Consolidated Kansas

[medawinks]

Danz, Thank you, that would be wonderful! We would be happy to pay for her too!
Our Bloom is such a hoot! She just laid her 6th egg in 5 days.... I think she just likes strutting and singing and showing off to the younger ones Sera will be thrilled to have a matching color "ground parrot" . She explained Bloom's egg song to a classmate who is our neighbor as a ground parrot and was met with smiles and encouragement. I will leave the smoothing the noise over with the neighbor all to her

 

[prairie]

He Chicken,
Thanks for all the information!! Mine should be here tomorrow or on Saturday. I didn't get the light sensor but do have the solar coming. I talked to them on the phone to make sure I understood things before I ordered.

She told me not to mount the solar panel on a tin/metal roof but to put a piece of wood on the roof and then mount the solar panel to the wood with caulk. She also told me that they recommend putting up a little wood tunnel in front of the door if it will be in a spot that gets wind or if we live in a windy state. I told her we lived in Kansas!

nothing but wind at time! so I think I will build a little the little tunnel with some left over plywood we have. She also said to set the door to open only to about 120degrees because it will work better.

I 've been so busy this week that I sure hope it doesn't get here til Saturday-- but still won't probably have time until next week. Can't wait. I sure appreciate you taking time to post how you did it.
Kare

 

[Trish44]

HeChicken, it sounds like you did a great job installing that automatic door. I should have had you here when we installed ours. It didn't really turn out to be that hard, it was more learning how it cycles than anything. I don't have the solar though. I was worried that we wouldn't have enough sun in the winter sometimes for days to keep it going & I don't have a place to hide the battery really either. My DH had talked about it & then I just ran the cord from the garage, it's just a few feet over there, so it's not like it's very far. I don't however know exactly how I'm going to handle the new coop & 4 pop doors as of yet. Maybe with the dogs here I won't have to worry, we'll see.

My ear still is not doing that well, I figured it would be better by now. I decided if it's not much better by tomorrow I'm going to call the Dr's office back. I hope I don't lose any of my hearing over this infection, I know that has happened to other people, my son for one.

I'm trying to make myself work on this nest box to get it painted, I just need to get it done & put up. I have other things that need to be done around here if I can just feel well enough to do them.

Oh & I never did catch the little chick in the garage & now I can even find it any more. I don't know if it gave up & died somewhere or what. Now I have to try to pick out another one that I think could be a roo & keep it.

 

[HEChicken]

Heather that was very informative and I'm sure everyone who is thinking of one of those will appreciate it. It is just too much cost for me to justify with my many birds. I never shut coop doors anyway except maybe in winter. It certainly sounds like you know what you are doing.

I don't blame you! If I had LGD's, I wouldn't be near as concerned about it either but my two dogs I doubt will be that good at guarding as it is not in their nature. The other day we were drinking coffee on the front porch and DH suddenly said "Well, look at that". I looked that direction thinking I was going to see a deer but instead standing there was a jet black shepherd, not too far from us, standing still and just looking. My first thought was "I don't want that dog over here (no idea where it came from) because of my chickens" but about then, my dogs took off after it. Were they chasing it to get it off our property? No sirree! They were chasing it because they wanted to play. Well, at least my black one was. The other one probably was chasing it off, as she went to our fence line and once she was satisfied that it was gone, turned and came back to us. The black one chased it to the far side of our next door neighbor's fence and only reluctantly returned because we called her back. Sigh.

He Chicken,
Thanks for all the information!! Mine should be here tomorrow or on Saturday. I didn't get the light sensor but do have the solar coming. I talked to them on the phone to make sure I understood things before I ordered.

She told me not to mount the solar panel on a tin/metal roof but to put a piece of wood on the roof and then mount the solar panel to the wood with caulk. She also told me that they recommend putting up a little wood tunnel in front of the door if it will be in a spot that gets wind or if we live in a windy state. I told her we lived in Kansas!

nothing but wind at time! so I think I will build a little the little tunnel with some left over plywood we have. She also said to set the door to open only to about 120degrees because it will work better.

I 've been so busy this week that I sure hope it doesn't get here til Saturday-- but still won't probably have time until next week. Can't wait. I sure appreciate you taking time to post how you did it.
Kare

Wow - thank you for this! I sure wish they had put some of that information on their website or instruction manual. I didn't call them but did have an extensive email exchange with them and several of these points never came up. I'm actually relieved about the metal roof part because with the bumps and ridges in metal roofing, I wasn't able to get it to sit down very solidly in any one place and was concerned about it staying put. I really like the idea of putting it on a piece of wood much better - will do that tomorrow.

I've been trying too, to think of what to do about our winds. I will have to check out the 120-degree thing - right now it is opening about 90. I did wonder if opening it further would help. And, since that would open it more against the side of the coop, the birds would be less likely to try to roost on it too, I'm thinking. I wonder about a chunnel (chicken tunnel) that incorporates the door, allowing it to open and close but providing it with a wind break and something close enough over the top of it that the birds don't even have the option to try to roost on it. I will have to put my thinking cap on.

In exciting news though, drumroll.....it closed tonight!

