De-chickening

After many back and forths with our HOA, they have decided to adopt rules of a municipality that we do not live in... Where chickens are only allowed if there is more than 200' from the chickens to the nearest neighbors house.

As we are considering getting solar passed, we want to be on the good side of the HOA for at least a short time. We will fight for chickens next year. 

So Jarred and Sven picked up our chickens today and some awesome compost! I had also started some vegistables from seed that they picked up (snap peas).

Link and Torsten had some fun playing together. I'm now very impressed by my mom taking both of them on every Tuesday!

Short Hose

A neighbor threw away their garden hose this week. I snagged it before the garbage men came by.

I chopped off a little over a foot, and now I won't get sprayed when I refill the chicken's water dispenser (during freezing temperatures or otherwise).

Snow Storm

While it is nothing like what New England is getting, Denver got hit with a significant amount of snow this weekend. Brianna and I didn't have anything scheduled, so we pretty much just forted up inside our house - I'm pretty sure we only left to grab the mail and feed the freaking chickens.

That stupid little shelter I knocked together for the chickens' water tank is still doing its job admirably.

Got a pretty crazy snow formation on top of the vent for the range hood.

Link did not enjoy his first snow angel (Please don't call child services on us - he's fine (I swear)).

Freaking Chickens

Freaking chickens needing a freaking water refill when it's freaking NEGATIVE SIX DEGREES outside.

At least the freaking shelter I knocked together last month is doing its job.

(freaking chickens)

Winterizing the Outdoor Faucets

Well, I screwed up.

I knew we had so-called "frost proof" faucets on the outside of our house. So I didn't worry about them when the cold snap happened last week.

But when I tried to fill up the chickens' water dispenser this morning I saw that I forgot to remove the garden hose, which prevents the water in the faucet from draining.

Most of the websites I visited said this most likely means I have a cracked pipe in my (drywalled) basement wall now. But at least the crack will be downstream of the valve seat, which means as long as the faucet is turned off, no water will leak into the house.

Today, the temperature got all the way up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I was able to get water flowing out of the faucet when I turned it on after work. Was the water pressure as high as it used to be, indicating there is no crack...?

I don't know. I'd like to think so.

I am very tempted to just tie the faucet into the "off" position, and ignore this (potential) problem til spring.

Does anyone with frost-proof faucets want to chime in with advice?

Water Heater for Chicken Coop

We ordered a heater base for the chicken's water dispenser, and it arrived today. It dropped down to the low twenties this afternoon, so the dispenser was already frozen when I got home.

This heater is supposed to sheltered from the rain. I didn't want to put it beneath the coop overhang, because there's a fence rail in the way.

I knocked together a quick shelter out of some scraps and some shingles left over from the chicken coop build.

In my haste, I put the shingles on at a ninety-degree rotation from what I meant. The chickens will just have to live with my shoddy workmanship. They can file a complaint.

Also, I had to recharge my drill battery half-way through the project. It's really on its last legs.

All the chicken coop electrical is now protected by a GFCI. I should have done that earlier, but now that I have a cord reaching outside and exposed to the elements, it seems particularly important.

I did a quick estimate while I was driving to pick up the GFCI and extension cord: based on materials alone, no labor, we could have purchased two dozen eggs a week for three years if we didn't have chickens.

(Brianna asks "well, what type of eggs?)

Chicken's Booty

So after a quick trip to the gym this evening (watched Love it or List it - thank you HGTV), I took some leftovers out to the chickens AND look what I found!

One big one, three mediums and one tiny one! Looks like now we have 5 out of the 6 laying.

We are now reaching where there are enough eggs to satiate a pregnant women's desire for fresh eggs every morning while letting her husband have some too! This woman's day has been brightened!

Chicken Coop Electrical

We had a cold snap a few days ago, and the days are getting shorter. It's time to run the electrical in the chicken coop.

I want to automate the chicken coop door at some point, but for now I just put in a "day" light and a heat lamp.

That last picture is inside the shed. I hooked into the sub panel and installed a new outlet. Two timers control the light and heat lamp. For now, I'm just leaving the heat lamp off, but pretty soon it will be cold enough to have it on at night (and maybe during the day).

I dunno what I'm doing. I'm mostly just floundering around with the care of these chickens. If they freeze in the winter, hopefully I'll have time to find and cook them before they thaw and spoil.

Yard Work Again

Finally gritted my teeth and got that old hay bale out of the backyard. The chickens love it.

The back yard is looking better (I mowed today, too) but at this rate, the weeds are going to take over that area way before I ever get around to making it look pretty.

Chicken Eggs

One of our younger chickens has started laying!

I never did catch our egg thief. But we went back to finding one to two eggs per day (as opposed to the previous two-week drought) the same week that school went back into session in our county (three days after I started recording). I think I'll just be satisfied with that.

FIrewood and Back Yard Clean Up

The sellers left quite a few logs between the shed and the fence in the back yard. They also clearly used the area as a composting/dumping area. My father-in-law lent me a chainsaw and splitting maul this weekend, so I could chop up the logs for use in the winter in our wood-burning fireplace.

Once again, I forgot to take a "before" picture. The earliest photos I have are after cutting the logs down to size. Brianna had a "before" photo:

Eva would follow Brianna anywhere, as long as a gate didn't get in the way.

The following photos are from after I cut the logs into sections.

