It's just 5 days before Christmas so Joe and I had a pretty laid back Sunday planned. We slept in, caught up on my fav TV show "Nashville" and then tuned into the Pats game. When we took the dogs out this morning we noticed that 2 of our hens had escaped! We stopped letting them free range completely when we got the new chickens in October, and now we keep them confined to a run that we added onto the existing coop. The run is just some chicken wire held up with metal posts and has a tarp for a roof, but it's meant to give them more room than just the coop to roam while still keeping them safe and warm for the winter. Every night we peel back a corner of the tarp and shut the coop door with the ladies safely inside. The runner is somewhat safe, but with no floor a predator could dig into it pretty easily so they sleep in the coop. Yesterday morning we noticed an entire wall of the run had been pushed in and a big hole was dug right in front of the coop door. Nothing had gotten in, because we have a buried wall of bricks 1 foot deep all the way around the coop...but we knew we had a problem. We (by we I mean Joe with absolutely no help from me) re-built the run and reinforced the walls with extra ties to the posts to keep everything nice and tight.
Needless to say, when we saw that two hens had escaped this morning we were pretty surprised. Joe picked them up, put them back in their runner and we looked the whole runner over to try to figure out how they got out. We couldn't see any weak spots or gaps so we left them in there and went about our day. During the football game when we saw the chickens were out again we were like, screw it we'll just let them roam around the yard and tuck them into the coop later.
My friend came over so we could half watch the game and half bake Christmas cookies. We were sitting in the kitchen talking and making my fav peanut butter cookies when she said, "Aw, there's a cute neighborhood dog in your yard...uh oh he's near a chicken...OH SHIT THAT'S A FOX! THAT FOX IS EATING YOUR CHICKEN!" In broad daylight nonetheless! (Normally we only worry about them at night since most predators, including foxes, are nocturnal.) Joe kicked into protector mode and went charging out into the yard. The fox ran off, but the damage had been done. Thankfully two of the chickens that aren't escape artists were still peacefully in the coop unharmed, but the other two were not so lucky. When Joe went charging outside, the fox left the chicken he had in his grasp but we could see that he had already gotten one of the hens and he retrieved her body as he left. Our other hen was pretty badly injured, but alive. We couldn't see any blood and her neck was clearly intact so Joe picked her up gently and took her back to the coop...but she hasn't shut her mouth so we think her jaw is broken and she might be dead in the morning :(
Meanwhile, during this whole ordeal the fox never went far and we kept seeing him wandering the outskirts of the yard. I know he will try to break into the coop again tonight, and even thought I doubt he will get in it's a very stressful situation for the hens. When we found the hole he made 2 nights ago we found all their eggs smashed in the coop no doubt because they were panicking and fluttering around in the coop while a predator was trying to get into their house. We have a motion sensor light out there meant to deter coyotes but evidently it doesn't work on foxes...
Being a chicken owner is definitely not for the faint of heart! This is the 5th and maybe 6th hens we have lost to predators in 6 months. Hopefully we can keep the rest safe through the winter, and maybe in the spring we will have to build a giant fortress around the coop to keep the ladies in and the bad guys out.
Showing posts with label backyard chickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backyard chickens. Show all posts
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
2 Hens-a-laying
Farm fresh eggs are back at the Martin Madhouse! Those of you who know Joe & I well or are regular readers of the blog know that we set up a coop and got 4 hens last spring. Sadly...they became a coyote's dinner in July. (Remember that crazy post?) Fortunately, the same farmer in Ellington we got our chickens from in April did another sale in October so we were able to get 4 new 18 week old hens! In the colder months, hens don't always lay eggs so when late November rolled around and we still hadn't seen any we were getting antsy.
