Big Island Chickens

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" CP...

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...

Nest Box and More Too many spaces, not enough chickens! Chalk it up to being a newbie chicken coop designer, or wanting to have the opportunity to expand the coop for more birds, or my eagerness, but I made a space of 24" x 72" to be split into two levels of six boxes per level. With the conventional chicken Math (explanation of the phenomenon of Chicken Math is coming in a future post) of 3-4 birds per nest I would have room for 48 chickens! However, this does not  jive with CMath tenet #4 which is 4 square feet per bird, or a total of 16 birds for the floor space I have right now.  I then went back to the drawing board and came up with this new plan. You can see in the photo I have 5 boxes with storage above and vertical storage next to them. Hinged lids and doors create the access to each of the three areas. Each of the nest boxes have a plastic tote for cleaning and routine sterilization. With the outer door access daily egg collection and replacement of the beddin...

It Begins JoAnn and I retired to Hawaii, dream of a lifetime, right? Retirement in paradise. Well, the life in paradise is expensive. One of the higher costs here is at the grocery store. The high prices of meat has gotten us to rethink how we want to go about providing for ourselves here. Among the other choices we've made, we want to raise chickens. So the first order of business is to get a working egg and meat production coop up and running. We want to have both egg and meat provided from our future flock, and figuring out how many birds of each to have has proven to be vexing. I'll cover the thinking process in subsequent posts, as chicken math takes on a life of it's own. Those that know what I mean will be smiling, those that don't are invited to take the trip with us on our adventure to find out just what 'Chicken Math' is and how it corrupts. I'll be devoting an entire post just for that subject so I'll skip to the second step.  So the fi...