Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[WhoDatChick]

That was in zachary and i dont even wanna think about that place is 5 mins from the comite and i cant do a single thing for it and fema wont help us again

So you still have that house but it is ruined? And there is nothing you can get for it!?

 

[mixedUPturk]

So you still have that house but it is ruined? And there is nothing you can get for it!?

No they helped us the first time and its 3/4s redone i jus cant think about that

 

[WhoDatChick]

No they helped us the first time and its 3/4s redone i jus cant think about that

Oh, I hear ya... sorry about that ... I understand...

 

[Ribh]

@mixedUPturk: Wow. Just wow. Stay safe.

 

[mixedUPturk]

Thanks! Im hanging tight for now but we have three toddlers, i wont hesitate to leave for one second if i feel thats needed. Our bags are packed and loaded w plans for rush moving crates and grabbing the dogs and as many birds as i can Too

 

[Ribh]

Thanks! Im hanging tight for now but we have three toddlers, i wont hesitate to leave for one second if i feel thats needed. Our bags are packed and loaded w plans for rush moving crates and grabbing the dogs and as many birds as i can Too

What do you do with your birds? We don't often get cyclones so far south but it does happen & I still don't have a game plan I am happy with.

 

[mixedUPturk]

What do you do with your birds? We don't often get cyclones so far south but it does happen & I still don't have a game plan I am happy with.

Haha Well i didnt have a plan to begin with But most importantly weve moved all the cages from under the tree that wants to come down. God forbid if the water comes up, bags are packed and ill throw all 100 birds into the backs of the trucks w the 4 dogs and cats too all to evacuate if need be. I wont have drowning victims again, God help me ill overcrowd em first, anything to keep em from drowning again. In the meantime weve added tires to the tops of some coops to keep the roofs from blowing away, moved the mobile ones close to the super stable ones. I had a number of grow out pens thrown together for just the spring boom and theyve been taken apart those chicks put into small crates in the shed for time being, overcrowded but fairing okay so far. Sand dirt and shavings added to every pen to help keep their floors drier let em bathe in dry spots often. Its been a helluva week.

 

[Ribh]

Haha Well i didnt have a plan to begin with But most importantly weve moved all the cages from under the tree that wants to come down. God forbid if the water comes up, bags are packed and ill throw all 100 birds into the backs of the trucks w the 4 dogs and cats too all to evacuate if need be. I wont have drowning victims again, God help me ill overcrowd em first, anything to keep em from drowning again. In the meantime weve added tires to the tops of some coops to keep the roofs from blowing away, moved the mobile ones close to the super stable ones. I had a number of grow out pens thrown together for just the spring boom and theyve been taken apart those chicks put into small crates in the shed for time being, overcrowded but fairing okay so far. Sand dirt and shavings added to every pen to help keep their floors drier let em bathe in dry spots often. Its been a helluva week.

Yeah, I figured on crating mine in the bathroom. We don't have a garage & it's only 11 birds just now but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be happy. How long will this last 4? Any idea?

 

[mixedUPturk]

Yeah, I figured on crating mine in the bathroom. We don't have a garage & it's only 11 birds just now but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be happy. How long will this last 4? Any idea?

The winds will last thru the night but the worst of that is upon us now as the storm is about 75 miles due west of me moving northward. The water will be a problem for the whole next week. In some places it will go down fast but in lots of places it will sit with the river so high and no where to go.

 

[BY Bob]

The Coop
Well my wife lived up to her promise and she loved those chicks. She did hold off on naming all 6 knowing that 4 of them would have to be rehoused at some point and that if they were named it would be extremely difficult to let them go.

Soon they were growing into pullets and we needed another housing solution. We could not keep them in the trunk much longer. The source of our adventure had a couple of you assemble coops that looked to be the solution to our problem and they seemed attractive enough to be in our backyard (according to my wife). This is where the biggest mistake we made occurred. We trusted the housing recommendations provided by the coop manufacturer. The coop (and enclosed “run”) we selected was supposed to hold up to 6 chickens. In the end it would not be big enough for 2.

So decision made, off we went to the local Tractor Supply to purchase our coop. Imagine our surprise when they were sold out of the one we wanted. Of course through procrastination and overall busyness of our life we had waited too long to get a coop. The pullets were too big to stay in the trunk any longer. We needed a coop and my wife wanted THAT coop. Tractor Supply found one in another store 75 miles away. So off we went.

