What did you do with your flock today?

[PopoMyers]

DH and I picked the rest of the grapes today. The chickens got to have their favorite treat, the not so beautiful or sparsely grown bunches. Last year when they had the free run of the yard, they would head for the grapes as soon as they were let out of the coop. The garden is finally trying to be done. @Smokerbill have finally gotten the peach wine fermenting.

 

[Smokerbill]

@Smokerbill have finally gotten the peach wine fermenting.

@PopoMyers Cool! I would like to see a picture of that, if possible. Are you fermenting whole, pulverized fruit? What strain of yeast are you using?

 

[Maddcatter]

Yesterday we put the chicken wire back up around the main chicken run, and blocked off some holes that where made by the hail in the hallway between the run and the coop. Also found out that every hose in my yard was spilt by hail.

Moved the smaller chicken run off the small coop so I could open the doors of the coop instead of crawling through the chicken door, which made me learn that my small run has to be rebuilt (it has a sweet gangster lean now)....

Otoh, 3 of the chickens that I had separated out in the small coop decided to nest in there last night, and I was really happy to be able to move them using the human sized doors instead of crawling in there again.

I still have 4 chickens in my bedroom. My blind chicken, and 3 red sex links that pull their feathers out and get picked on. Hopefully the small run will get rebuilt in a couple of days.

 

[Nomadicus]

This morning I went outside and sat down in a chair that I use for getting some sweet sugar from my Honey girl. She was as sitting on top of her coop waiting for me to call her and as soon as I did she made a beeline for my lap for a piece of cornbread. Some of the other free ranging kids have caught on so I have to find a quiet place just for the 2 of us to get the day off to a good start. I must get a tripod setup with a long lens on the camera so I can make a clip of her making her way from the coop to me in the mornings before the others are all waiting her first. She is one special little girl. If nothing else we will ride the John Deere out so far the others won't follow and make a selfie video of us bonding.

 

[Smokerbill]

It was the usual routine this morning: checking under the roost for any soft eggs dropped overnight, opening up the "day run" for the girls, turning the overnight poop-bombs into the woodchips with the manure fork, gathering eggs, and wetting down a few cups of layer pellets and filling the mash bowls.

A single apple dropped off my tree so I threw it whole into the run for them to peck at. All the chickens looked nice and healthy.

There was another jumbo egg in the nest box this morning, too. And it was the biggest egg they've ever laid. It is HUGE!!! And the shell and shape are pretty much perfect. Good girl!

 

[PopoMyers]

@PopoMyers Cool! I would like to see a picture of that, if possible. Are you fermenting whole, pulverized fruit? What strain of yeast are you using?

Sent you a PM.

 

[PopoMyers]

Yesterday we put the chicken wire back up around the main chicken run, and blocked off some holes that where made by the hail in the hallway between the run and the coop. Also found out that every hose in my yard was spilt by hail.

Moved the smaller chicken run off the small coop so I could open the doors of the coop instead of crawling through the chicken door, which made me learn that my small run has to be rebuilt (it has a sweet gangster lean now)....

Otoh, 3 of the chickens that I had separated out in the small coop decided to nest in there last night, and I was really happy to be able to move them using the human sized doors instead of crawling in there again.

I still have 4 chickens in my bedroom. My blind chicken, and 3 red sex links that pull their feathers out and get picked on. Hopefully the small run will get rebuilt in a couple of days.

So sad to read about the damage from the hail! Oh my goodness, you should add that to the list of dangers that cause loss of poultry. Waterhoses have also gotten pricey, and you have to replace all of them.
You must live on the wilder side of the state. I'd never seen that size hail, let alone football sized ones on the NE side.
It's funny how our coops evolve over time as we see how it could use improvement. DH built ours, and the doorway is a little less than my height, and the actual coop/nesting/roosting area has access from both sides, but now I wish it could just be a big room with roosts, above the floor boxes, and poo boards. Maybe in my next dream.

 

[PopoMyers]

It was the usual routine this morning: checking under the roost for any soft eggs dropped overnight, opening up the "day run" for the girls, turning the overnight poop-bombs into the woodchips with the manure fork, gathering eggs, and wetting down a few cups of layer pellets and filling the mash bowls.

A single apple dropped off my tree so I threw it whole into the run for them to peck at. All the chickens looked nice and healthy.

There was another jumbo egg in the nest box this morning, too. And it was the biggest egg they've ever laid. It is HUGE!!! And the shell and shape are pretty much perfect. Good girl!

View attachment 3637765View attachment 3637766

Very good job, hope she recovers from that Uber jumbo egg! Over time, you may get less of them. One of mine started out that way. Now all of them are large to jumbo, no more double yolks. Those girls are now 1.5 years old.

 

[fuzzi]

Yesterday we put the chicken wire back up around the main chicken run, and blocked off some holes that where made by the hail in the hallway between the run and the coop. Also found out that every hose in my yard was spilt by hail.

Moved the smaller chicken run off the small coop so I could open the doors of the coop instead of crawling through the chicken door, which made me learn that my small run has to be rebuilt (it has a sweet gangster lean now)....

Otoh, 3 of the chickens that I had separated out in the small coop decided to nest in there last night, and I was really happy to be able to move them using the human sized doors instead of crawling in there again.

I still have 4 chickens in my bedroom. My blind chicken, and 3 red sex links that pull their feathers out and get picked on. Hopefully the small run will get rebuilt in a couple of days.

I recently got a short hose made of metal, love how it doesn't kink. Would that type of hose be less vulnerable to hail damage?

 

[Maddcatter]

So sad to read about the damage from the hail! Oh my goodness, you should add that to the list of dangers that cause loss of poultry. Waterhoses have also gotten pricey, and you have to replace all of them.

Yeah, everything is super pricey these days. I'm blessed in that I can replace what I absolutely cannot go with out right away. It's probably still going to be 6 months of trying to do with out some of the stuff I previously had. ... But it'll be ok. All the living beings are still alive, and the rest can be replaced.

You must live on the wilder side of the state. I'd never seen that size hail, let alone football sized ones on the NE side.

Amusingly, the little town that's 10 miles away from me didn't get any hail from that storm. My place seems to exist in a very odd weather pocket. We occasionally get super damaging storms, but we often don't get the rain that the little town just south of us gets.
Tbf, the super huge hail seems to only go in very small, very fast moving storms. The storm that killed the 4runner from last year got it's own phone alert about a minute before the storm hit. We got an alert for another storm later that year, but it (thankfully) passed north of us. I'm in the panhandle. Tornado alley mostly passes us by, but apparently hail is different.

It's funny how our coops evolve over time as we see how it could use improvement.

Yeah, my DH is very good at designing things, so I mostly get to go "I need it to do this" and then he tells me what that probably means construction wise.
That being said, the little chicken run is getting a bunch of stuff that the old run didn't have... I have a much better idea of what I need it to do this time.

... though not "lean like a cholo" is at the top of the list...