Heartbroken !!!!!

[ChickiesInUtah]

I understand. I've had a few "omg, these 'free' eggs are going to be really expensive!" moments but building the coop and raising the chicks has been a great experience. It's a great hobby to share with my husband, plus I've learned how to use some power tools. It's been so fun.

I hope he comes around, and ditto others on looking for scrap wood on Craig's List. Our recycling center gave us some great 2 x 4s today for free. Swing by one and check it out. Good luck!

 

[AmyA248]

Cost... seriously?

We had talked about getting some birds, but being the OCD type, for me that meant we still had months, if not a year of research and prepping before actually getting any birds. Then one fateful day this Spring we wandered into Tractor Supply when they had baby chicks and ducklings on the floor, and as soon as my wife caught sight of them (I tried in vain to steer her away) it was all over but for my crying (she sees cute, and all I see is work for me). Being a well trained hubby, broken of mind and spirit, I stand like a simpering idiot nodding my head up and down - repeating the mantra that has been the cornerstone of our marriage's success for almost three decades... "yes dear... whatever you want".
We left with "only" 6 chicks and 3 ducklings, a me thinking I'd gotten off easy.

The evolution has been steady, but by no means am I tempted to calculated the costs to date. Conservatively, when eggs hit about $30 a dozen, we should break even... about three years later.

First there was the brooder, so of course we needed heat lamps and waterers and feeders and bedding. The chicks were no real trouble at all and soon graduated to a garden cart/coop that was just some vinyl covered wire fencing that I had laying around and tied into a 2'x4' giant bird cage for them. As their feathers grew and the weather improved, they could easily be pulled out of our sun room and onto the patio to get some sun, and later leave to start roaming the fenced yard. The ducks moved from a galvanized tub to a an unused 75 gallon aquarium, but their acclimation to the outdoors was a lot faster. We started with a big shallow bowl of water on the kitchen floor, and very quickly they had jumped to invading my wife's koi ponds. Today they all free range the fenced yard next to the run, but the Mallards have decided that they prefer the solitude of my neighbor's yard - with his three cats - to the cacophony of the chickens, so any time they get the urge (usually when I'm on the roof, up a ladder, or otherwise indisposed, they like to show off and fly over the 4' fence.

This of course results in an immediate and frenzied call from my neighbor to wife, wife to duck herder (yours truly) whereupon whatever progress was being made on "The List" must be abandoned to retrieve the wayward stooges. ( I call this proof that duck pooh can and does roll down hill.)

So after cornering the birds and tossing them back over the fence a couple of times - between shooing chickens out of my peas, and then the beans, and then whatever the heck else they can possibly get into, I am reminded that the duck ponds need to be emptied and refilled. (I could have sworn there was a wife and kids around here somewhere, but I'll be dashed if I can see them...). Not possessing Nostradamian foresight, I neglected to build my backyard shop so that I might actually get work done there whilst keeping one eye on Hogan's Heroes and the fence line, one eye on the sky for winged predators that see a lot better and move a lot quicker than me, one eye on the marauding chicken horde, and one eye on the power tool (stuff like saws - big saws and bigger saws) that my hands are being fed into. What could be expected of me, I'm just a stupid husband.

I had already built some raised beds for our expanding veggie gardens, but had also already ordered about 40 fruit trees that we were going to adapt to a micro orchard in some more raised beds. Somewhere in the midst of all of this it was decided that everything should be put under one roof so to speak (we have deer, hawks, eagles, coons, fox, feral cats, possum... pretty much a game preserve). This has now grown into a 1300 sq.ft. pen surrounded by a 7' varmint proof fence (with 18" buried into the calliginous cement we call soil here) and an electric fence surrounding that. Today I get to string the cabling that will support the wire "roof"... between trying to finish the chicken tractor, complete the permanent attached coop, replace the duck's original large pond (yeah they only have two... so far) with a larger one, and oops - almost forgot - cut the grass, edge the yard, mulch the beds, fix the hot tub, paint the pergola, build another 700' of fence for the dogs, and finish planting and putting in transplants. I've been up since 4 am and the love of my life is still sleeping. I hope I live long enough to see the first egg.

My suggestion would be to take a page from my owner's manual (which I've never seen, but I'm pretty sure the woman who owns me got one).
First - keep him busy enough that he never has time to think, complain, or pull out his calculator.
Second - sex is a very strong motivator, as is not having to bunk with the dogs... so you've also got that workin' for ya.
Don't mention all of the wonderful "free" eggs and fertilizer that will soon appear I'm already workin' on my third new compost bin and the mere thought of eggs just makes me wanna join a monastery and go Vegan.

Great story! Great husband!
Do you have any seminars for other husbands? Lol!!!

 

[Ridgeback825]

We used shade cloth to cover our run but also lock them in at night. It is pretty tough and cheap! For us it's another layer to our preps and a easy source of protein. Definitely more expensive than buying eggs but that's if there are eggs to buy.

 

[SourRoses]

Fourscore and sixty years ago, this thread was created... I think everyone was still using F-keys to navigate their dialup AOL connection back then