Now as I have said before, we are suburban people. At the time we did not own a pickup truck or SUV, all we had was my 2009 Jetta. It holds quite a bit especially with the back seats lowered. However, there was no way this coop, even removed from the box, was going to fit into the Jetta. The side walls a roof were just too big. So we purchased some straps, fortunately I always have a blanket in my car (in this case my oldest’s Kansas State blanket) and onto the roof went the sides and roof. Here is my wife with the load on the roof of the car.
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Here is the coop assembled and awaiting the pullets.
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Here are the pullets in their new house
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Not long after placing them in their new house did I learn that they needed a roost. The coop supposedly had a roost but you had to remove the floor from the coop in order for them to have one which made absolutely no sense to me. So I built one out of an old post hole digger handle, some pieces of a serpentine belt off of our old minivan that we no longer had some screws. I cut the handled to the width of the coop, drilled pilot holes in the ends, placed a small piece of the belt on both the inside and the outside of the hardware cloth and then suspended the roost by pinching the hardware cloth between the serpentine belt pieces when I drove the screw into the handle. This enabled me to build a roost higher than the coop and nesting boxes. Here is a close-up of the end of the roost.
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Here they are on the roost. Unfortunately only 5 of the 6 fit at any one time. There was always one sleeping at the top of the ramp. Of course since we were going to drop down to 2 soon, I let it go.
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This became one of my favorite and most annoying things about the chickens and it wasn’t even their fault. There was always something that had to be done to make this $300 plus coop work for them. I loved coming up with the solutions but they frequently had to be done in the worst conditions as that would be when I uncovered them.

Of course by building the roost “outside” the tiny coop area, I was setting myself up for issues when winter arrived. At this time winter was the furthest thing from my mind.

Winterizing the Pre-manufactured Coop

WARNING. This is a long post. That's no joke; it's long.

To best understand the challenge that was before me as the National Weather service was posting their blizzard warnings for us I need to take you back to the pre-manufactured coop and how I modified it for the hens.

If you remember, the coop had no functional roost in it. Therefore I had added a roost in the “run” portion. This worked great in the summer and fall. When winter arrived I realized that I had made a big mistake. In fact, winter just showed one day as the fall hung on past Thanksgiving. All of a sudden the forecast was calling for fridgid temperatures and I had not planned ahead. The “coop” portion of the structure was way too small to hold them out of the weather in the winter. I was going to have to do something to keep them out of the wind and snow/sleet, etc. and do it fast.

I did not want to simply wall in the structure. They needed daylight as I didn’t want them to feel “cooped up”. Whatever I did, I needed something clear.

For the back wall of the structure I took an old wool Army surplus blanket and tacked it on. Very little sun came from that direction in the wintertime and it was on the lee side of the structure away from the winter wind. I needed something clear that could be taken on and off the coop. I found Plexiglas at Home Depot but it was outrageously expensive and then I noticed a large broken sheet that was marked way down. In fact there were 2 broken sheets. I grabbed them up an thought, ok, how do I attach them?

Thinking this was going to be our forever coop, I knew I couldn’t just screw them into the frame. I also knew I had to allow for ventilation. Now the blanket will permit some air exchange but I was concerned and didn’t want any of the girls getting frostbite. I picked up some small screws, washers, and wing nuts. My plan was to cut the Plexiglas to fit the panels in the structure, my grinder worked great for that. I then drilled holes through the plexiglas and the frame, fitted a screw through, placed washers onto the end, put the plexiglas back on, and used a wingnut to hold it in place. The washers created a space for air exchange and the with a few small pieces of wood I was able to encase the outside of the coop. Here it is.

Now I knew that the hens did not need heat but I did have a big problem, how would I keep their water from freezing? At that time I had no idea they made water containers that kept the water warm. The only thing I had handy was the heat lamp from when they were chicks. I ran an extension cord from the pool pump to the coop and mounted their heat lamp so that it pointed directly at their water dish and put it on a remote switch for Christmas lights. That way when it was above 32°F (0°C), we could sitch the heat lamp off. Here is the coop in winter with the heat lamp on I had not yet put the Plexiglass on so there is a piece of cardboard up to keep the wind off the roost in this photo.

