More Eggs and the Escapee is Caught!

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 egg tastes a touch "eggier". It is also has a brighter color on the yolk.

Okay, item #2. Our escapee has been recovered. I gave up on getting this one back some time ago, but JoAnn has been saying she's been seeing it pretty often lately. So to humor her I set to making a guillotine trap today to try to get the phantom chicken. I took the old travel pen I made to pick up the chickens and cut the original door off. I then made some slide rails for the flat plywood 'guillotine' door. I then made a trigger plate whose fulcrum was off center so when the plate was stepped on, the high end moving down would pull the trigger out from under the trap door and gravity would close the trap keeping the chicken inside. Well, I built it, tested it and set it all in about 2 hours, we had lunch and I thought it might take a week or so to finally catch the hen if it ever came around again.

It took 15 minutes.

That knocked my socks off. We barely finished with lunch when we heard a bang and the chickens were clucking like crazy. We headed out to the coop and the photos show what we had! The thing worked first time! We then quickly moved the entire trap into the pen and made sure the exit door was securely closed this time and opened the slide door. She ran out and tried the corners of the pen, but we were ready this time. I figure it will take a few days for her to settle in, but who knows!?! I just know JoAnn is relieved to have them all back together again.

Next Post will be the Worm Condo Tour, I promise.

Comments

Update

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

Coop Build Part Three

Installation Time Or, the real business of Construction Okay, the garage build was prep time for making panels, now is the time I consider that the real building got started. I didn't take a lot of Photos so it looks like a lot happened, which it did. Making each wall a panel allowed for fast assembly. This photo shows the piers in place and the floor set on them. It was sturdy, but a bit too wobbly for me knowing I had a few more feet of building going up soon. So I then cut (2) 2x4 braces for each pier and screwed them in using 3" gold screws, not real gold, but they are called that. Not sure why other than their color. We then attached the linoleum. Sure we risked it getting damaged from adding this early, but by placing it under the bottom plates of all the walls, we figured less water penetration into the floor this way. So far so good- no big gouges yet. These walls went up in less than 20 minutes and I was working alone this day. By allowing an overhang

Grain Sprouting Update

New and Improved Seed Station Or, protecting and taking the stink out of the seeds. My last post was about the idea of sprouting seeds for our chickens gastronomical pleasure.Since then, I have run into a few problems that I think I have solutions for, we'll see. This is my Sprouting station as built: A standard set of big box store shelf racks set up on the ground near a water source. Seeds soaked in a bucket for 24 hours (convenience, as they need only 8-10 hour soaks) then spread out in an even layer on a 10" x 20" garden tray with pre-punched holes. Problem 1. Water distribution. Dry seeds in one side, flooded on the other. Problem 2. During the night rats and during the day the birds are getting to the seeds eating and fouling the trays with husks and their waste. Between the two shifts, I am losing almost half the seeds to these scavengers. This is my Sprouting station as it is today: We added 5 more shelves, a larger water recovery tub for reci

Big Island Chickens

Search This Blog