My Weekend

It has been a fairly productive and fun weekend for me. On Friday, I spent all my free time working on the chicken coop and run. Since I use the deep bed method in my coop, I only need to clean it out once a year, and in preparation for the hot summer staring me in the face, I cleaned out a year's worth of old, dusty bedding. When using the deep bed method, instead of cleaning out the coop once a week, you just add another layer of bedding until the annual clean-out. The deep bed method means that the bedding on the bottom is composting. There's the obvious benefit of stuff to add to the compost pile that's already slightly composted. There's also the fact that the compost releases heat, which can be a huge help in the winter. But in the summer months, it's best to keep the coop as cool as possible, so it gets cleaned out before June begins. If you are curious about the deep bed method, here's some reading for extra credit.
Anyway, I did my yearly clean-out of the coop and I swear, if I never inhale another smidgen of pine dust mixed with decomposing chicken coop, it will be too soon for my lungs. Unfortunately, I will inhale more in my lifetime. But, it's for the greater good of chickenkind.
After that, I cleaned the nest boxes, which wasn't too hard, but it was still work.
Then I planted some spearmint covered in chicken wire so that the chickens could munch on it when it got bigger. Apparently chickens really like spearmint because they stuck their heads through the chicken wire and stripped all the leaves off of the poor plant.. But the stem and roots survived, so hopefully it will grow back and after that grow bigger.
I refilled their giant feeder and their water bowl. If anybody reading has done chicken research, they'll probably tell me that I should use a waterer instead of a water bowl, but waterers don't really work for my flock. A normal waterer is too shallow, so my flock kicks dirt, poop, bedding, anything really, into their supply of water and it gets badly clogged. I also tried doing a nipple waterer, and my chickens were too dumb to figure out that water comes from the shiny thing when you peck it. Now, my water bowl isn't perfect. Some dirt still gets kicked into it. But it's not enough dirt to keep my chickens from having fresh water at all times. If you know of a better way to supply chicken water, then by all means tell me and I will probably give it a try. But for now, I have to be content with my little water bowl.
Finally, as the grand finale to all my hen-keeping activities, I made a DIY grit and oyster shell feeder of my own invention. It's not perfect, but it's certainly an improvement, because before, I'll be honest, the little plastic containers they were in got kicked all over, and then I would forget to refill them, and then I did not have happy hens. Here's my design.

It looks very precarious, and it's not a thing of beauty, but as long as the dowels stay on it should be fine. I'm putting it in a place that's sort of out of the way, so hopefully it will stay intact. Here's how to make it:

You Will Need:

2 small plastic containers, or 2 big plastic containers with the bottoms cut off, or one of each. Or 2 small glass or metal containers. Doesn't matter. You just need containers.

1 fairly large dowel cut into 4 sections that are about as tall as you want the feeder to be. My dowel was cut into 6 inch pieces.

1 hot glue gun

grit and oyster shell

The Steps:

1. Figure out which container should be the top and which should be the bottom, and which supplement should be put in each container. I put oyster shell on top and grit on the bottom, just because I would rather my chickens kick dirt in the grit than the oyster shell. They are more likely to find grit while free-ranging than oyster shell, so that's my reasoning.

2. Glue the tops of the dowel sections equidistantly on the bottom of the container you want to be the top. That's bamboozling, probably. So, if you're talking about mine, I would be gluing the dowel sections so that if you drew lines between them it would be a plus sign. And I would be gluing them to the bottom of the clear container. If your container has that little ring on the outside that helps it stand up, glue it inside of that. Be liberal with the glue!The way I glued my dowels was to put the glue on the tops of the dowels, then put the tops of the dowels on the container and hold it there. You have to do them one at a time though, or they'll get all messed up and you'll have to do it all over again.

3. When that glue has dried, put a dab of glue on the side of a dowel and make it slant. Slip your second container in and glue the side of the dowel to the side of the container. Repeat with the rest of the dowels. They should all slant outwards like in the picture.

4. Fill with grit and oyster shell and give to the chickens. Enjoy the amazing beauty of your new creation! : p

 

 

To finish off Friday, I had a riding lesson on a horse named Gunner. I couldn't have Dolly because the poor horse has an abscess on her leg. But Gunner was a fun challenge. I thought Dolly was stubborn...

On Saturday, I mainly sat around with my eyes glued to the laptop screen. I did to some research on keeping quail, though, so it wasn't a completely wasted day.

What will I do today? So far, I've woken up at 11 and done absolutely nothing! Fun, right?