Around the house in North Dakota...a wordless post

DIY shed to chicken coop

So you got your cute little chicks they are so fun and cuddly and they can live right in the house with you. Your children love playing with them and life is good.

But before you know it they will be getting feathers and looking a little funny. They will get a little stinky and you will start to feel frantic about the chicken coop.  

And then your husband starts working Saturdays and your dream pallet chicken coop goes away and you need something so much faster.

A chicken coop is basically a shed with chicken stuff inside. So if you buy a shed all you have to do is add the chicken stuffy stuff and your ready to go.

Essential chicken stuffy stuff

Chicken door and ramp

Nesting boxes

Roosts

Ventilation but no draft

Optional but awesome chicken stuffy stuff

Windows that open

Paint

Insulation

For us insulation was a must.  North Dakota winters can get cold!  Plus, I'm a wimp in the cold, so I think my animals are wimps too.  And after I spend all this money and time on these chickens I would hate for them to die because it got too cold on a blizzardy winter night.

 

Insulated is an easy step, just shove it between the framing.  Anyway you can.  It's a chicken coop, it doesn't have to be perfect.

Our shed came with a vent in it, lucky us! One less thing for us to do!

Next cover the insulation with wood of some kind.  Fancy mahogany, red cedar, hand carved works of art.  Doesn't matter just make sure it's all covered, you don't your chickens eating the insulation. We used plywood, cause it's slightly more cost effective than mahogany.

My next job was to paint paint paint.  I used deck paint because that stuff is strong! And it's meant to take a lot of weathering.  So it stands up well to chickens.  The plywood sure sucked up a lot of paint.  This 8x8 shed took nearly 3 gallons of paint! 

My handy hubby added the roosts...and I painted that too.

 Next he added the nesting boxes...and I painted them too.

I painted the inside a dark brown so it would make a darker spot for the hens to lay their eggs. Look the lid even lifts up for easy cleaning!

After my husband built the framing for the partition I painted that too.  Starting to get the theme? I painted every bit of wood on the inside to protect it from rotting away due to moisture.

We had some leftover laminate flooring from our downstairs bathroom so we added that to the chicken side.

 

Now we are getting close to done! We added chicken wire to the partition framing and a door.

We have a shelf above the chicken side for storing stuff.

Then quick! Lock your kids in!

The girls loved it and wanted to have a sleepover out there, they settled for spreading some straw around for the chickens.

Tada! Add food, water, and chickens!

Now go air out your garage where the chickens used to be...it stinks, or at least mine did!

 And now you can see we have awesome storage on the 'human' side of the coop. On the other side there is room for a few straw bales. And sometimes chickens use the human door too.

Our beautiful coop!

Ducks are messy messy messy and how to combat it

Our children talked us into getting ducks. They begging and whined until we couldn't take it any longer.  I'm afraid it wasn't all that hard for them. We are total pushovers.

We were actually thinking of adding ducks to the farm next year so speeding up our plans a bit wasn't that big of a deal.  We originally planned to have them live in our chicken coop with the chickens so this new animal thing was going to be no big deal right?

Wrong.

Ducks are messy.  I know this has been said before. I didn't haphazardly get ducks, I did my research. "Ducks are messy" has been stated on countless poultry boards. But this is a terrible understatement. I felt lied to. Never once did someone actually say how messy ducks are.  I read plenty of times that ducks are messy.  But I never once read the truth about ducks and their messiness. We got 35 chicks and our brooder space worked fabulously. So four ducks should have no problem in the same space. 

Wrong again.

When I say ducks are messier than chickens please understand that I don't mean one duck is messier than one chicken. I don't even mean that one duck is messier than three chickens.

What I am trying to tell you is that one duck is about as messy as 100 chickens.

This is not an exaggeration. This is the truth.

Ducks poop on average 6,000 times more than a chicken (okay that might be an exaggeration). Our four sweet ducklings had a three gallon poultry waterer. I had to fill it twice a day.  And not because they were drinking it either.  They splashed it out.

Breakdown of facts:

4 duckling

6 gallons of water

24 hours

They are also messy eaters.  They just fling the stuff everywhere. No matter how hard I tried to keep the food on the dry end of the brooder they drug it down to the wet end.  Now you have mushy duck food to go with your tons of water and poop. And ducks do not eat mushy food.

