Chicken City

So we finished building Chicken City! 

$2.50 sale on plastic crates at Wal-mart was an inventive idea for nesting boxes.  My husband used an electric saw and cut the fronts out of these exquisite condos, leaving a small lip at the bottom to hold in the bedding.  Though we have wood chips on the property, we decided to try local hay at first for the litter. 

My husband measured and made stands with 2x4's and plywood to lift the crates off the ground.  If you have tools already, this proved to be an inexpensive way to make a cozy nesting place for the hens!

Just as our book suggested, we contacted the local feed store to find a source for chickens. While we were unsure of what breed of chickies we wanted, we knew that a dual purpose breed would be the best route.  (Dual purpose meaning good egg layers and good for meat.)

Luckily, the breeder, was informative.  He may have been intoxicated on our visit to his home, but man, he is the chicken whisperer!  (He was so much fun!) We decided to go with "Production Reds" because they are just as their name suggests...productive! They are a vigorous, hearty chicken that lays lots of brown eggs.   

We decided to buy one already laying, one about to lay, 2 four month old, a younger one, and a rooster!  The rooster is not a production red, but a bantam.  Since we are planning to free range them after they have settled in, we felt it best to get a rooster.  If a predator is around, the rooster will alert the hens to run to safety...alerting us as well.  And anyway, who doesn't want little baby chickies? :)  

Here they are, about to get settled into their chicken high rise :)

Katie's favorite....the baby :) 

For about a month, we will be going out to the coop at least 2 times a day to get them used to interacting with us and to train them with scratch grain in preparation for free ranging.  And of course, to watch chicken TV!

"My favorite chicken is a sweet chicken (you might even want to meet it too).  Chickens are a great idea for an animal.  You might even use it for eggs too! Chickens are the best ever! My favorite part about raising chickens is having fun activities to do, like getting eggs from the egg nests. I see you can see the picture...I hope you like it!" ~Katie

Acting Out

While Katie does act out at times, I am not talking about the behavioral acting out today. :)

We use the King James Version for study which can be a little daunting to even the most educated adult.  Thank God for the dictionary! There are many Bible versions out there that interpret the King James Version but not all of them are accurate.  Some don't even come close.  So, since I have the opportunity to root her at a young age in KJV, I am taking full advantage.

More times than we would like to admit,  the two of us will have difficulty understanding certain passages or even a story line.  We hit the dictionary for confusing words, and then we act it out!

Today, Katie's difficulty was not a KJV passage but instead a story about sheep in Animal Science.  The story read like this:
" Sometimes a sheep will stray away.  A straying sheep can become cast and die within a few hours. A cast sheep is one which has turned over on it's back and cannot get back upon its feet. Sometimes a fat sheep with long fleece will lie down in a low place on the ground.  The sheep will roll far enough on one side that its feet do not touch the ground.  The sheep begins to kick but finds that it cannot rise to its feet. When the shepherd finds the cast sheep, he helps it get back on it's feet.  Sometimes he has to rub the sheep's legs.  After a while, the sheep begins to walk and then run."

After reading the story,  it came time to answer the fill in the blank questions on the next page.  I noticed her scrambling and re reading the story to find the right answers.  Usually, when your child is trying to look up the answers, it's because they are not comprehending the story.  If the story is comprehended, the answers will come easily.

I said to Katie, "Okay, I'll be the shepherd and you'll be the sheep." So as I read the story, I asked her to act like the sheep."  After that, she was whizzing through the questions without stumbling.

When all else fails, just act it out!

"Katie, do you want to kiss the fish before we throw it back in?" ~Eli Genung 

Prepare The Way

Well, we finally bought a house in the country! We've been so busy with moving, packing, and starting school lately, I haven't made time to blog.

The property we purchased is heavily wooded and backs up to a huge drop off that appears to be a seasonal creek. We have downed trees everywhere you turn and so much limb and leaf debris that its overwhelming at times.  We have so much work to do with not too many hands :)

 "Train a child up in the way he should go....is a hard concept for me to grasp at times.  It doesn't say in the way I want her to go, but the way she should go.  I have a part in influencing her which way to go, but it's turned out that her interests and desires have usually stretched my comfort zone.  Katie has shown a special interest in Animal Science which is the study of animals, their behavior, and biology.  This is an elective subject for us that she enjoys. It's funny to me because as I watch her develop interest in an area of her life, I typically find myself saying, "Oh crap, here we go!"

So....Oh crap...here we go! We are getting chickens!

Yes, for real.  We are getting chickens. Maybe you're like, "oh that's it?  just chickens?"  But this is a big stretch for this born and raised city girl.  Not because I desire to clean up chicken poo on a weekly basis but because my child never wants to leave the farm when we visit to pick up milk, meat, and eggs!  Plus, I really like nutritious fresh free range eggs! On our last visit, she begged our farmer (like all the rest of our visits) to help collect the eggs.  Since our farmer's chickens are not on site, we can not partake in that chore.

So I said to Katie after that visit, "Come on. Lets go to the library and pick up a book about raising chickens."  That was step one.  So I devoured a small book about raising chickens. Then we called grandpa to get some good old time advice.  I feel like a professional chicken raiser already.  :)

Step Two:  Prepare the way!

All hands on deck!  My mom came over which made 8 hands total.  We have an animal shelter already on the property that at one point was used as a chicken coop. The bad news is that it was full of fire wood and in need of repair! So we moved all the firewood from the shelter and stacked it off the ground against the lean to off the shed. (we plan to extend the roof to cover the wood)

Ok, so maybe we will beautify the stack soon.  For now, it works! 

There were some repairs needed such as new door hinges, new chicken wire, and a new bottom door panel.  So we took a trip to Tractor supply.  We purchased all that we needed to repair plus some chicken accessories.  Below is the finished chicken coop.  (well, still a little clean up to do)

We also have many huge piles of wood chips we inherited with the property that will make fine chicken bedding!

The cinder blocks with wood were possibly used previously as a chicken perch but we are using them as a Katie perch so she can reach the door latch.  :)

Step 3: Make nesting boxes and buy chickens!

Chicken raising to be continued....

Speaking of inheriting, we inherited this huge rosemary bush!  Nothing like fresh herbs.

As Daddy promised, a new tree house is under construction!  

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