farmer's notebook

                       Goodbye, Antonio.

Poor Antonio the rooster met his demise this fall - a raccoon reached in the vent hole and tried to make off with him in his sleep, but was only partially successful. I had to put the poor guy out of his misery, and put hardware cloth over the vent holes.

Update on the "Chicken Hotel"

The set of pictures below are of our original mobile "Chicken Hotel I" when it was new. Of the original Americauna chickens, we have three left.

As of today - January 17th, 2010 - "Hotel I" is about 6 years old. It is still in use and badly in need of some federal emergency assistance. Actually, it has held up OK, although the little door wired to chicken wire (2nd picture, below) has been nothing but problems and finally, after numerous fixes, completely fell apart. Note also the corrosion of the galvanized chicken wire as it sits against a stainless steel screw. "Hotel I" was never light weight, but gets heavier in our soggy winters (Pacific Northwest) as the treated wood picks up moisture. My wife can't really move it uphill. That little white hen in the picture immediately below still lays about an egg a day! Her laying season is shorter than 2 years ago, though. I don't have the heart or guts to turn these last three old girls into stew, and so will let them retire in their decrepit Hotel I until they fly to that grub-infested meadow in the sky, after which we'll go in, re-paint, and rent it out again!

Meanwhile, we created "Chicken Hotel II"! We kept the design pieces from "Hotel I" that worked, and changing the things that didn't. The pictures below are of

"Chicken Hotel II":

 The new one is 6 inches narrower, still incorporates the levered wheels for moving the thing each morning. It uses stainless steel chicken wire, and has some slight dimensional changes to the coop so that the chickens, when roosting, don't poop on their nests and so that rain doesn't drip through the lid hinge onto the nests. More importantly, Hotel II has a covered area adjacent to the coop portion (as opposed to the "yard" portion) with a door in it that opens upward. This door allows us to change food and water each morning without kneeling in the wet grass to access the small ground-level door in the old design. I did create a ground-level door in "Hotel II" to allow chickens to leave and enter easily if desired, but that door it is now part of the wooden coop portion and so shouldn't fall apart like the old design.

The covered area next to the coop is also useful to help keep their "layer's mash" (food for laying hens) from getting soggy in the rain. Food and water hangs from the cross bars under the cover and doesn't touch the ground, which keeps slugs out of the food and kicked dirt from out of the water. With the weight of the food and water positioned closer to the levered wheels, "Hotel II" seems much lighter weight and is a lot easier to move than "Hotel I".

There are only 3 egg nests in Hotel II, which is plenty for the 8 hens we currently have. There is an electric light inside, mostly for cold nights and to let things dry out somewhat. There is hardware cloth over the vents. Nests are removable for cleaning.

In "Hotel II" we have young Barred Rock chickens that we raised from chicks. They grow very fast and began to lay about 6 months after hatching. They are very sweet and talk at least as much as the Americaunas. They are curious and personable! I think they may dig in the dirt less than the Americaunas. We've been getting about one egg per hen per day since before Christmas! That's a lot of quiche!

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By popular request, here are some pictures of the stainless steel, hanging chicken waterer I made. I got tired of buying those plastic waterers:

This waterer is created from a stainless champagne bucket, a stainless camping skillet, and some wire:

To use it, you fill up the champagne bucket with water up to the punched hole (see middle picture above), place the wired skillet over the champagne bucket, and quickly flip over the whole assembly. Occasionally the lid will slip off as you flip, dumping water all over your kitchen cabinets and risking your marriage.

If the hole you create in the champagne bucket is,

a) the correct size (mine is about diameter 11/32", or 0.340 inches), and

b) positioned just below the lip of the skillet (or holes you may have drilled in which to string wire) when the whole thing is assembled and flipped over,

then water will only glug out and fill the skillet as the chickens drink (and water level gets low in the skillet). If the hole is too small, too big, or positioned incorrectly, water may not come out, or may overflow the skillet and cause your bucket to run dry in a few minutes. Use a punch or drill to make the hole in your bucket. Again, I experimented and came up with a hole in my champagne bucket of about 11/32" diameter. Good Luck!

Kind Regards,

Dan Vorhis