We started herding the ducks to the pond on nice days and back to the garage at night just to give our stinky garage a break. Ducks are really smart and after a couple of days they knew where to go and it wasn't hard at all but it was silly to herd ducks!

After working our butts off on our chicken house there was no way I wanted the ducks to even go near it. I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep the ducks to be honest.

Clearly, the ducks needed their own space and they were not allowed to have water in it.  Ever.

After some research I found that many people where having good luck by only feed their ducks once or twice a day and not allowing them to access to food or water in the house.  Since the ducks are only shut in their house at night this isn't a big deal and our ducks are now happy and healthy and only being feed once a day.

Feeding them only once a day also forces them to get out of their pond area and go poop in other places in the yard, eat some grass, poop under the trampoline, and eat my flowers.

After some trail and error I have found what works for best for us and our ducks.

I tried feeding them twice a day once in the mornings and once in the early afternoon but it was a pain to get in the early afternoon feeding if we planed to be gone for the day and then they ended up being feed before they where put in their house and that increases the mess. They also never left their pond area to go find anything else to eat. And going out and eating plants and bugs is the best thing for them!

Now, I feed my ducks once a day. In the morning. It's important that they eat the bulk of their food in the morning so the bulk of their pooping is done during the day.  It took a while to figure out how much to feed them but now I feed them about a cup of food each.  They also can eat as much as they can forage all day.  I will have to change this in the winter time when there is less foraging and they will need more calories to stay warm.

I feed the ducks in a big wide dog food pan.  It's big enough for them all to get around it and too big for them to flip it over.  They also have access to water all day.

At night they go in their duck hut with no food and no water. They have a nice hut though and are let out first thing in the morning.

Now here is the inside of the duck hut after one month without cleaning it, without adding more straw, and without stiring the straw.  I have literally done nothing to it.

Not bad huh?  What are your tricks for dealing with the messiness of ducks?

And stay in touch! Coming soon is how to make that beauty I call the duck hut.

Time flys when you're watching chickens grow

This post has been a long time coming, we got our chicks back in March and somehow I haven't posted a single chicken related thing. Shame on me.

Aren't they just so cute! We ordered 35 day old chicks from efowl, I was very surprised when every single chicken came alive.  This was my first experience mailing chicks. One little gal did appear to have a few chicken seizures but she is happy and healthy now, maybe she was just really clumsy and would freak out when she fell? Who knows.

Chicks are way more fun then you would think. (Adult chickens too!) Sure they are cute and fluffy and as much as you'll have fun holding them you will have way more fun just watching them. These cute little guys had fun multiple times playing keep away with a wood chip.

Even your animals will get entertainment from these chicks.

We had our chickens in our house for the first month or so, March in North Dakota is cold! Even our heated garage is a bit too chilly for the little guys. It was also more fun for the girls and I, when could watch them whenever we wanted.

Aren't these guys the cutest?

But soon the day will come when you will be so excited to get them out of your house.  And soon after that, you will be so excited when they moved out of the garage and into the coop.  No more stinky animals in your space...and then you get ducks.

 

And when they move to the coop and are big and not quite as cute, they will still be lots of fun.  I find myself having 'reasons' to go to see the chickens several times a day. I never thought it would be so entertaining to watch lettuce get eaten one small peck at a time.

 

I'm really not sure what this guys problem with me is but he only has a problem with me.  Not my kids and not my husband.  But if I go out he seeks me out and tries to eat my entire foot and sometimes my calf too. I can't wait til he is big enough to eat. If he doesn't knock it off I'll be having myself a really small roasted chicken next week. He is mighty lucky he doesn't go after my kids.

Chickens are good for a lot more than just eggs and meat, they are also good entertainment. Both for the girls and I. I love our little farm on the prairie.

Baby Bunny Love!

So the other day my family and I were walking around in the field and picking wild asparagus. Just enjoying a nice sunny day and soaking it in. As I walk to some asparagus this rabbit dashes out in front of me of course sending me into a slight cardiac arrest... I mean c'mon who doesn't jump when bunnies do that? Okay, Okay, OKAY... Fine, I'm a jumpy person. ANYWAYS! My husband, Westen tells me, "Hey Mia there's another bunny there in the side of the ditch."

