Humming Along.

It's been a while since we updated the old blog. Quite a bit has been happening but we've not taken the time to note it all down Here's an attempt to recitfy that situation.

Things that have happened since the last blog update:

• We visited family and friends in New Brunswick, and attended Laura's brother's wedding. It went well and was a very good time.


• While there we walked a lot on the scenic path by the harbour. We found a strange sign to send to ZeFrank.
  




• Came home and finished building the tractor for the meat birds and moved them into it. We've been dragging it around the yard a little bit every day.
  




• (note the fancy skids!)






• (Another view with the meat birds)
  



• The place is definitely starting to look more rural. And that's a good thing!



• We made good progress on putting in raised beds for the garden. There's still more to do, but the important stuff is planted and the beds will be set for next year.


• Our cousin Jim put together a custom panorama head for our tripod and camera. Very soon we'll post a cool panorama picture or two, so you can get the feel for "being there". :-)


• Shortly after our last posting about the eggs we were getting from Priscilla, she decided to go broody. :-( So of course she wasn't laying at all, and we had to pull her out of the coop each day to get her to have some food and water and move around. She seems to have finally come out of her broody-ness. She's out and about with the rest of the birds, so maybe she'll start laying again soon.


• I did a minor tune-up on our Airens lawn tractor. This doesn't sound like much, but it's a big deal to me because I've never been much of a mechanic. Usually I'm of the "break it and pay to have it fixed" school, so this was a revelation for me. :-)


• A while ago we had our neighbour come over with his tractor and dig a big hole, which was to become a fishpond. Once we looked into it, we decided it would just be too damn expensive to make, so he came over and filled the hole in. ;-) I'm going to rake it a bit more flat and throw some grass seed on it, and eventually you'll never know it was there.



• We've had rainbarrels for a quite while now and I've been meaning to install taps into them so we can more easily fill the watering cans and stuff. I finally started doing that, as you can see here. I've still got one more to install and then I need to build stands for the barrels, so they'll be up in the air a bit.




• Last fall I chopped down some crappy scrub trees in the side yard. A couple of weekends ago I helped my neighbour use a big wood chipper on a bunch of branches and trees on his property. As a payment, be brought the chipper over and chipped up the stuff I had cut. We dumped it onto a tarp, and I'll drag that over to the garden, to be used as mulch between the rows.



• I learned the proper techniques for slaughtering and preparing a chicken. One of our turkens wasn't doing well (it had leg problems, and was having a hard time getting to the water and food), so we decided to cull him. Thanks to our neighbour, the process went smoothly and I learned the right things to do. We now have a small chicken in our fridge, ready for the BBQ. Now I feel I'm prepared for the bulk processing of the rest of the meat birds in the fall.
  



• Again, thanks to my neighbour, we now have a universal string head installed on our weed-whacker. The bump-n-go systems never really work well, and I had lost the reel part that contains the string. So I bought a universal head from Lee Valley and Terry showed me how it all comes apart and goes together. It was very educational. The only downside is that now I don't have an excuse to avoid doing the weed-whacking. ;-)

• Started a new flower bed at the end of our laneway. The plan is to put in a few plants and shrubs, and a tree (or two?) that will eventually provide a bit of shade for the house, which gets very hot in the summer. (We'll do a posting on energy efficiency soon, where we'll talk about the house's total disregard for the huge number of BTUs being pumped into it by the sun in the summer).
  

Things we have planned for the near future:

• Put the landscaping cloth on the raised beds. I've been cutting up clothes hangers with my angle grinder, to be used as landscaping cloth pins. We might even be able to plant a few late-season things. I'll leave that part to Laura. ;-)
• Finish tapping the rain barrels and building their stands. This will make watering the various things easier.
• Rent a trencher and bury 200ft of garden hose, out to the chicken coop and garden. The coop has an auto-waterer (what a wonderful invention) and we've just got the hose laying across the driveway. I want to clean that up by burying the hose. While we have the trencher, I want to run a line out to the garden, so watering it isn't such a huge chore.
• We're going to expand our chicken coop and run a little bit, to give us a bit more room to segregate the birds for breeding purposes.

Things we plan on doing in the medium future:

• Hang a new screen door on the front of the house, to encourage cross-breezes.
• Paint the garage door.
• Sand and stain the deck and railings.
• After it cools off a bit, re-roof the south-east side of the house. We did the south-west side a couple of summers ago, and now it's time to do the other side. The whole north side is fine, though.

