, nor in their order confirmations. Each order I placed, went through monies exchanged and only after three days, plus or minus, I get a second email telling me the transaction didn't complete. No reason why, just that it didn't complete. This being Hawaii, I guess not everyone wants to put our zip code on the package. I have to assume that those that won’t are jealous since all 10 of the major shippers- USPS, FedEX, UPS, DHL, YRC, TNT, Bolt Express, OnTrac, etc., - already deliver here or the dealers just don’t know it’s no more time or

Okay, The Mealy Worm Condo Tour! And Mini Rant- Grrr.... As promised, this post is about the 'Condo' we made in anticipation of getting our long awaited meal worms! First, I had two orders of meal worms cancelled because it turns out neither of the "quality" meal worm breeders I ordered from ship to Hawaii! And of course, they didn't bother to say anything in their ad on Amazon, nor in their check out process, nor in their order confirmations. Each order I placed, went through monies exchanged and only after three days, plus or minus, I get a second email telling me the transaction didn't complete. No reason why, just that it didn't complete. This being Hawaii, I guess not everyone wants to put our zip code on the package. I have to assume that those that won’t are jealous since all 10 of the major shippers- USPS, FedEX, UPS, DHL, YRC, TNT, Bolt Express, OnTrac, etc., - already deliver here or the dealers just don’t know it’s no more time or

The Prodigal Chicken returns! I know this was supposed to be a tour of our WORM Condo...  Okay, one item at a time- Egg News We went and picked up our hens 14 days ago and though we were told they were in molt and the stress of the move, and, and ... we expected to wait much longer before the first egg. Well, it came on day 11 and we've had at least one a day since. I say that because today was our first multi egg day! We got two. They are slightly different color egg shells so we know at least two hens are laying.  We are also hearing a lot more of the egg clucking noises from the coop! It really is eggciting. The photo shows our egg on the left and the commercial egg on the right. When cooking them up, ours again on the left and commercial store bought on the right. Just as all the Tree hugging naturalist, organic spewing believers say, it is both fresher looking and way better tasting. The store bought one tastes like the eggs I grew up on, but the home grown eg