Bunny family!

Being the animal lover I am I wanted to see how close I could get to the bunny for some pictures. As I get closer I see the bunny was acting different. Would not move. I was shocked and was wondering if the bunny has some disease or something and was dying. I quickly notice that was not the case. She had babies! They were hours old if that. It was one of the coolest things I has seen in a while.

Tending to her babies!

I sat there basically sitting in the same ditch she was in. I was taking these pictures with just my cell phone. Yes, my CELL PHONE! I was that close! Just when I thought that this couldn't get any more awesome the daddy bunny (Or so I'm assuming?) came back around from where he went when he flushed out. He stood his ground right above the mommy bunny and just watched. I was not only in shock but just amazed by what I was watching.

See them??? Hard I know but they are there! 

So anyone who knows me is probably like really? Mia... you hunt rabbits.. Your amazed by little rabbits? Okay I see where your coming from, but this was really cool I thought. I hunt elk & deer but could spend hours just sitting amongst them watching their day to day. Were surrounded by amazing wildlife and how they go from their day to day can be fascinating. I love nature and I'm dedicated to preserving habitat and conserving the wildlife the land thrives with. Amazing how god created all of this for us to see and enjoy and pass on for future generations to see and enjoy. 

Happy Mothers Day bunny family!

Herding Owls with a Broom

Herding Owl with a Broom

Life on the family ranch is certainly never dull.  Early this morning Paul saw something walking down the driveway.  On closer inspection it turned out to be a fledgling Great Horned Owl.

By the time I got there, it had walked down the side of the house and sat there for awhile.  Paul tried to go out the front door and get it to walk on down the driveway hoping to get it into the shelter of some trees.  Nope, he snapped and popped his beak at him and wouldn't move.  We carried on with getting Paul ready for work.  I went out to look again and it was gone and I didn't see it though I'd have sworn I heard it popping its beak as I went out the door.  Then in a bit Paul found it where it had crossed the back porch and crawled under his toolbox (which was about 3 feet from my bare ankles when I went out earlier and why I heard it pop its beak!).  

The morning proceeded with wondering how to deal with this owl.  I didn't want our dog Clancy getting it and the owl getting some good tears in on Clancy with that beak and its talons.  We did chores by Clancy going in and out the front door and avoiding the owl.  It was still there and I knew something needed to be done.  So I got the push broom and poked it out from under the toolbox.  It went across the porch rather reluctantly and then across the back yard.  Wish I could have gotten some pictures of that because it was fluffed up with its wings out.  It stopped and turned to me many times as I swept it along.  It tried to fly a few times, but didn't get more than a couple feet off the ground in a couple of hops.  Then I discovered it would grab the broom bristles and I messed around with it hanging on the broom and lost it several times.  Finally got it kind of secured on there in an awkward way and headed for the tangle of trees nearby.

After a few attempts, I kind of got it in the trees, but it wouldn't turn loose of the broom.  So I left it hanging there for a bit to see what would happen.

When I came back in about ten minutes, it was upright and loose from the broom.

And mama is watching from another tree not too far away.

The fledgling can't fly so I don't know how this will turn out.  I just know it's better in the tree than right on the ground outside my door with my dog and other family dogs nearby.

Update:

I had to be gone for a couple of hours and when I came back there was no sign of the owlet.  No sign of mama either.  I will always wonder how she rescued it.  So I'm just going to believe I helped to save it. 

2nd Day Update:

Paul spotted the owlet further into the tangle this morning and higher up.  Since it can't fly, not sure how it got there but it's still around.  Then this evening I went looking and not only was baby sitting there, but mama owl was sitting right beside it, so I KNOW she is still caring for it!

Several days after the last update I traveled out of town and left Paul with instructions for updates and to keep an eye out.  He continued for about a week to see the young owl and mama in the tangle of trees.  The young owl moved from place to place in the tangle.  Then one morning, they were gone.  But that evening they were both back in the same tangle.  Baby owl had flown.  The next day they were gone and we haven't seen them since though in the dark we hear owls hooting off and on.  We are choosing to think it all worked out and we were able to help save this young owl.