First eggs

Priscilla started to lay last week and managed an beautiful hard-shelled little cream-coloured a day until yesterday. These wonderful little eggs are mostly a yolk the same size as a small standard chicken egg. The yolks a a brilliant orange.

Here they are shown with large brown store bought eggs.

It was such a surprise to find them. I had stopped checking for any and on a day last week I went in to clean and fill the indoor waterer and there were four eggs sitting tidily at the door in a shallow nest.

Elvis is now crowing regularly in the morning. He's a handsome boy. The iridescence is developing on his check jowls.

Here is Rembrandt our 7wk old Welsummer cockeral. He's turning out quite handsome too. Currently Horus is winning the dominance thing I think but soon Rem will out weigh him by quite a bit.

Here are two of the Black Stars looking for treats at my feet. The on on my feet has the most gold and one of her sisters in the back is showing an increasing irridescence in her feathers. They're 8wks now.

Here are Isis and immediately behind her Nephthys. I'm hoping that Nephthys is her sister because 'she' is nearly as red in the comb as the two known roos. It won't be long before we know for sure. It'll be quite a disappointment if she is.

Chick Watching

I was just sitting out in the coop, which is currently divided nearly in two with chicken wire. The silkies and me on one side and my three and four week olds on the other. Their personalities (and maybe breed atributes) are more obvious than ever.

The three Ameraucanas are very active and are frequently seen chasing each other other around. It almost always is one of them that will run off with a peice of sod and the others will chase. Horus (for he has the eye of Ra) the little roo was brazen from the start and continues to be, but he seems good natured so far. Isis has lost the ladybug marking on her back now that she is mostly feathered out, but the little tiara-like glyph on her head is still discernable.

Day, the ISA Brown, was the first to be the most curious about me and now the little brown Ameraucana, Nephthys, also steps right up as soon as my hand appears. You can see Day and the make-shift feeder in the foreground. The two Welsummers are in the back.

I think I can now distinguish between the male and female Welsummers. The male I think has the bigger comb and his feathers have developed an almost partridge look to them. By contrast the other's body is now nearly uniformly brown and has just a hint of a comb. She tends to be a little shier and he is usually part of the crush trying to get to oatmeal from my palm.

The Black Stars are all now decidely hen like, but it's the little Buff Orp, Charlotte (after Miss Lucas who went into Kent) who has learned first to sleep with her head under her wing.

The chicks at four and five weeks

I've meaning to post chick pics quite a while, but life been busy. Still it's no excuse for forgetting my mom's birthday. Sorry Mom!

Here are the chicks as they were on the 11th. Notice the bronze breast feathers on the Black Star in the middleground. That's the Buff Orpington in the fore and Horus the Ameraucana roo-to-be in the background. The light Ameraucana hen-to-be is on the end with the Cleopatra eye.

This is a pic for comparison of the light Amerauraca and Horus at 5 days or so old. I like the ladybug on her back and the glyph on her head.

Here is another size comparison group, a Welsummer at five das or so and at about two weeks. I've spread her wing to show the feather growth. Both pics are a bit blurry.

This is Day (short for Daylight as my littlest nieghbour named their matching swap NightLight) at four weeks. She's looking quite ratty at the moment with her brown feathers coming in all patchy. And this was her at 12 days.

This is one of the Black Stars. She's now bigger than a Starling, but not quite Crow sized. This is one of the smaller of the five. She is just getting her first bronze feathers.

Here is the brown Ameraucana. You can really see the fluffy cheeks. In the last day or two longer fluffy neck feathers have developed one the light coloured one.

More chick pics will happen on Friday when we get our batch of roo chicks we're raising as meat birds.

More coop construction

The coop is looking pretty good now. The chickens are in and seem to be living comfortably, and we've been working on building a run for them. Initially Laura had built a temporary run out of a few posts and some chicken wire, so she could work inside the coop without disturbing Elvis and Priscilla.

First off, here's a picture of the construction site. The weather has really warmed up, which is nice but it brings hordes of black flies with it.

I asked our neighbour Terry to come over with his tractor and post-hole auger, which made life much easier. We put in posts for two gates and the corners of the chicken run. I also dug a trench so the wire fencing can be buried a few inches.

Next up, Mom helped me put up the posts for the gates and corners. We had some pressure treated 6x6 posts left over after building our deck, so we just used them.

Then Laura and I put up the fencing.

While Laura filled in the trench, I built the front and back gates.

And here's a picture of Elvis and Priscilla in their new home!

