Recent content by libertychicken

Melissa, I'm curious why you don't like your EEs? Mine (I have 3) are not very friendly, but since I lost both my super-friendly Buff Orps to hawks last fall the EE girls have become more social. I wonder if they are just grumpy because they tend to be at the bottom of the pecking order? I'm...

Cutest coop ever! I'm an architect and yet I adore this coop more than any straight one I've ever seen - great work!

Quote: darkmatter I love your setup! Wish I could get a weed jungle established in my girls' yard - that will be a goal for this spring. For mosquito control in my rain barrel I floated a thin film of citronella oil on top - the larvae can't get oxygen through the oil and die. BUT! I have...

Back when summer had just ended I rinsed out my son's little plastic wading pool - it looks a lot like your bed liner, but round - and propped it against the wall of the house, in the yard where the chickens range, to dry. The chickens spent half the day just hanging out under there, and after...

I have three EEs and every day I get one blue egg, one olive egg, and one light brown egg. One of the girls has a tiny pea comb, one has a single serrated comb, and one has a big weird flat unserrated com that flops into her eyes sometimes. They are mutts, that's why they're so lovable!

Quote: Seriously, an owl (or hawk, or raccoon?) can pull out the poultry staples I hammered in to attach my hardware cloth? I see so many coops now on BYC with screws and washers holding the hardware cloth - I have poultry staples every 4" and it would be such a pain to go back and add screws...

It BROKE THROUGH the plexi?! Good heavens, I would never have considered that to be possible. I'm with you on raptors having lost ALL aesthetic appeal for me any more - they just look like bloodthirsty lunatics to me after having lost two to a hawk. My logical mind knows they just do what...

I used The Garden Coop (google it) and was very pleased both with how it looks and how it functions. It's pretty simple to build, though my husband does have a lot of carpentry experience. If you run into troubles, though, the website says to email them and they will walk you through any...

I am exactly the same way, especially in this cold cold weather - I feel like if I'm going out there I OWE them a little snack to warm them up. But it's all healthy: lots of kale and apple. And their eggs are regular - pretty much one a day per hen - with very strong shells, so they must be...

I'd had them for 3 days when I had to get rid of one of my "hens" when HE started practicing crowing - the farmer I bought him from was embarrassed and happily traded him, just a mistake. But the adorable sound of that adolescent cock-a-doodle-doo, it was so cute! Wish I could have kept him...

True Story: There's one of these in my yard. Elizabethbinary: really? I see you've updated to show your location as Australia: you actually have an enormous spider like that blue/grey one in your yard? Do you see it regularly, or just once? We had a great big wolf spider last summer...

I'm so sorry shandiane - it is sad to lose one of our girls. You do need to try to take precautions if you can because yes, the hawk now knows where tog et a meal and will definitely be back. This weekend we are hanging a net over the yard where the chickens run - they've been locked in their...

I've been interested lately in the topic of "emotional signage", which is in some ways just a fancy term for being both polite and common sense. In your friend's circumstance, I think a "No Trespassing" sign in the front yard is both necessary and yet still somehow a little rude - so maybe a...

GGGAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! I honestly thought this was going to be a thread about a cute chicken getting a big juicy snack, instead it;s the opposite! GAAHHH!!! Actually, I like spiders (because they eat bugs, and I hate bugs) and when I find one in my house I ALWAYS catch it and relocate it outside...