Girls Gone WILD!

    

If you were hoping for a video of drunk twenty-somethings flashing their boobs while sticking their tongues out, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed here. This is a video of how my [chicken] girls act when I give them treats such as worms, grubs, or crickets. Enjoy!

Coopzilla Video Tour

Here's a video tour of my latest creation, Coopzilla. 

 

Combining Flocks

I finished building my new coop finally! I am calling it Coopzilla because it's so big (at least compared to the old ones). In the old "compound", I had 17 birds. In the most recent acquisition, I had 24. They were in separate coops with separate runs since early January. They were neighbors, sharing a pallet wall so they could get used to each other. 

With Coopzilla, I figured it would be a perfect time to integrate the two flocks. It would be completely new to both flocks so there wouldn't be much territorial fighting. Just the normal pecking order stuff. 

I locked the 24 birds in their coop last night with the idea that we could carry the whole thing to the new location next to the yard and let them all out. My neighbor was kind enough to come over in the morning to carry the coop full o'chickens over. That sucker was heavy! I think I tweaked out my back a little. We got the old coop over to it's location, cut a hole in the fence for the door, attached the ramp, and opened the floodgates so to speak. Chickens were falling over each other to get out of that coop. It was pretty comical to watch. I threw some scratch (aka "chicken crack" on the ground to keep them occupied which worked perfectly. Now to get the others. 

Since the "compound" birds are not all self contained, moving them required a little more strategy. I brought the dog crate into the yard and threw some scratch in it. Most of the birds rushed the crate and stood at the doorway pecking away at the scratch. I nudged about 4 of them inside and closed the door. I was able to catch a few more and put them in as well. Again, my neighbor was on hand to help carry the crate full o'chickens over. We opened Coopzilla's yard door, stepped in and let the girls out. The rest of the birds were on to me when I cam back with an empty crate. One looked at me as if to say "hey, where did you take those other birds?". I tried the same method of put some scratch in the crate, but they weren't having it. I had my son close the door to the coop so they had to stay in the yard and then he and the neighbor's daughter helped me catch the birds one by one. I have to admit; I'm no pro at catching chickens, that's the neighbor girl, but we rounded the last of them into the crate and carried them to join the rest. Piece of cake. 

There was the typical fighting among birds. They were all in a new environment so there needed to be a pecking order, literally. It was funny to see Elvis try to take on one of the other roosters only to have the third come join in. I was curious to see how it would go between the roosters. Elvis has shown aggression in the past and the other two are about as cool as cucumbers. I have to admit, it was nice to see Elvis get a bit of his own medicine. They have SO much more room now. The newer flock was in such a small coop, they were pecking each other so much they were losing feathers towards their tails. This new yard is bigger that the other two yards combined. At 384 square feet, they have plenty of room to roam. The inside of the coop is 128 square feet, about 4 times what both coops were. Not to mention they can now roost way up high inside which they like to do since the coop is 8 feet high inside. 

I put a feeder and a couple waterers in the yard and a feeder inside and everybody is seeming to get along. I even got 3 eggs in the new nesting boxes, which I didn't expect. I thought the stress of the move and new "friends" would prevent any laying. Nice to be wrong this time. So they're getting along during the day. It will be interesting to see ho they do when it becomes dark and they all go in to roost. i suspect there may be some more jockeying for position. We'll see.  

UPDATE: Didn't hear much from the chickens last night as they all went in to roost. I checked on them after dark and most were on the roosting poles I set up. They filled them from the top down. Only a few could fit on the highest roost and it was full. They gradually filled the lower two poles. A few birds were in the community nesting box and 4 were in one of the other boxes. I set up a couple cinder block on end out in the yard with a 2x3 between them for them to sit on during the day (you can kinda see it in the background of the picture above). Barry White & 4 of his ladies were roosting there. It had to be cold for them. I think I will take that thing down and see where they go tonight.   

Whitebeard is clearly the dominant rooster of the 3. Barry White, true to his name is definitely the ladies' man. Poor Elvis is just the young punk kid trying to figure out where he fits. 