Elvis and Priscilla are in their new home!

Over the last few days, we've made good progress on the coop:
* put up the rest of the interior sheeting
* built a rooster box and closed it in
* built the chicken ramps and the human door, including hinges and latches
* covered a broken window (d'oh!)
* tacked down plastic on the foor

and last but not least,

* Brought Elvis and Priscilla over to their new home!

We got the coop "done enough" late last night (we had to bring out a light for the last work items -- good thing we ran a heavy-duty extension cord out there). Then we emptied the wheelbarrow and dug out our big cat carrier. Then off we trundled to our neighbour's house for a late-night chicken abduction. ;-)

We put down the bedding, got the food and water ready, then opened the carrier. The chickens showed absolutely no interest in getting out of the carrier! So we just lef them there.

This morning we peeked in on them and they were strutting around like they owned the place.

Today Laura plans on putting in some fencing, so Elvis and Priscilla can go outside. We also have a few pictures, so we'll put up another blog posting later.

Grant

More chicken coop progress.

But not enough!

Sunday was a "good progress" day. I started working on the chicken coop at about 10:30. I put screening in over the windows and then installed the windows on hinges. I tried to put insulation in the ceiling, but that's a two-person job. So I started building the door. I also drilled a hole for the extension cord, for the lights/heat lamp.

We're getting there! A couple more evenings and we'll be done! Laura and I finished putting the insulation in the roof and put the vapour barrier up. Then we started putting up the sheeting inside, until it got so dark that we couldn't see to nail anymore. ;-)

I took some pictures but they're still in the camera. I'll put them up in a day or so.

Tonight is the first game of the Nortel Golf League! I'm very excited, but in a way I wish it didn't start till next week. I want to finish the coop as fast as possible because Laura wants to get Elvis and Priscilla out of the neighbour's coop/horse stall, and I want to get the chick brooder out of the spare room (they're really starting to stink).

I think it'll be a couple of days and then we'll be able to get the chickens in their new home. What's left to do:

• finish the interior sheeting,


• build the door and chicken ramps,


• then hang the brooder boxes and a few roosts, and finally


• put up the fencing.

Once that's all done, we should be able to bring over Elvis and Priscilla, and hopefully put the brooder out there as well.

The chicks are getting bigger and the spend less time huddled under the heat lamp now. We picked up another small batch of 6 chicks on Friday. They're various types. I'll leave the description of the chicks for Laura in another post.

Grant

Our neighbour's chick coop

The first chick has already been named, introducing Nightlight and her ISA Brown coopmates.

This is the namer with a Brown chick. I like the jaunty black marks on their heads.

This is the best coop. This used playpen previously served as a sheltie crate before it turned coop last year for a batch of 25 Cornish crosses. I really like the fact that it folds up and there aren't any rough or hard edges near the chicks.

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The first batch of chicks are here!

They're five Black Stars (Black Sex Links) and one ISA Brown. The last was because my neighbour and I swapped a chick, so she has 11 Browns with a Black Star. She looked very cute amongst the yellow fluff. I'll have to get a picture of them too.

They ended up all together for the first few hours as we didn't get the chick coop together in time. An hour or so later I had it finished, then went and collected my group.

They are very active just crashing for little power naps here and there. I've uploaded a short video in raw mov format.

Chicken coop progress

This Easter weekend was a busy one. We made good progress on the chicken coop, and had a bunch of people over for a BBQ party. The weather was gorgeous -- warm but not too hot, sunny, and NO bugs!

On Friday, I got the windows framed in and the back wall plywood put up before the people starting arriving for the party.

Then we had a BBQ party. It was the perfect time of year - the bugs weren't bad and it was warm enough to spend a lot of time on the deck.

Saturday was spent picking up materials and things, so no progress was made on the coop.

On Sunday, we put the remainder of the wall sheeting up:

And then the roof went on:

Here's the chicken-cam view:

Laura working on the roof:

And the roof is on and the tools are being put away:

So all in all, it was a great Easter weekend. We had fun, made good progress on the coop, and got some exercise and fresh air.

Here's another neat thing I've been meaning to mention for some time. Laura's Mom was once in a movie called "In Her Defense" as a courtroom artist. This movie didn't do well at the box office, and it's been very hard to find. Laura and I wanted to get the movie just to see her Mom on the screen. So thanks be to the Internet, we finally got the movie. Here's proof:

< class="MsoNormal">Of course, it wouldn't be a "proper" blog posting without cute pictures of the cat, so...