I stopped cutting when the chainsaw idled to a stop and wouldn't immediately restart. I split the logs with the maul, then did a first pass at cleaning up all the dead vegetation by throwing it in the chicken run. The chickens loved it.

I really wished I had a wheelbarrow when it was time to truck the split logs from the back corner of the yard to the front corner by the garage. But Brianna came out and did a few trips with me, and the little neighbor girl apparently thinks we're cool enough that she even volunteered to help us carry wood, as well. Overall, I think we made a vast improvement on the back corner of the yard. Still have another solid afternoon worth of work ahead of me, though.

I'll add that bale of hay to the chicken coop when I finish up with this area. Another day.

We have a good chunk of wood set up for the winter, now.

There's some darker wood on the bottom-right, which was in the woodshed when we bought the house, but the rest is wood I cut and split today. The quantity worked out pretty well!

Yard Work

While visiting siblings up in Fort Collins last weekend, we learned we are supposed to be composting the chickens' bedding and leftovers on a regular basis. This explains why the chicken coop was starting to smell.

We managed to buy what just might be the last two composters in Parker - apparently it's the end of the season, and most stores were out of stock. But we got both for just $100 total.

Placed these right next to the fence. Hopefully nobody notices they're not "complementary to community".

I also replaced one of our sprinklers, which has been making a fair amount of whistling noise; and modified the drip line in the chicken run as a backup water source for the chickens. The whole sprinkler system ran nice and quiet during testing - we'll see how it sounds when it runs as scheduled tomorrow morning. (Update: slept right through the sprinklers this morning - perfect!).

Oh yeah - I mowed the lawn and put the clippings in the chicken run, too.

Brianna remediated a few dead patches that we allowed to die before figuring out the sprinkler system. Hopefully they come back.

Finally, I spent a fair amount of time doing general clean-up, picking up dead branches, pulling a few weeds, and finally picking up the last of the construction debris from building the chicken coop.

The Homeowner's Association Does Not Like Our Chicken Coop

We got a letter last month telling us we had to apply for a permit from the architectural committee for not only the chicken coop, but also the shed.

So we applied for the permit, which included getting 3 people in the neighborhood to sign off on it (we got 5 signatures - most of the cul-de-sac).

Today, we got a second letter, telling us our application was Disapproved because, and I quote: "NOT COMPLEMENTARY TO COMMUNITY". There's also an illegible signature, and no other explanation given. That's the whole letter, implying the shed itself is also not permitted (it's been there for approximately 10 years already). And I'm fairly sure we adhered to all the community guidelines for construction of the chicken coop- at least, the architectural committee seems unwilling to point out any guidelines we may have violated.

So, that's where we are. The only command we received was to apply for a permit - there was no "or else". I'm inclined to wait a week and see what happens. Brianna is inclined to stage a coup of the architectural review committee, and maybe the whole HOA.

Beware the pregnant lady who likes fresh eggs.

Chicken Coop VI

I don't have any "after" pictures of this yet, but yesterday I trimmed off some overhanging shingles on the back of the shed, so the roof line looked nice and even, and I tied together the ceiling strips of wire mesh - not enough to actually keep a determined critter out, but enough that it looks more or less like a continuous sheet of wire when walking by.

"Before" picture

"Before" picture

***Update***

"After" Picture

Turns out the chickens group themselves by age:

Chicken Coop V

Alright, the chicken coop is painted. Probably need to touch up the paint and do some other things, but it's at least looking like it's completed.

Chicken Coop IV

Brianna came home after work and went straight outside to start staining the old boards that we built the chicken run on. I'm curious to see how well it matches the new wood once it dries.

Staining the inside of the chicken run, where the mesh overlays the boards, is going to be difficult.

One of These is Not Like the Others!

Brianna found the first egg from the chicken coop!

Weekend Update

I finally managed to get the toilet tank off so I could paint behind it. I had to cut the bolt - it was completely rusted in place. By Sunday afternoon, I had touched up the primer coat and gotten the first coat of color in place.

I also finally got some shelves installed in the closet of the master bedroom. The top level used to be wire racks, anchored into the drywall. We pulled those out when we painted the bedroom, and this weekend I finally got around to installing these wooden ones. Certainly not a top-notch carpentry job, but it's a lot more solid than the wire racks were.

After Brianna and I both went through and picked up all the visible debris from chicken coop construction, I went through the grass with a magnet bar and found this:

I got the evaporative cooler working! And the fan blasted a ton of dust and grit in my face the first time I turned it on. In fact, the fan spewed so much grit that I had to vacuum the room once I was reasonably confident I had blown out all the dirt. It works pretty well, though, and I believe Sunday was the first day in Colorado I experienced humidity greater than 40% when it wasn't raining.

And finally, we primed and painted the trim (but not the siding, yet) of the chicken coop, so I was able to fasten down the last of the wire mesh. Still have to weave the ceiling mesh strips together, though:

Chicken Coop III: The Chickening

Brianna's Dad came up for the third Saturday in a row! We finished installing the wire mesh and weather stripping, and he built nest boxes and a roost bar:

Then it was time to introduce the chickens to their new living area:

Not all of them wanted to leave their comfortable dog crate for the Great Unknown:

But eventually we got them all out. We have two laying hens and four (cowardly) two-month-old chicks:

So here's what it looks like. We still need to paint and before it gets cold we need to wire in some lights and a heat lamp. Brianna is planning to stain the old planks to match the new wood.