I have not yet fenced in an area for our chickens to roam during the day. I would love it if they could just roam the yard. We live on a dead end street so I am not all that concerned with them getting in the street. I am concerned about neighbors complaints. I am still on the fence as to what to do.

Today, Jared and I took the spring off the coop door and left the door open. The Buttercups jumped out first and very quickly the rest followed.

The plants in my garden are big enough that I didn’t think the chickens would cause much damage and I was right.

If you look in the first photo above, you can see the pile in which I am composting the chickens’ manure. It is full of ants and worms. When the chickens found that, they went crazy scratching and pecking. It turns out the chickens don’t really like larger worms. They go for the small worms and ants.

Twice the chickens all returned to the coop on their own. The second time was when it started raining. I am sure as they get more comfortable being out in the yard, they will venture farther away from the coop.

The new Marans are doing pretty well. I wanted to let them out of their little pen so they could join the flock. (Look at my previous post to see photos of the chicken wire.) The big chickens still want to chase and peck the newbies. Yesterday, I rolled up the chicken wire at the bottom a bit so the Marans could go in and out of their area but the bigger chickens could not. That way if the Marans are attacked, they have somewhere to hide. It works pretty well. Occasionally a Buttercup will get into the Marans’ area which stresses out the Marans a bit.

Last night after I was sure the chickens were in the the hen house, I went out to see what the Marans were doing. I figured they would be checking out the rest of the coop since there was no threat of being pecked. I got to the coop and saw no sign of the Marans but I could hear the chirps of their read-for-bed song. The hen house has tree limbs for roosts at three different heights. The longest roost is the highest one. It took a while for our chickens to use the highest roost but now they all use that one. I figured I would open the hen house and the Marans would either be sitting of the floor or on the lowest roost. Nope, they were up on the highest roost with the rest of the chickens. The flock has not yet fully accepted the newbies but we are getting there.

As much as I hoped it was not true, Chicky turned out to be a rooster. He started with a very weak voice but each day, his crow grew stronger. After a couple days of rooster waking dogs, dogs waking wife, wife waking Ed, something had to be done. On Saturday, I posted an ad on Craiglist offering Chicky up for free. That night, Craigslist flagged my post for removal. I am not clear on the reason. Lucky for me, I managed to get a couple responses while it was active. A man had bought his daughter 10 hens last year and this year, she wants to try her hand at hatching some eggs. I hated to see Chicky go because you can tell in the photo above, he was going to be pretty awesome looking. But, he is now on a farm with 10 hens and lots of space to roam. Mary and I wanted 10 hens. We bought 6 chicks and one didn’t make it to the first night. It may have gotten too cold on the ride home. We bought 5 more chicks the next week and one of those died a week or so later. After Chicky’s departure, we were down to 8. Mary found out that Bay Hay & Feed here on the island has more than just baby chicks. On Saturday we went to check out their stock and sure enough, they have chickens that are various ages up to 2 or 3 months old. We decided to buy 2 1-month old French Marans.

Say hello to Amy and Agnes.

I can’t take the camera into the coop without gaining the attention of the Whites.

Here is a video that shows how much more curious the Whites are than the rest.

Jared’s First Cake, originally uploaded by just…eD.

Jared prepared and baked a box cake mix all alone today. The only assistance he was given was Mary helped him decide when it should come out of the oven. We have some strawberries that we bought at the store and those strawberries on top of Jared’s cake makes a very tasty dessert. I think for a 9 year old kid, this cake is very impressive!

The very first thing Jared cooked by himself was scrambled eggs. This is the first thing he has baked. The first thing I cooked by myself as a kid was pancakes. I really liked pancakes which motivated me one morning to make some of my own. I followed the recipe on the Bisquick box which is actually pretty simple. The most difficult things were deciding the right setting for the burner on the stove and deciding when to do that first flip.

We had great weather today and it allowed me to get some stuff done outside. I ran the chipper and munched up the last of the yard debris collected from last fall. My tomato plants were getting very leggy so I needed to get them in the ground. Mission accomplished!

I put my tomato plants in really deep holes so only about 6 inches or so of the plant is exposed. I will put wire baskets around the plants later.

The garlic I planted last fall is doing very well.

