Snoskred – Life in the Country

Is completely exhausting.

I had no idea there were so many chores – enjoyable as they may be – involved in the owning of chickens.

Life has changed somewhat. My morning routine used to be – recliner with coffee – breakfast thingy – check messages. It is now outdoor coffee & breakfast thingy, check chickens.

It is then clean out the coop time. The girls like to poop. They especially like to poop while sleeping on their roost. There will generally be a line of poop that coincides with where their butts hang off the roost which needs to be scooped and sifted.

I was initially doing this with a rake and sort of similar to how to scoop out kitty litter but the other half came up with a much better idea. The floor is sand. He saw me doing my thing and said.. you need something like panning for gold. So he went inside and got one of our older colanders. We had 3 of them and two were recently brand new so the older one is now the poop sifter. It works a treat! The sand falls through and the poop stays in the colander which I then empty into my bucket.

Then I head off to the garden to grab a couple of leaves of spinach which I throw onto the freshly sivved sand and half a cup of free range scratch mix. The girls go a bit nutty at this point. They love the spinach but the chooky chocolate known as black sunflower seeds fights for their attention.

While the girls do this, I hunt through the sawdust in the laying boxes to look for any poop there may be in there. It isn’t as easy as sifting the sand so it takes a little longer. Plus I am keeping an eye on the girls to make sure they’re not thinking of using the hatch above the laying box as an escape route. Generally they are not – they are busy with the food.

If it is a sunny day and I don’t have to work, I might at this point put the girls into the cat carrier and take them over to the temporary free range hut for a bit of free ranging. I have to stay there with them to make sure no roaming cats appear – we have several that visit our yard from time to time – but that is no chore. I enjoy watching them scratch and dig and do what they do.

If I do have to work or they aren’t going to freerange because I am on painting run duty, I’ll make sure they have something interesting to keep them busy. They had a cauliflower for the first few days which they pecked into an alien landform. I baked some pumpkin for them. They’ll get some slices of apple when I’m setting up the meal worm farming tomorrow. There may be warm oatmeal. I didn’t like it, but that does not mean it should go to waste!

That is now the story of my mornings. As it is so long, I’ll keep the story of the afternoons and evenings for another post!

The girls as yet do not have names. I am waiting for inspiration to strike me. In the meantime I am calling them all chookadoos. Here they are free-ranging. First the Light Sussex with two of the English Game birds..

Next up, the 3 English Game girls.. Red Comb is at the back, and the two purple combs are in the front.

What’s that about a meal worm farm? I hesitate to mention it because I am pretty sure I won’t be the only one wanting to set one up.. Have a read of this thread in particular the posts by Jocler and Glennie.

I’ve been feeding the girls meal worms a couple of times a day and they adore them. It creates quite a frenzy and the chooks are at their noisiest, trumpeting, bok boking and sharing the joy of eating the mealworms vocally with the other girls. I figure I should start farming them or else it is going to become an expensive habit..

This morning we moved the coop out into the yard. We put wheels on it last night before we went to bed.

We put the sand in so it could dry out – funny because the other day I was at the Sushi place and they had a Zen garden where you could rake the sand – now I have a chicken Zen garden!

This is the chicken I fell in love with in her pen. I am not yet used to the fact that they are girls. I keep calling them “it” or even “him” which is bad.

Here are my 4 chickens together in their cat carrier on their way home to their new home.

And here are two of them in their new home – the one I fell in love with has the bright red comb, the other one has a more purple color comb.

The three English Game bantams together on their roost.

The Light Sussex hiding out in the cat carrier eating a leaf from the cauliflower I gave them.

Tonight is Chicken Eve. Tomorrow is the day our chickens will come home for the first time, and they will be living in the coop pictured below for the first week until the run is completed

This is the result of over a months work out in the mancave.

On the inside –

Yellow paint, and lino which will be covered with sand – providing I can manage to dry it out, our bags were wet!

And the section above is the laying area which will contain straw for nesting.

The roof is Solar Grey color, it keeps out a fair amount of the UV rays. We’ll have to see how it goes for Summer but our yard is pretty shady, I’m hoping we won’t need to insulate it.

So yeah, if Frogdancer is reading this, see what your chicken blogging did? You made me believe that I too could keep chickens.

I fell in love with a chicken today, btw. I am hopeful I will be bringing it home tomorrow and if so, you better believe you’ll get pics

There is a girl at work who is getting married. Everywhere she goes, she takes her wedding planning diary with her. There are no words. I do my best to avoid rolling my eyes.

There are plenty of wedding shows on the teevee, some funny, some quite tragic. As in spending thousands upon thousands on just one day tragic. It is *one* day, people. Some people spend years planning and looking forward to this one day.. and then what? What’s next?

My favourite wedding show without any doubt is “Don’t tell the bride”. The wedding planning is handed over to the groom. The show gives them money towards the wedding. He has 3 weeks to plan it and he must choose everything, including the dress for the bride. She does not get to see the dress until the day before the wedding.

Usually the groom does quite a good job. There are occasionally dress issues where the bride refuses to wear the dress and the groom has to work something out last minute which usually busts the budget and means he has to drop something else he had planned.

There was one occasion where the groom decided to have the wedding in Vegas. His bride was expecting 100-200 people at the wedding. He could only afford to take the parents and the best man and bridesmaid. The brides sister and brother were left at home. The wedding nearly got canceled by the bride who was disgusted and very unhappy. It probably should have been cancelled – if he can get it that wrong he must not know her very well!

Maybe I am just getting old.. I don’t like to see such a focus on one day when there are so many days.. I think it potentially leads to depression once that day is over and the bride is left thinking.. well that is over.. what now?