Hay!

Earlier this year, when we built the coop and run for our urban chickens, we dutifully went to the local feed store and picked up a bale of hay. We wanted to have a layer (heh, see what I did there?) of hay on the floor of the run.

Being almost exclusively "city folk" we had no idea just how much hay was in a bale.

"They look heavy on TV, you know, the sweaty farm hands throwing them around... Maybe 40 pounds? But I bet they have smaller ones for us," I guessed when my wife left in her minivan to go pick it up along with the cat litter and a few other pet-related goodies.

My wife returned a short time later with a car FILLED with bits of hay. Apparently hay bales start to break down once they get in your car -- some sort of radioactive half-life thing. Anyway, interesting side note, it took her hours to get the little bits of hay out of the carpet in her car...

But back to the hay story. I pulled the bale out of her car and it was big. I called it a regulation size bale. Jokes about buying in bulk seemed a bad idea.

We wrestled it into the backyard and realized that it would not fit inside the run in the nifty little space under the coop. Long story short, we had to leave it out of the coop and eventually it got rained on, turned moldy a bit, and started to decompose.

And we had used about one quarter or so of the whole bale. Now I have a huge pile of hay in the staging area for our compost bins. I'll need to mow a LOT of lawns to get enough greens to get the hay turned.

And so this weekend we had to go buy new hay. But this time we'd be ready!

We brought a tarp in the car, to limit the bale-shedding.

We set up a place where we can keep the hay out of the rain and up off the ground, so it might last through the winter. If it does, we figure we will literally have enough hay for two years. Unless we find a neighbor who needs some.

On Strike!

Well, it must be winter time or close enough to it because our flock of urban chickens is on strike. They've laid just a single egg this week! They don't appear to be molting, so it must just be the shorter days and maybe the colder temperatures.

Somehow, I bet this ends up making it into this year's Nanowrimo story...

Coop Update

Here's a quick update on the coop.



As you can see from the image, I've got the roof and trim up. I still need to:

- Install an egg door
- Install a back window
- Install a door for the coop itself
- Attach the ladder (not pictured)
- Build a roost (easy stuff)
- Finish up the floor of the run (add some sand/gravel/dirt/hay/etc.)

Should have the chickens out in their new digs soon!

Tragedy Strikes

We suffered our first urban chicken tragedy last night.

It all happened so fast. Well, relatively fast.

Our chicks are 5 weeks old, and getting along swell. But yesterday morning one of them seemed a bit sleepy, even while the other two were racing around gobbling up the little crumbs of bread we tossed in as a treat.

By 5:30PM the chick was dead.

The kids took it especially rough. They cried all through dinner. They decided on their own to wear black to school today.

As first time chicken owners we realized quickly how little we were prepared for something like this. I mean, they've quickly become "pets" even if we do plan on raising them for their eggs. But we'd only had them for 3 weeks and it's not like the birds run around the house with our cats or anything. But still, I wasn't exactly shocked to see the kids upset.

We tried calling some vets. Of course, finding vets that know anything much about 5 week old chickens is tough.

We had difficult decisions to make and questions to face:

Is it "worth" $160 to get a necropsy of a $4 bird you've had for a total of 22 days? Couldn't we just buy 40 more of the suckers and let the odds work for us?

But what if it died of some disease we could prevent from harming the other chicks?

Would it be better to pay half that amount to have the two live birds checked out by a vet?

We want to get a new chick, but will the other birds accept one if we find a new bird about the same age? What would happen if we got a one or two week old chick?

Ah Peepers, we'll miss you.