A chicken coop for $150

So as you all know, my constant devotion here has been to get a chicken coop up. Behold, I present progress! I had a fellow who was due to cut me a load of wood for a steal of a price, but as it turns out, his resurces have run dry due to all this rain we have been having. He can't get
FRIDAY EVENING

into the woods, you see, so he can't get any wood for me. I ricky reconed his place and sure enough, he is out of wood. Not to be outdone by circumstances, I went by Lowes where they will have a junk wood pile from time to time. And by junk wood I mean wood not meat for professionals.

Well, fortunately for me, modern homesteaders can do just fine with junk wood, especially when It is half price or less. I got 8 sheets of plywood for $30. Plywood sheets (the ones I got) usually go for $15 each. Even with Algore math, that is savings.

I also discovered I am no Mason. Although impressed with it's architectured tilt to the right, my building as not square. Insomuch as plywood sheets tend to be rectangular, it presented a problem. However, with a little detailed measuring and surgical percision with my hand saw, I did indeed make a seemless roof, which you see below in the white. Keep in mind that that is just for priming sakes. Ultimately it will be a tin roof.

I have got to buy some more exterior primer and prime the rest of the thing. After a put corners on it and make sure it is sealed, I have got to paint it. I am gravitating towards something swedish, ie, red and white, but then again....

I suppose we could paint it totally white, but then I would have to grow a beard and start a cult. Maybe yellow and white. Anyway, I will figure it out.

NOW

To at least one of my readers chigrine, we are but a month away from chickens and immediate savings in egg purchases, not to mention chicken. Oh, happy day.

Now about the rabbits. Due to Silas and Atlas being 3.6 and 1.5 years old, they fooled with the baby rabbits and they died. The babies got buried in the straw and mother rabbit failed so save them so they froze and starved. I am sure this mother rabbit would vote for a welfare state. She was always out galivanting with her boyZ and let her babies die. However, she is a prolific breeder so I will keep her for that reason.

This big brown rabbit to the left is pregnant. I have secured a large wooden box that I can keep silas and atlas out of for her to give birth in. I hope she does.

Now for a confessional. I think I knocked one of the rabbits retarded. He got out and I cornered him near a fence but he was too quick. I got a big stick to extend my reach and when the rabbit bolted right, I certianly did extend my reach. It was a good polo shot. Right in the middle of the face and rabbit goes flopping all over the ground screaming. I noted in my log that given the right set up, you can exude that satisfying "crack" from a rabbits head that you always want to hear when you beat a creature over the head. I swear I did not mean to hit him like that.

These days he is not making good decisions. When we go to get him, he will run and hide under a leaf or go into a sideways turned bucket and you just pluck him out. The other male chases him all over. If I could tune into it, I am fairly certain he sits around and says " Huh huu huh huuhuu!" all day. We'll see if he gets some play from the females. He has till May.

I think I will name him POTUS.

433% growth!

Well, today was a prosperous day. As I walked out through our pasture area I noted a cardboard box that I intended to burn in our wood pile. It seemed like a pleasing exercise to kick said box for the sheer joy of it and so I walked near to kick and right as I did, I noticed that the box had an unusual amount of straw inside as well as enough rabbit fur to make me think Global Warming had exploded one of our rabbits. Fortunately, I also know that mythical creatures do not kill rabbits in boxes. Quickly adapting to the new situation, I peaked inside the box and observed 10 nude rat/dragon/demon creatures. Ten! Our New Zealand White gave birth last night in a box and that, my friends, is progress.


Excited about this and pondering the implications of another buck in our projects, I vied to go purchase the mate of the brown rabbit we got last week. I bought him and noted that he has funk-ear. Mites, you understand, gather in rabbit and weenie dog (PBUT) ears and cause a lot of trouble. Campho phenique is said to cure it. So, to the store to buy some Campho phenique (and salt blocks for their guts) and dumped a bunch in his ears and massaged them. He could not love it. I am sure having that stuff poured into an open wound and then having someone rubbing the wound feels like crashing a stolen plain into government offices. So this begat me to wondering whether our other rabbits were so stricken. Two of them were. Thus I nuked their ears and they will get better.


I decided to take the chance that the new buck might be feeling lucky in a new town with new ears and a new salt wheel, so I put him and the brown female in a coop together and I swear sexual assualt occurs in the animal kingdom. That poor girl didn't have a chance. I expect that at least 30 days from today, we will see how babby gets formed.

So count them: 10 new babies and 1 new buck.

But that's not all! I noted on craigslist this morning that some champ was advertising a doe and kid pygmy goat pair for free. Said he, "I got them to eat all my undergrowth and vines and thorns. Now they are done and I have no use for them." Me knowing that pygmy goats generally go for some $75 around here and 'free' is less than that, I made arrangements and went on to pick up the goats. The catching was easy enough and then I accessed my heritage and hog tied that mamma goat in an enviable fashion, tossed her on a tarp in the back of the minivan and about made it out when the guy let me know that the new world definition of "free" is "$50". Well, swindler that he is, I had to confess he got me. After driving 40 miles out there I was not about to turn back because this guy wanted to be a land pirate, especially when he was selling me goats at $25 each, which is still less than $75 and also less than "free"











In one day, our herd went from 3 rabbits to 14 rabbits and 2 goats. That means we are getting a bit more independent. I'll take 433% growth most days.