You can do things to encourage your chickens to keep up egg production all winter long, like putting a light in their coop to mimic daylight. You want them to get about 12 hours of light, but you don't want to keep the light on all night because that might keep them awake and they won't get enough sleep. We rigged a little lightbulb up in the ceiling of the coop and put it on a timer so they get light from 5-8 am and 4-8 pm to help them out. You also need to make sure your chickens have constant access to water, regardless if they're laying or not. You can get a heated chicken waterer for about $80, or you can get a big heated dog bowl for about $18. Once we saw the water freeze overnight for the first time, we swapped in the heated bowl and it seems to be working out just fine. We did all this prep work about a month ago and still the days went on eggless.
You might read this blog and think, hm...chickens are kind of cool and I like eggs...maybe I'll get some chickens! Well, fresh eggs are definitely cool but chickens really aren't. They're super dirty birds and not necessarily the most friendly (although ours seem pretty docile so far). Having to go out in the freezing cold and clean up chicken poop and fill their food and water when you're not getting eggs out of the deal is NOT COOL. But finally, FINALLY last Friday there it was...an egg! Saturday 2 eggs, Sunday back down to one, Monday and Tuesday back to 2! I'm pretty confident that 2 out of our 4 little hens are happily laying eggs daily now. This makes me a very happy chicken farmer!
Hopefully we'll have all four laying within a week or so and we'll be back up to full egg production. When we are, if you're nice to us, there's a strong change that you will get some eggs laid with love by the Martin Hens!
You can do things to encourage your chickens to keep up egg production all winter long, like putting a light in their coop to mimic daylight. You want them to get about 12 hours of light, but you don't want to keep the light on all night because that might keep them awake and they won't get enough sleep. We rigged a little lightbulb up in the ceiling of the coop and put it on a timer so they get light from 5-8 am and 4-8 pm to help them out. You also need to make sure your chickens have constant access to water, regardless if they're laying or not. You can get a heated chicken waterer for about $80, or you can get a big heated dog bowl for about $18. Once we saw the water freeze overnight for the first time, we swapped in the heated bowl and it seems to be working out just fine. We did all this prep work about a month ago and still the days went on eggless.
You might read this blog and think, hm...chickens are kind of cool and I like eggs...maybe I'll get some chickens! Well, fresh eggs are definitely cool but chickens really aren't. They're super dirty birds and not necessarily the most friendly (although ours seem pretty docile so far). Having to go out in the freezing cold and clean up chicken poop and fill their food and water when you're not getting eggs out of the deal is NOT COOL. But finally, FINALLY last Friday there it was...an egg! Saturday 2 eggs, Sunday back down to one, Monday and Tuesday back to 2! I'm pretty confident that 2 out of our 4 little hens are happily laying eggs daily now. This makes me a very happy chicken farmer!
Hopefully we'll have all four laying within a week or so and we'll be back up to full egg production. When we are, if you're nice to us, there's a strong change that you will get some eggs laid with love by the Martin Hens!
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
The ER patched me up...but our chickens died
Sunday morning I woke up with some pain in my calf, I figured it was just a pulled muscle and didn't think much of it. Later in the day I noticed a red spot on the back of my calf about the size of a silver dollar and thought maybe I got bit my something. The red spot kept growing and getting darker, it looked almost like a bruise and there was a dull burning that accompanied it. By 7:00 pretty much everything from my knee down was on pins and needles and I got nervous maybe it was a blood clot so Joe and I decided to make a trip to the ER to get it checked out.
After they ruled out a blood clot, they diagnosed me with cellulitis which I guess is a pretty common bacterial infection of the skin but it spreads rapidly throughout your tissue and can be pretty painful. They gave me medication for lime disease just in case and a prescription for antibiotics, drew a circle around it and told me to come back if it got bigger than the circle. By the time we filled my prescription at CVS and got back home it was after midnight.