Here are Dolly and Trisha on the roost that first winter. You can see the army blanket behind them.

The Blizzard of 2016: A Chilling Tale, Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

This was the situation we were still operating in a few years later when the first blizzard, post chicken acquisition arrived. I had added an extension to the coop structure to provide some more room and I had added a large run onto that which was 6 foot (1.8 meters) wide 12 foot (3.6 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters) high. But the coop itself was still that original structure. Now the coop itself was about 3.5 feet (1 meter) high. I can say with certainty that we have never had a snow that deep. At this time the flock now consisted of three hens, Daisy the Alpha, Patsy, and Lilly the “spare” chicken. Here is what the compound looked like at that time. These were taken 1 week before the storm.

And here is the flock on the roost.

So as I prepared the yard and house for the storm to come I was not really concerned about the girls. They were calling for 18+ inches (45.7 cm) of snow but I figured I could dig my way out to them after the storm was over. I did add a second feeder for them and turned on the heat lamp so they would have plenty of warm water, and frankly a warm spot to lay in if they wanted.

It started snowing about 8 hours earlier than they projected. In fact it would wind up snowing over 2 nights for what seemed like 48 hours with wind gusts well over 50 mph (80 kph) at the peak of the storm.

Day 1 the snow started about 4:00 pm. When we woke up the morning of day 2 there was already over 16 inches (40 cm) of snow and the wind had not yet kicked up. I forced my way to check on the girls and they were fine in their house scratching around. Daisy laid an egg. They did not have a care in the world. As I stood out there looking at them, looking at the house, looking at the snow falling (which was beautiful), the lightbulb finally lit up in my head. It wasn’t the total snowfall that would be a danger to the girls, it would be the drifts the wind would pile up. Here is the coop on Day 2 while it was snowing.

There was a song bird stuck in the big run so I went over dug out the door and let it out.

Their coop (and the current one) is oriented east to west. That is very important because in blizzards the prevailing winds are from the east. The wind in a blizzard blows the length of my house and the length of theirs as well. For my house this is great. It blows my front porch and garage door clear and I can easily emerge after it is over. For them this could be deadly. In a storm of this magnitude we can easily get drifts over 5 feet (1.5 meters) high. It would likely bury their coop completely, suffocating them.

I needed a new plan.

In this instance with likelihood that their coop would be completely buried by the storm, I had no choice but to bring them into the house for an extended period of time. Now the question was where and how?

The first place I considered was the garage. Unfortunately my garage is very small I had a car in there that I was rebuilding. There was no space I could close off for them. We had gotten water in the basement from a massive rainstorm in the fall and I had torn out the carpet in the hallway and had not yet replaced it. The hallway does open into the rec room with no door so that would have to be dealt with but it might just work. So after pleading my case to my wife and getting her reluctant sign off, I covered the entryway to the rec room with a sheet that I thumbtacked up. We closed all of the other doors and covered the floor with wood chips left over from a long since departed guinea pig. A new coop was born!

I forced my way to the coop and back 3 times because I did not trust myself to carry more than one of them at a time. Here they are safe in the basement hallway.

Now after I had them in I realized they had to place to roost. I knew they were stressed and wanted them to be as comfortable as possible. The perfect solution popped into my head, a step ladder! Here they are roosted but not in pecking order.

That night the storm really picked up and the winds started howling. The best measurement I could get before everything started to drift was 31 inches (78.7 cm).

This what the world looked like the next morning. This the view out my garage door to the street. That is my wife's SUV at the end of the driveway. There are 2 cars buried on the right in the driveway. You can tell the driveway was perpendicular to the wind while the SUV was parallel. Because the winds blew along the street, it was essnetially clear of sigificant snow.

Here are the cars in the driveway as viewed from the porch.

Once you got out to the street you can see how the wind scoured the snow away. Here is the back of my Jetta.

This is what the indoor coop looked like. Daisy even laid an egg every day she was inside. Those leghorns are laying machines!

Eventually I got a path dug to the coop and out they went. They were not thrilled but soon got over it. I think the mealy worms helped. I also dug out most of the big run and put down straw for them as they were going to be confined for some time.

We have had several more blizzards since then but none since the new coop went in. It is big for a reason. I should not have to worry about blizzards any more. It has that big front face so it won’t get drifted over.