Chicken Coop Expansion - The Hen Palace Grounds

This past week has seen an expansion of Claire's Chicken Chateau, with an add-on to the side of the coop, complemented by a protected outdoor exploration yard. 

As you may recall, the Chicken Chateau was based upon the dog house that was originally with the property when we purchased it.  Re-using the dog house roof was a way to use what we had on site, and save some cost, as well as recycle materials.  This made a good, but narrow chicken coop.  Here's how it looked when it was in the initial construction phase, nearly completed.

Over time we acquired a few more chickens (now 22 adults and 6 nuggets), and watched their behaviour, especially on rainy days when they didn't really want to be outside, I decided it was time for a bit of an expansion.

My helpful local builder came and built out the side of the coop to the existing perimeter fence, using the fence as part of the new wall.

He installed a new roof portion as well.  This part of the renovation opened up some space for more indoor comfort, and space for another roosting bar. 

This picture shows the renovation partly completed, but you can see how it opened up a whole new area.  We used a lot of old barn boards and pallet wood that we already had handy.

On the weekend, he came to complete the renovation and add an outdoor exploration area.  Having lost two birds to hawks in our initial chicken days here, we knew that keeping them protected when foraging was critical.  The new chicken yard uses some recycled material from a metal barn structure, which holds up a plastic mesh cover material.  There's also a gate for me to go in and out.  The sides are wood and hardware cloth, which is more sturdy than chicken wire.

It allows for sunlight and air (and those yummy bugs) to pass through, but prevents hawk or owl activity.  The base of the outdoor area also has wood around the base to prevent raccoons or other predators. There is a hatch door with a ramp on both the inside and outside for the birds to use to access the yard.

The outdoor foraging area will only be accessible in the daytime.  At night, they are inside the coop with the door firmly closed.

There is also a brand new Mummy-and-baby suite for Whisp and her little ones, which can be used when needed for birds who need time to rest, recuperate, be mothers, or otherwise be separated but "with" the flock.

On their first afternoon in the foraging area, after some initial discovery of leafy plants and grubs in the dirt, they all selected an ideal dust bath location and dug out a shallow bowl-shaped area.  Everybody seems to get into the dust bath at once.  I am hoping it won't get too muddy and nasty when it rains, but for now, they are all loving it!

Here's Willoughby supervising the dust bathing area.

Buttercream goes bug hunting.

Jellybelly has a rest in the leaf litter and looks like a queen as always.

Shadow shows her fluffy pantaloons while foraging in the wild blueberry bushes.

I'm so glad that they have more space to roam and enjoy their environment while remaining safe from birds of prey.

The Weekend Roundup: J

The prompts for this weekend from Tom the Backroads Traveller are: Starts with J, Joy, and Favourite.

Starts with J

Jumper starts with J.  In the UK, and some other commonwealth countries, a jumper is what we here in North America call a sweater.  To me, a jumper is a sleeveless dress that is designed to be worn over a top of some kind.  In any case, I was recently inspired to try a new wine from a winery called Tussock Jumper.  Each wine they produce has a different animal on the label, and in each case, the animal is wearing a red jumper (sweater).  The wine I tried was the Sauvignon Blanc variety, which is one of my favourite wine grapes, and I really enjoyed it.  However, with this cute label with a sheep in a red jumper, how could I even resist trying it?!

Tussock Jumper makes a whole range of different wines with cute jumper-clad animals on the labels.  I'd like to try the Rose Moscato with a rabbit in a jumper on the label, and there's a Cabernet Sauvignon with a really cute penguin!

Joy

I am not very joyful today - unfortunately little Ivy, our pet rat whom I featured last week, died last night.  It was a sad day for me and I am sad for her sister, Violet.  Sometimes when I am feeling sad, spending time with pets and animals helps me to feel happier.  So, I found some joy today when I went out to spend some time with the chickens.  I have a little plastic step-stool that I take out to the coop and I sit on it and just relax and let them interact with me.  There are several hens who will immediately come over and jump up on my lap.  The first one is almost always Amelia.  She flew up onto my shoulder the day I brought her home, and she has remained very interactive ever since.  Here she is on my knee today, doing some preening.