We had left our chickens out when we went to the hospital, they still had about 2 hours of roaming left and were tucked into our back woods with no desire to come out when we left. There have been a few nights when one or two didn't come home and they always showed back up the next morning so we didn't think much of leaving them out for an extra hour or two...midnight was a little later than we thought we'd be. When we got home I went straight up to bed and Joe went straight out to the coop to make sure the girls were tucked in safe and sound...but they weren't there. He got a flashlight and saw that there were feathers strewn all over the yard and paths of feathers going into the woods. Something (probably coyotes) ate all of our chickens. He came inside to tell me and I ended up crying myself to sleep. Chickens, to me, aren't pets in the way my dog is. They're outdoor animals and they're there to serve a purpose (eggs) rather than being for companionship; but the idea of them being dragged off and eaten when they were supposed to be sleeping was a pretty awful thought. I had hoped that one or two made it off somewhere or escaped and would come back the next day, but it has been 2 days and no such luck.
So for now...no more eggs :( We're looking into getting new chickens; it's not really the right time of year but we found some chicks available on craigslist that we're going to look into. I told Joe that we should build a big shelter around the coop and keep the chickens in there and protected all the time, never let them just roam free anymore. He responded...just because there are sharks in the ocean doesn't mean we're not going to swim.
Farewell Susie, Ruth, Penny and Rose...hope you ladies are resting easy.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Free Range(ish) Chickens
Our chickens are free range...ish. We keep them cooped up (get it, GET IT?!) during the day when we're at work and then my husband, Joe let's them out around 4 when he gets home and they come back to the coop on their own around dusk. We keep them in their coop mainly to protect them from things like this:
(yes that's a bear roaming our yard in suburban Connecticut) and also so that we can go wrangle them back to our yard when our neighbors from the abutting condo complex come to warn us that our chickens are wandering in the streets. For the first few months they would be sleeping soundly in their nesting boxes within the coop when we went out to check on them around 9pm. The last few weeks they have been roosting/sleeping on the top of their coop (they like to roost on the highest point...no idea why) so my husband goes out around 9, picks them up one by one and "scoots" them into the coop. Tonight he's is working the night shift which happens pretty often and usually without much warning, so for the first time I had to go out and "scoot" the ladies into their coop. It was a scene. For starters they weren't sleeping peacefully like my husband said they would be, they were awake and they were looking at me. They were also laying right next to each other almost overlapping their wings so it was very difficult to grab one without disturbing the others. After about 2 minutes of hemming and hawing and poking at them just enough to really rile them up; I grabbed one. Not a tight enough grip, she flapped her wings right out of my hands almost immediately and landed on the ground right in front of the coop door. Then I really did just have to scoot her in and she went pretty peacefully. The next three were increasingly difficult and the last one kept turning around in a circle following my movements so that I couldn't grab her from behind and it's pretty hard to grab a hen that's staring straight at you...I couldn't even figure out where to grab her! Finally I nabbed her from behind and after she flapped out and around the coop for a minute, she wandered in the door on her own. This entire endeavor probably lasted 15 minutes and was enough for me to break a serious sweat and get a foot cramp from the stress of it all...I hope Joe is off the night shift soon or else our hens might not be free ranging at all for a while!
(yes that's a bear roaming our yard in suburban Connecticut) and also so that we can go wrangle them back to our yard when our neighbors from the abutting condo complex come to warn us that our chickens are wandering in the streets. For the first few months they would be sleeping soundly in their nesting boxes within the coop when we went out to check on them around 9pm. The last few weeks they have been roosting/sleeping on the top of their coop (they like to roost on the highest point...no idea why) so my husband goes out around 9, picks them up one by one and "scoots" them into the coop. Tonight he's is working the night shift which happens pretty often and usually without much warning, so for the first time I had to go out and "scoot" the ladies into their coop. It was a scene. For starters they weren't sleeping peacefully like my husband said they would be, they were awake and they were looking at me. They were also laying right next to each other almost overlapping their wings so it was very difficult to grab one without disturbing the others. After about 2 minutes of hemming and hawing and poking at them just enough to really rile them up; I grabbed one. Not a tight enough grip, she flapped her wings right out of my hands almost immediately and landed on the ground right in front of the coop door. Then I really did just have to scoot her in and she went pretty peacefully. The next three were increasingly difficult and the last one kept turning around in a circle following my movements so that I couldn't grab her from behind and it's pretty hard to grab a hen that's staring straight at you...I couldn't even figure out where to grab her! Finally I nabbed her from behind and after she flapped out and around the coop for a minute, she wandered in the door on her own. This entire endeavor probably lasted 15 minutes and was enough for me to break a serious sweat and get a foot cramp from the stress of it all...I hope Joe is off the night shift soon or else our hens might not be free ranging at all for a while!
