Month: May 2017

Chicks: Merida & Domino

I spend time with the chicks each day (in the morning and before going to bed). This morning, I had one of the two most friendly chicks hanging out on my left hand/arm while getting and holding others in my right hand. Then I had both of the friendly ones at once, as pictured below.

This is Domino, a Dominique chick.  (I bet you can’t guess where her name comes from!) She is very friendly, and likes to snuggle in the palm, and often falls asleep soon after being picked up.

Here’s Merida, who I believe is a White Plymouth Rock, along with Domino.

Both again. It looks like Merida is being confrontational (she is Top Chicken), but a moment later they both settled down again.

Chicken coop: door & window trim

A little more done on the chicken coop: trim around some of the windows and doors.

The trim around the front window, egg door, and people door. (Not quite completed; still needs boards at the bottom.) I used wider trim around the door to avoid a narrow strip of siding between the two doors, and between the door and right corner (which will also have trim, not yet installed).

Trim around the east side window, looking through to the west side window.

The front and west sides.

The east side, including the poop door, sitting temporarily in place.


Closer on the poop door. I cut the sides narrower to allow for the corner trim (yet to be installed), and the bottom to fit around the concrete footings.

Bee inspection

A few pics from a recent inspection of the beehives, when we added a second box to the purple hive. (Captions are now below the photos instead of above, as in previous posts.)

Jenn inspecting the purple hive; it’s amost full, so time to add another box.

Both hives now have two brood boxes, which is full-size; once they get mostly full, we’ll add a queen excluder (a screen the queen can’t get through) and honey supers (smaller boxes that will contain honey, no eggs).


Checking on the second box of the other hive; they’ve barely started on it yet. The black is the plastic foundation, the white is where the bees are starting to draw out the comb.

Three chicks

Just three of the chicks, spending quality time with me. Still little balls of fluff, but starting to get bigger and grow feathers.

Re-categorization

Site administrivia:

I’ve just edited the blog posts about building the chicken coop to only be in the building category, i.e. to remove the chicken category, so the latter now only includes posts with chickens in them.  I also added a chicken coop tag to those building ones.  That seems more useful.

I’m also thinking about changing the way I do posts, to use a caption below each photo, instead of a description beforehand.

Chicken coop: building doors & windows

Back to working on the new chicken coop, in between work, garden stuff, etc.

This week I built all of the doors and windows.

Here’s the person door under construction:


These are the egg doors — double doors to access the back of the nesting boxes, which will be configured as “roll-out” boxes, where the eggs gently roll into a padded collection area, so they stay nice and clean and easy to collect:


Here’s the poop door: a hatch underneath where the roosts will be, with trays to collect the night-time poop for easier cleaning:


These are a couple of the vents on the back of the coop, temporarily clamped in place:


This is a small Lexan window that will go between the above two vents, covering the pop door controller. It needs a window as the controller has a light sensor to automatically close the door at night, and re-open it in the morning:


Here’s building the front window, that will be above the egg doors:


And the two side windows:


Finally, all of the doors and windows together, after being caulked (somewhat messily, but the paint will cover that up):

Video

A chick steals a Q-tip

We have some Q-tips for cleaning chick pasty butts, and a couple of chicks discovered them during my interaction time (when the crate is open), and stole some, and proceeded to run around squawking about their find. Great good fun!