Amelia has really lovely feather patterns.  She is a maran cross breed hen.

Such a beautiful hen.

The two young birds that have been the subject of prior blogs, which were incubated by my white silkie, Whisp, are now out in the coop, and they are also extremely friendly with me.  Willoughby, the little rooster, and the little hen Buttercream, both fly up to my lap very quickly, and as I pet them, they soon settle down to sleep.

Here they are shortly after flying to my knee.

Such a sweet pair.  How can I not feel some joy when they are so eager to sit on my lap?

Buttercream flew up to my shoulder for an adventure.  She made me smile, and that's a sign of joy.

Shortly after that she came back down to my lap, where her brother was already asleep.

Soon I had two sleeping chickens and after a time spent enjoying the antics of the rest of the flock, and collecting a few eggs, I had a much improved disposition.

Favourite

A favourite shot for this week is this one I unexpectedly snapped of a red-breasted nuthatch who had just dropped its seed, presumably by mistake.  I didn't realize I had caught that moment until I downloaded the pictures.  Since a person who drops things is sometimes referred to as a "butterfingers," I wonder if I can call this bird a "butterbeak?"  

The Weekend Roundup: H

I'm quite late doing the weekend roundup this weekend.  It seems to have been a bit busy lately and I am just catching up with things today.  The prompts from Tom the Backroads Traveller are: Starts with H, House, and Favourite.

Starts with H
Words that start with H include huge, or hefty, which are good words to describe one of today's eggs from the chicken flock.  Normal "large" size eggs from the grocery store weigh approximately 2 oz, or 56 grams, and extra-large weigh 2.25 oz, or about 64 grams.  Here's a fairly normal egg from our flock.

The tiny eggs we get from our silkies weigh about 1.2-1.4 oz (35-43 grams) which is classified as a "small" or "peewee" egg for commercial sizing (based on the USDA egg weights, which are similar to the Canadian egg sizing charts). 

Today's huge, hefty egg came in at an amazing 3.1 oz (87.8 grams) making it the largest yet from our flock.  I feel a bit sorry for the hen who had to push this one out!

Holy cow!  errr....egg!

House
We still have quite a bit of snow around our house, as you can see in this picture.  This is a view of our house through the grove of trees in the front yard.  Although we've had some warmer days and some sunshine, it takes a long time for the snow to melt because we get a lot of shade from the trees.  Some areas near us that have sun all day have no snow, which is weird for this time of year here.

Here's the path to the chicken "house" or coop.  The path is VERY icy right now because we've had several freezing rain events and then melting, with freezing again, making the path a very compacted, icy spot.  I have put some straw down in the front of the coop to stop me from falling on the ice. 

The deck still has a lot of snow on it, as you can see on the steps in the left of this picture, and all the flower beds are still well covered with snow, although it's only about 6 or 8 inches now, compared to the 2-3 feet we might normally have in February.

Favourite
One of my favourite new additions to my house that I assembled and installed a couple of weeks ago is a new bookshelf in the kitchen to hold all my cookbooks.  Now my cookbooks are all close at hand when I am actually cooking, rather than being in the home office.  I have organized the cookbooks by category.

I am very fond of the rabbit and mouse bookends that I am able to use on the bookshelf.  They are longtime favourites of mine as well!

A bonus favourite shot:  Here is "mama" hen Whisp, a splash silkie, with her two young ones, who have grown into lovely little chickens.  The little hen on the left is Buttercream, and the little rooster on the right is Willoughby.  Whisp didn't lay the eggs, but she did incubate them, and the rooster (Wellington) to the left of Whisp is definitely the father.  I suspect that the hen you can just see in the far left (her back and tail are visible) is the one who laid the eggs, since she is the palest of my red hens, and the eggs were definitely from one of the red production hens.  The pale colour of the little ones leads me to suspect the eggs were hers, but I'm not sure.  In any case, they have integrated quite well into the flock and are permanently outdoors now, rather than in the rabbit cage in my home office!  Hooray for that!