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Mexican Egg Fried Rice
Tonight I tried to whip up a dish with things we already had in the kitchen and garden, and it turned out pretty well! Ingredients:
3 cups brown rice (cooked)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 a red onion
1 green pepper
4 eggs
1 can of black beans
2 tomatoes
Cilantro
1/4 Jar of jalapenos
Cumin powder
Garlic powder
1. Heat water on the stovetop for rice according to the instructions on the box.
2. While the water is heating, chop the onion and peppers into small pieces (whatever size you want to eat works).
3. Saute the onions and peppers in the olive oil over medium heat in a large frying pan or wok. (All the ingredients will end up in this dish so make sure it's big enough!) Season with cumin powder.
3. Rinse the black beans in a strainer to get the yucky stuff from the can off.
4. When there is about 5 minutes left for the rice to cook, add the 4 eggs into the same container as the onions & peppers. Scramble it all up together.
5. When the rice is done, add the rice, black beans and tomatoes to the frying pan. Add garlic powder and more cumin powder to taste.
6. Chop the cilantro and add it to the frying pan, also add in the jalapenos. Let heat for another minute and viola! You are ready to eat!
Of course any of these ingredients can be removed and other ingredients can be added to your liking. My husband finished his portion off with hot sauce and sour cream, I finished mine off with some shredded cheese. We both liked it and have plenty left for lunch tomorrow!
3 cups brown rice (cooked)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 a red onion
1 green pepper
4 eggs
1 can of black beans
2 tomatoes
Cilantro
1/4 Jar of jalapenos
Cumin powder
Garlic powder
1. Heat water on the stovetop for rice according to the instructions on the box.
2. While the water is heating, chop the onion and peppers into small pieces (whatever size you want to eat works).
3. Saute the onions and peppers in the olive oil over medium heat in a large frying pan or wok. (All the ingredients will end up in this dish so make sure it's big enough!) Season with cumin powder.
3. Rinse the black beans in a strainer to get the yucky stuff from the can off.
4. When there is about 5 minutes left for the rice to cook, add the 4 eggs into the same container as the onions & peppers. Scramble it all up together.
5. When the rice is done, add the rice, black beans and tomatoes to the frying pan. Add garlic powder and more cumin powder to taste.
6. Chop the cilantro and add it to the frying pan, also add in the jalapenos. Let heat for another minute and viola! You are ready to eat!
Of course any of these ingredients can be removed and other ingredients can be added to your liking. My husband finished his portion off with hot sauce and sour cream, I finished mine off with some shredded cheese. We both liked it and have plenty left for lunch tomorrow!
Backyard Chickens
About 3 months ago my husband and I got 4 hens. He grew up on a farm (I did NOT) and has been talking about getting chickens since we bought a house, I thought it seemed kind of cool and who wouldn't want fresh organic eggs everyday; so I agreed. It was pretty easy to get set up. We ordered a chicken coop from amazon for just under $300, got our 4 hens at age 20 weeks old from a local farmer for about $20 each and after a trip to tractor supply for about $80 worth of feed and other supplies we were off! Within a month Suzy, Ruth, Penny and Rose were each laying an egg a day...4 eggs a day for us! We try to eat eggs for breakfast a few days a week, but we found we quickly amassed many more eggs than we could eat just frying a few at a time for breakfast. We give about a dozen a week away (which I enjoy because people get so excited when they get some farm fresh eggs), but in an effort to get a little more bang for our chicken buck, I've been trying new dishes that incorporate eggs for dinner!! Check out my chickens and my recipes here.
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