Further, I have found a spot where I can excavate and dam up. See, a wee little spring feeds a certain portion of my lot and the water table is extra ordinarily high around here. For less than $700 or so I can have built a pond for channel catfish, large mouth bass and animal water. Can you say, property value appreciation? I swear, this place of mine will fetch a fine price on the survivalist market.

The rabbit lives!

So our new rabbit made it. Not only did she make it, but she dug a burrow while the other rabbits just sat and wasted their time. I like this rabbit already. This big beast remains docile for now. The New Zealands we have think they are wild like gazelle and have become very hard to catch. Yet, somehow Atlas caught one today and intead of picking it up and swinging it about like like he normally does, he just lay his body on it and snuggled.

That is the stuff cute baby moments are made of.

In the meantime, Silas and I worked to set the 4 corners of our henhouse in concrete. He is getting masterful with the measureing tape these days and does well enough at holding the posts straight up so I can tamp them and adjust them. Next paycheck I will be able to get the boards and whatnot I need to mostly finish this thing, aside from the paint. It feels good to have this place coming together.

I found some ads today for beehives and an article on how to raise talapia in a cow trough. More on that later.

Death, renewal, and a chicken coop

Over the weekend we had a rare but global warming induced snow storm. It usually does not snow here at all. It snowed 8 inches. One of the rabbits, as seen to the left, died. I found her this morning near where the chicken coop is being built. I brought Silas out to show him and talk to him about how the cold can effect animals and boys. He has been interrogating me all day as to why I killed the rabbit. He ran to his friends house and slapped on the door till they answered and yelled, "The rabbits is dead!" and ran away. The confused grandma looked at him and closed the door. He ran back to where I was, but I had buried the rabbit in a shallow grave. Shallow so the plants can better benefit from the rabbit flesh. I thought about showing Silas how to bury a creature but decided ought because he would likely dig it up, he being a wolf boy.


That evening, we went to pick up some concrete and sand paper and on the way home I decided to stop by the rabbit man. He is a retired Marine who has about 100 rabbits in cages. He raises them for meat, sells them to restaurants, to beagle trainers, to pet stores. He has been at it for about 2 years now and he finally has it to where he can turn a profit. He built a bass pond, has chickens, and literally is self-sufficient. I applaude him there. While we were there, Silas renewed his interrogation of all us adults (using his knife hand) as to why the rabbit got killed. I think I earned some credibility when the old man told him that sometimes rabbits don't survive the cold. That seemed to settle it for him.


Anyhow, I did not intend to get another rabbit tonight, I just wanted to find out more about breeding them and if he would sell my his darker colored breeds. He gave us one for free because he is an old champ and I, he says, am a repeat customer.
This is a big one. It is a giant breed, due to get about 15 to 20 pounds. Silas and atlas fought the whole way home about who gets to hold her. Silas won out and also won the scratches that go with it.

We will see how she fares the night or if the night fares her.

This sets us back a bit because the rabbit that died was our pregnant rabbit. Oh well... try again, I suppose.

As for my chicken coop, I finally lay the foundations in concrete. At this time, it will be 8x10x7 feet tall. As it is now, the chicken coop will be in a compound of about 55x35 feet where the rabbits and chickens will hang out. The chickens, being woodland birds anyway, will do well in the trees. The rabbits will just be rabbits in their compound. The boys lost my level, so I improvised with an empty nail jar with water in it. I was able to tell the level by how the water matched up with the label. Pretty smart if you ask me. Go ahead. Ask.
Silas and I lay the foundation by tamping down asphault chunks and then pouring concrete in. It holds. Really, the foundation will be the solid structure itself, but the beginning can't be ignored.

I haven't decided the colors I will paint it. It behooves me to set up with modern homestead with a sense of fashion and flare. Chickens and rabbits ought to live in a happening environment. I have got to figure out how to run a wire, underground, the 200 feet back required to power what I need powered back there by the coop. I do not feel like digging a 200 by 3' by 6" trench through roots and rock. I would loose it. I wonder how much a ditch witch would cost...

A ditch filled in

Today Janet and I filled in the ditch I showed days ago. At first I attempted to fill in a 2 inch layer of gravel and then dirt, but since the gravel was $3.40 per .5 cubic foot, I decided against it. Instead we collected about 30 buckets of broken up asphalt that makes up our ugly driveway, poured it into the trench to make a place for the water to run along the corrugated plastic pipe under the dirt without eroding it. It was successful. I think. I had started doing it a week ago, but a rain storm washed it away. I feel better about our chances this time.

The trenched area makes up the far border where our garden was to be. But it got me thinking: if a gardener digs just a foot down into the soil along that trench line, he will be assailed by angry asphalt and water muck. That can't be right, I think. So, I have decided to move the fence I will build about 10 feet over so that it will flow alongside the water trench, providing undigable area. This is exciting! Now, since the fence will border the ever flowing underground wellspring, we can now build up a dam where the spring flows into the creek bordering our property, making a small pond for exciting ducks and water foul! Sadly, it may prevent us from building a hang out spot where our nice tree is. Shameful!