"Whitebeard"

"Barry White"

My Healing Crisis

A healing crisis is when you experience symptoms or reactions from diseases or toxins that are released during a cleanse.We have seen such crises with my son and bad gut bacteria die and we get another positive growth moment. 

I recently had my own healing crisis. Without getting into too much detail, there has been some custody drama with the X. I originally filed to have my child support reduced when I became unemployed last year and the other party became greedy. I'll just leave it at that. 

As you can imagine, this was VERY stressful. It was stressful for me, my family, and my marriage. It was a rough time. Life pretty much sucked. 

Then something miraculous happened. My wife & I realized just how much we mean to each other, how we need each other, and how much we love each other. Whaat could have easily driven us apart actually pulled us closer together. 

This event has recharged my marriage and made me fall back in love with my wife (not that I was never not in love with her). And she has fallen back in love with me. This event has put the spark back in our marriage back to when we first got married. My youngest asked the other day" How you guys hug so much?" to which I replied "because we love each other". She then said "you guys didn't used to do that". She's right, after 10+ years of marriage, and 14+ years of being together, things tend to get complacent. This event has revitalized my marriage and life is awesome once again!

Sometimes you just need a slap in the face to make you realize just what you have. I've been slapped and I realize once again that I have everything I need.....my wife & my kids.

Goat Barn Tour

Here's a short video tour of the goat barn I made from pallets & reclaimed plywood. 

The goal was to give the goats a shelter to get out of the weather and use as much reclaimed materials as possible.

Enjoy!

Avocadon't!

Turns out that yummy green avocado is bad for your animals!

A friend of mine and fellow chicken farmer found this out the hard way when one of his chickens became sick. He was able to figure out that the avocado scraps given were making his bird sick because avocados are toxic to animals. 

I found an article from the Avocado.com on the subject you can view here. So beware before you feed sparky chips & guacamole!

By the way, guacamole can be literally translated to "green shit"!

A Word on Building with Pallets

If you choose, like I have, to build with pallets; there are a few things you should know. First of all, pallets are very sturdy, and usually hard to break. That's why they are used for shipping. Many times they're build out of a hardwood like oak. When you are selecting pallets for building,please consider the following:

1. Always ask for permission to take pallets from the place you are taking them from. Many times, companyies contract with other companies to come take their pallets and pay them a fee. The store basically sells their pallets back to recoup some of their costs. 
2. Never use pallets from a grocery store. Remember the e coli outbreaks? That stuff can seep into the pallets that all the tainted lettuce is on!
3. Get all of you pallets the same size. Standard pallets are 40" x 48". If you have all the same sized pallets, the chances of your project turning out square is better. If you're not building a structure, but just using them for the slats, this is still important to make sure all your slats are a uniform length. 
4. I once read that, in order to use the pallet slats, you had to cut along the side stringers and rock the piece from the center stringer to get a usable board. This works great except, now you're left with a shorter piece of re-usable lumber. I break down my pallets with my trust pry bar and big-ol-hammer. I'll do a video blog on how to break these down. It's not that hard and you get more usable lumber from the pallets. 
5. All pallets are treated for pests. Bet you didn't know that. The international export standard, ISPM 15, requires that all wood packaging material be heat-treated at a core temperature of 56 degrees Celsius for a minimum of 30 minutes or that it is fumigated to a prescribed specification with methyl bromide. This regulation eliminates the presence of pests found in wood thereby protecting crops and forests in other parts of the world. NEVER use the chemically treated pallets. Most pallets have a stamp on one of the runners (thicker pieces usually a 2x4). If the stamp reads "HT", that means "heat treated", you're cool. If it reads "MB", stay away. That stands for "methyl bromide". 

Methyl Bromide is some serious shit. If you uses the MB pallets, and you have other animals around that may chew on wood (my dog does, the goats...), they can be seriously harmed. For more info on MB read here. In my opinion, it's best just to stay away from MB treated pallets. 

Here is a stamp showing that the pallet was heat treated:

Well, there you have it; everything you didn't think you wanted to know about using pallets as a building material. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.