I know that is what it is supposed to do but somehow I always worry that I've messed up the installation somehow so it won't work. The only thing is, I stayed down there at the coop as it got later and later and darker and darker, waiting for it to close as I wanted to see for myself that it was going to work. As time went on and it stayed open, I was certain I'd done something wrong. Then my contractor, who was working through the evening, came out to tell me he was done for the day and was leaving. We chatted for about 3 minutes and when I returned to the coop - it was closed. I waited a minute thinking maybe it was on its first close and there was still time to see it reopen and reclose but nope. It was done for the night. Can you believe my luck? So the next test will be waking up tomorrow morning and looking out the window to see if it is open. And then I need to go down and check that everyone was able to get out. I installed it high enough that doing DLM this winter won't be an issue but that means it is high enough that the ducks and silkies might have a problem with it. I put a 6" paver on the inside of the coop as a step for them and I'm hoping that's high enough they can get up and out the door but over the next few days I may have to make some adjustments.

 

[sapphireblu76]

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Canada was awesome and I had A LOT of work waiting for me when I got home.
We had a 62% hatch rate out of 13 eggs this time!

There is one SLW/BA cross cockerel, at LEAST one SLW/PR cross cockerel and the other 6 are SLW/PR cross (hopefully all) pullets. Hubby did a great job ^_^

He also had cleaned the WHOLE HOUSE! I only had outside work to do!

I started to read back posts, but gave up when I realized I'd missed 700+ posts, lol.

SAPPHIRE, I hope you didn't feel I was scolding you for reprimanding Sarge. When I reread that I thought it might have been misinterpreted. It was meant as more of a reassurance that he wouldn't be chewing on the carcasses any more if it happened again. Of course these guys are still puppies and they will all chew on anything at this stage.

Danz- Absolutely not! I knew what you meant

.
We lost more birds while I was gone, but only the ones in his pen. Hubby took every last chicken out until I could get home to assess the situation. I'm sure it was just a bad combination of the "puppy crazies" and the new birds not knowing what to do about a crazy pup charging through the flock. He probably got over excited and once he caught them tried to "groom" them (I've seen it before in a friends GP/Anatolian, so I'm assuming). Since their neck skin is so delicate, the skin tore with the feathers. We are working on supervised visits until I am sure I can trust him.
He is definitely very much still a puppy, he's so goofy

. His pen is now surrounded by the new chicken yard, so he still has them around all the time. I got him a leash and collar, so I guess we'll be working on leash training at the same time...I needed to do that anyway. He's such a good dog and he still alerts the chickens when he sees a hawk and barks bloody murder if one of the chickens gets upset and starts squawking.
Fortunately, the birds that survived the incidents have healed very well.

I picked up my Marans pair today! Thank you ladies for: 1) beautiful birds, and 2) making sure they were so well cared for while I was gone. You know who you are, ladies. I'm indebted to you, let me know if there is anything you need.

Anyway, I'm so glad to be back and back into the swing of things!

 

[chicken danz]

Sapphire, I am wondering why you are keeping Sarge in a pen? He is old enough he should be out starting to work on the property. He wouldn't have all the puppy energy if he could run it off. Just wondering.
Heather congrats on your door working. Is it open this morning?
Yahoo! I have a lavender Orp egg pipped this morning. I am hoping for many more!!
I'm going to have a very busy day. I've got to take care of some things in town and I am also going to take some eggs into the farmers market and see if they sell. My restaurant buyers will be gone the next two weeks and that means tons of extra eggs I will need to sell. I can't feed these birds for free. If they sell well I'll be there the next couple of Fridays.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Danz, glad that you got the stitches out on your own! Huh.. well, glad all of your medical woes helped save you a trip! ha! Congrats on the lemon pips! I want to see what they look like when they are hatched!

Josie, do those beetles FLY? I've thought about doing the same thing, but the beetles freak me out, not the worms! LOL Yikes, I'd have been upset with all those beautiful geese walking down the road. Have to wonder what they are thinking.

Trish, you're not sounding too good. I know when I had strep, it wiped me out for a week AFTER I was feeling better. I could not hardly move I was so over whelmed with exhaustion. You either had strep or some really nasty virus, and it's just going to be a while before you can be up and running around like you should. Take it easy and take care of yourself or you could be prolonging your healing. Your DH would understand if he had caught it too...

Sometimes, don't you wish they could feel what you're feeling just for a day to give them a grip?

Medawinks, I'll keep you in mind if I have a pullet I'm going to get rid of.

HEChicken, glad that you are loving your door and that it worked! Even better! Neat that it is solar powered. We've come a long way in making solar energy work better. I remember when it was really just a joke. Not any longer!

 

[Hawkeye95]

OKay, so now I'm really worried this morning. Last night around 3am, I was woken up because my horses were putting up a huge racket in the barn. Turns out my mare had escaped (she managed to get the gate open). I found her over at the neighbors talking to their horses, but I know from past experience, that they will run around like idiots when they get free. I was worried because this mare has had a broken bone down in her foot. She is still "recovering" 3 years later. So I put her back out into the pasture, fix the gate and went to bed. This morning, I look out there and she is laying down and I'm thinking, well yeah, she's probably tired from running around. THEN... just now I realized she is flat out. She knows her name, so I call to her from the house and no movement. I know something is wrong, because my two other horses are standing near her with their noses on her. I'm thinking- OMG, she colicked and died out there! I ran out there and kept yelling at her and sure enough, no movement. I get up to her and she lifts her head and then plops down again. I get her up and realized why she's down-- she can't walk! She must have done something to her legs while she was out running around in the dark!! STUPID HORSE!!! I'm so angry, but scared of what is going to happen. We have a 4-H thing this morning I cant miss. So when we get back, I'll have to see if maybe she needs to see the Dr. Crap, crap, crap!

 

[Kansaseq]

Hawkeye, keeping my fingers crossed for your mare

 

[chicken danz]

Oh Hawkeye, I'm so sorry! I hope it can be fixed! Is this the really old horse? I know you really love your horses.