Old birds, new birds, eggs?

Yes, we do have new chickens, but before I can post about them I must tell you that we are without two of our original five chickens. The first to go was Little Maggie. The smallest of the Silver Phoenix chickens, Little Maggie became sick one day and died the next. I could tell she was sick because while the birds were all out free ranging in the yard she walked up to me and stood between my legs and let me pick her up without running off - I thought, "that's odd." Her eyes were glazed and she had a dull, detached look about her. The next day she was found lying still in the coop. Fortunately none of the other birds caught whatever it was she had. Actually it is more likely that whatever took her was not contagious. I've read that chickens may die suddenly for no apparent reason and Little Maggie seemed to do just that.

Coco's cause of death was quite clear when I found her but the culprit behind the deed is still a mystery. We had been letting the birds free range in the yard while we were home and I was doing just that one afternoon in October. I needed to get ready to catch a flight and thought I should go out and check on the birds. I didn't see them when I initially went outside, then I walked around the side of the house and there was what was left of Coco. Whatever got her had ripped most of her head off and had eaten a good bit of her back. Still don't know what got her. This all happened in broad daylight, next to the house, while I was at home, and I didn't hear a thing. Whatever it was left no evidence to suggest what it was. No footprints, no non-chicken feathers, nothing. I figure it was probably a hawk. We have them flying around frequently and Coco was big enough that a hawk would have trouble flying off with her. Seems like anything else that was really interested in eating her would have taken her off somewhere.

So that was the end of Coco. I was more PO'd that something got one of our birds than I was sad/upset. They are chickens after all - other creatures like to eat them as much as we do.

So, on to the new chickens. We actually got these before we lost Coco. They are three Silver-laced Wyandottes. I call them the Three Amigos (as in Chevy, Steve, and Martin). Here they are with Coco - the way she used to be.

Found these gals through an ad on Craig's list. They were reported to be about 15 weeks old when we got them. They were almost full grown but hadn't started laying yet - perfect! I think we got a good deal on them at $7 each. Unfortunately they still haven't started laying. In fact we have had no eggs from any bird since September 16th. I'm not really sure what's going on. All the older birds have molted and have a fresh set of feathers - they actually look very good. But no eggs! Last fall/winter we got at least an egg or two every now and then. I'm assuming the lack of production is due to the shorter day length so I've put a light in the coop and have it on a timer so that it's on from 4:30 am to 7:30 am and 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm. I just started that last week - hopefully it makes a difference. My hunch is once the new birds laying we're gonna be in egg city.

A Proper Woodshed

The tractor and associated implements are now being stored under one of the barn lean-to's, which is where we used to keep our firewood so we found ourselves in need of a proper woodshed. I picked a spot to build it behind the barn that was easily accessible by the truck, trailer, and tractor (all tools for moving firewood around). I first cleared out and roughly leveled the spot where the woodshed would go using the front end loader (with toothbar) on the tractor. I had some materials already on hand but I needed to get some 4x4 posts, siding and roofing. The siding and several 4x4s came from the local Habitat Reuse store. I think the siding works perfectly for this application. The roofing is corrugated metal from Lowe's. The woodshed has a 4' x 12' footprint.



I didn't really work from a plan on this (gee, can you tell?) just kind of went off what I had in mind. The front end loader sure was handy for this project. I used it to move the full bundle of siding out of the trailer and onto the ground and I used it to move all the 4x4s from the truck to the miter saw in the garage and back to project site. It also came in handy when I found that one of corners of the floor was drooping slightly. I just put the front end loader bucket under the corner, lifted it slightly and put a shim (piece of asphalt shingle) between the girder and support post and that problem was fixed.

I wanted the woodshed to have two separate bays with the idea that I could fill one side up and let that wood season and then work on filling the other side up. Ideally I'd be able to fill the entire thing up at once, but that's not how my wood processing usually works. It's more like a little bit here and a little bit there. That being the case having only a single bay would mean I'd be stacking newly split wood on top of older wood and therefore using the newer wood first - not ideal.

I decided to create a separate, smaller space in one of the bays to store bundles of bedding for the chicken coop. We also used to keep those where the tractor is now. The white bundles you see on the left are pine shavings that I get from the local Agri-supply. Pine shavings make much better bedding than the wheat straw I was using. More on that in another post. In the smaller bay I also keep my maul, gloves, and safety glasses. So I've got everything at the ready whenever I have wood to split.

Here I am with my Lead Assistant Wood Helper:

While we were out

We bought some property in the NC mountains about two years ago and it had started to consume all my thoughts, spare time, and money so I kind of got away from the blogging - you know got away for almost a year. We've decided to let someone else build us a cabin instead of trying to tackle it ourselves so now the mountain place will consume all of my anxious thoughts and money, which hopefully will leave me some time to blog about stuff around the place here in Raleigh. When I think back over the past year a fair amount of stuff has gone on around here since I last posted.

Possibly the most exciting thing to have happened is the acquisition of the tractor. We got a used Kubota B7610 from a friend of Dianne's at work. It had belonged to this friend's father who passed away leaving the tractor to Dianne's friend. It came with a front end loader and I also bought a box blade for it.

The question everyone asks is what do you do with it? So far I have used it to dig out a trench along the border of our driveway and side yard in which I put 6x6 timbers to create a well-defined border between the two. I used it to spread 20 tons of driveway gravel (crush & run) . One the material was spread I used the box blade to level it all and smooth it. I used it to spread 10 tons of topsoil to create a smooth transition between the driveway and the side yard. This is necessary to drive vehicles into the side yard for hooking up our various towables - utility trailer, boat, camper. I also used the tractor to create a nice trail through our front woods and am planning a trail through the back woods. I also fixed a drainage problem we were having by digging up a collapsed pipe that drains four box drains in the front yard. After digging out the old collapsed pipe I extended the trench (using the tractor of course) and put in a two new sections of pipe. The tractor is also invaluable for lifting and moving all sorts of heavy stuff. Eventually I plan to take the tractor up to the mountain property to help with maintenance and repairs on about 1/4 mile of gravel road and ditches. I have really been amazed at how much work this thing can accomplish in a short period of time. And I'm no expert tractor user. Everything I've tackled has been totally new to me but I've taken it slow and made sure I was working within my comfort level.

A really good web resource for tractors and tractor related subjects are the forums at TractorByNet . There's a cool sub-page on projects that gets me really inspired.

All for now, but I hope to get back to this more regularly - lots of things to blog about. New woodshed, new chickens, new chicken litter, new paint job on the garden village playhouse, new projects all around the place.