The chickens are enjoying the nice weather. They are growing fast!

If you follow me on Facebook, then you know that I have been working hard the past few weeks on a coop for our chickens. If you’ve avoided Facebook, then this post should catch you up…

I needed to build a coop and I wasn’t up for a lot of trial and error. So I bought plans from mypetchicken.com. After purchasing the plans, the web site operators e-mailed me a PDF file containing step-by-step instructions on how to build the coop.

The plans include a really good materials list. I made a trip to our local lumber yard, ProBuild, and ordered everything I needed. It is great having a lumber yard that still delivers for free.

I took the week of Jared’s spring break off from work to build the coop. Because I decided to place the coop in my garden, I had to first run a big pile of yard debris left over from the fall through the chipper. My mom came over on the first Sunday of my vacation and helped with the garden clearing work.

The first building day was not very productive because it rained but I managed to frame one wall.

On build day two, Mary, Jared and I constructed the frame for each wall in the driveway and then assembled the walls in the garden.

The coop is sitting on concrete blocks which took some time and digging to make level. Some flashing between the wood and the blocks should stop moisture from wicking up from the ground.

After two build days, we have a framed box. At this point, I had made two deviations from the plans. First, ProBuild only sells 3 foot wide 1/2″ hardware cloth (welded wire mesh). The plans call for 4 foot wide hardware cloth around the bottom. In the plans, the hen house is 3 feet off the ground allowing the hardware cloth to go a foot into the ground. Since I ony had 3 feet of wire, I placed the bottom hen house supports 2 feet off the ground. Second, the plans call for the vertical supports to be 6 feet high. I made mine 7 feet. Those two adjustments gave me a hen house that was 5 feet tall rather than 3 feet tall.

On build day three, I added the roof.

The polycarbonate roof panels will let in a lot of light and the design of the rafters allow for good ventilation. Plus, it looks pretty cool!

On build day four, I added the rest of the hen house framing and we installed the hardware cloth. Notice the hardware cloth goes into the ground. Hopefully this will keep out any digging predators.

Because it rained over spring break and with garden clearing that I had to do, I did not complete as much of the coop as I was hoping for over my vacation but I was happy with the progress. We had enough of the hardware cloth installed that Mary could put the chickens in the coop during the day. We wanted to start acclimating the chickens to some cooler temperatures. After work one day, I built the front door and we installed it the next day. That made the coop even more secure for the chickens during the day.

The chickens were really enjoying being outside but as soon as it started cooling off in the evening, they would change their chirps to something that sounded a bit more distressed. They were ready to go inside where it was warm.

The next weekend, I was able to work on the inside walls of the hen house. At this point I was loosely following the plans. I decided to put the egg door on a different wall and the plans called for building the hen house from the outside in, I wanted to build it from the inside out.

I installed all the interior walls of the hen house, the egg door, the access door and the chicken ramp. Now, the coop was fully functional. That Sunday night, the chickens slept outside for the first time. We scooped up the chickens and placed them in the hen house. I covered the exit ramp so they could not get out on their own. I didn’t want them getting out and becoming too cold because they couldn’t or wouldn’t get back in the hen house.

The next afternoon, Jared and I went in the coop for some chicken training. We would put a chicken in the hen house through the access door and then encourage it to exit down the ramp. We did this several times with each chicken. Later when it was almost dark, I went outside to shut them up in the hen house like the night before. I opened our back door and could hear some distress calls. I figured I would find them all huddled in a corner on the ground freezing their tail feathers off. When I got to the coop, I could only see two chickens on the ground. The rest were in the hen house happily chirping away. The two on the ground were crying because they couldn’t figure out where the rest went.

I went into the coop and one ran up the ramp on its own. I grabbed the other and encouraged it to go up the ramp. It was awesome to see the chickens were learning to use the hen house on their own. They are so social and so attached to one another that you really only have to get a few of them to do something and the rest will follow.

This last weekend, I put the finishing touches on the coop.

I had a pile of tongue-and-groove siding stacked in the garage from when the garage was built. That gave the outside of the hen house a really nice look.

I installed a few tree branches in the coop to give the chickens several places to roost. They started flying up to the branches as soon as I installed them.

Mary bought some really nice galvanized feeders for water and food. I used a turnbuckle to hang the food container so I could easily adjust its height off the ground.

The last thing to do was build the nesting box. The plans say that several hens will use a single box. The idea is to have 2 boxes so there is an extra in case a chicken becomes broody. The nesting box doesn’t have a back. When set up against the egg door, the eggs can be removed from the boxes without entering the coop.

The chickens are happy with their new digs and I am pleased with how it turned out. It was a super fun project to build.

My son has had to deal with the mortality of pets. He has experienced the death of two of our dogs and my mom’s cat. Each death hit him pretty hard because he loves animals and he really hates to see one suffer. Now we have a little flock of very mortal chickens.

When Mary brought home the first six chickens, one came out of the box in pretty sad shape. It wouldn’t eat or drink and just laid under the heat lamp. Almost immediately, Jared had given this one the name “Chickie”. Unfortunately, I didn’t think Chickie would make it until morning. I was not looking forward to an emotional outburst by Jared when Chickie died.

Chickie didn’t even make it to Jared’s bed time. I spotted it and told everyone. I was surprised by Jared’s reaction. Rather than burst out in tears, he did a very sweet thing. Mary and I had earlier been talking about how we didn’t think Chickie was going to make it through the night. Unbeknown to us, Jared had cut out a paper heart and wrote on it “J + C” for “Jared and Chickie”. When Chickie died, Jared ran and got the heart and put it in the paper towel that held Chickie. It was a memorial showing we will never forget Chickie.

We have chickens! If we sink into a depression, I might be trying to get you to buy some eggs.

I’ve wanted some chickens for a few years. My hope is I can get them to eat bugs and other vegetable eating critters in the garden. I have been dragging my feet when it comes to building a coup. I guess I have to get to it now. I am thinking of building this one: Garden Coup.

Ferry Ride Home, originally uploaded by just…eD.

Jared, my mom and I went over to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle to see the Lucy exhibit. I wasn’t 100% sure we were going so I didn’t pre-order our tickets. That was a mistake. We were at the ticket gate around 1pm and the soonest we could get into the exhibit was 3:30pm. There were a lot of people there. So, we walked down to the aquarium instead. That was pretty crowded as well but we had a great time. It was surprising how many people were out on a chilly, rainy Seattle Sunday.

Jared and I conducted some experiments on popcorn for his science fair project. Our goal was to manipulate the moisture in the unpopped kernels and observe the results. For each experiment, we popped 150 kernels on the stove top in 1 tablespoon of oil in our Whirley Pop popcorn popper. We popped one control batch with corn straight from the jar.

Experiment 1
For this experiment, we put the kernels in a dehydrator for a little more than 6 hours. The corn popped pretty well. Better than I expected. But, it was tough and tasted burnt. If you compare the photo of this popcorn with the rest, notice how smooth and shiny looking it is. It looks like meringue to me.

Experiment 2
For this experiment, we soaked the kernels in water for almost 5 hours. The corn popped smaller and a bit tougher than the control. Otherwise, it was not that unusual.

Experiment 3
For this experiment, we soaked the kernels in apple juice for almost 5 hours. This corn did not pop very well. This was the smallest popped corn.

Experiment #4
For this experiment, we soaked the kernels in sugar water. The resulting popcorn was pretty much the same as the batch soaked in plain water.

Experiment #5
For this experiment, we soaked the kernels in salt water. The popcorn looked similar to the batch soaked in plain water but this one tasted better than even the control experiment. Some of the salt must have survived the popping.

Experiment #6
For this experiment, we put the kernels in the freezer. We nearly forgot about this one. The corn was in the freezer for over 6 hours. We took it straight from the freezer and placed it in the hot oil.

I popped the corn, dumped it in a bowl and I could not believe my eyes. The popped corn was 2 to 3 times bigger than the control experiment. It was so surprising that I thought maybe I had not done a good job on the control batch. So, I took some corn straight from the jar and popped it. That batch came out just like the original control batch. Placing the kernels in the freezer really did make the corn pop to a much larger size!

So go right now and put all of your unpopped popcorn in the freezer. It makes a huge difference.

I’ve decided to celebrate 2009 in style.