Plastic Tote Brooder

on the way home

Well I finally found me some buff orpington chicks. I couldn't believe it. I walked into my feed store and I saw a light on back where the chick pens are and a few people standing back there. I didn't hear them chirping but I asked if they had chicks and they said yes. "What kind?" I asked. "Banty's and buff orpington..." "that's what I want." I cut her off before she could finish. I finally got around to asking the price which surprisingly turned out to be cheaper than the hatcheries online and the other feed stores that had chicks. Good thing none of them had buffs or I would have wasted money I could have saved buying at my local feed store.  I just hope one of these babies turns out to be a rooster.  They are straight run, so who knows.  I may have all pullets or I may have all roosters.  I just hope I have at least one rooster, but it would be nice to have a couple of them be pullets.  We'll find out in about ten weeks.  Also, I would like you to notice the holes I drilled into the sides of my brooder.  This is new.  Last year I cut a big square hole out of the top of the lid and put a metal grate over it.  I didn't really like that too much, so I changed it up this year, partly because I have a big puppy, that still has some learning to do and I don't want her thinking the little babies are snacks for her.  I had an extra lid laying around for the tub, from an old one that I had before.  I didn't want there to be any holes in the lid in case of rain blowing in on the porch and things of that nature.  My first plastic brooder like this was clear and I had a hawk fly down and land on it trying to get to them.  Luckily it didn't succeed but I changed to the blue brooder the next year.  What I did was drill three rows of holes on each side of the plastic tub, then I cut out a hole for my heat lamp on one side.  I had it a little too high and the lamp touched the lid.  So I put the cord through the hole and used my lamp clamp by sticking the clamp end on the outside and the smaller end that holds the lamp, I put through the hole.  Then I had to attach the clamp to something to hold it in place.  It worked perfectly and better than my original idea.  I lined the bottom with news paper but am planning on getting some shavings for it this weekend or next week.  I didn't want to use my big waterer and I gave my small waterer's away, last year.  What I really want to do though is fix up a waterer and feeder that isn't sitting on the floor of the tub.  I am thinking about a rabbit feeder and maybe even a rabbit waterer.  One of the things I hate more than anything with raising chick's is how nasty their water and feed bowls get.  If I could get them up off the floor so they can't jump on them and poop on them, then I am on top of things.  I do have some rabbit feeders but they all have the wire mesh in the bottom and the chick starter falls right through.  I'll have to get a new one without the mesh.  As for the waterer, I have an extra rabbit waterer but I'm not sure if they can drink out of it.  I'll have to research this a little, maybe even experiment with it to see.  

Fixing the floor of my rabbit pen

Moved the Pens back to back

Well today I replaced the floor of one of my rabbit pens.  I've been meaning to do it for a long, long time now, but I kept putting it off because I just didn't feel up to it.  After finding my stapler and my husband buying me a new drill, which I love by the way, I thought there is no sense in putting it off any longer.  I got right to work on it today, after I moved the pen out of the bushes which was no small feat being the only one homether than my two year old son.  He helped by staying under Mama's feet.  I kept running him out of the bushes and distracting him with the dogs.  I was scared to death he was going to get on a snake.  I ended up moving both of my big pens, and let me tell you, those things are heavy.  I cut the wire underneath it completely off.  I know it was put there to keep animals from tearing into the pens but it holds all their loose hair and rabbit pellets.  It had the pen smelling awful.  So I cut it off and let all of that mess fall to the ground.  I then had to take the sheet of tin off the front of the pen so I could get to work on it.  I still need to work on the door, and I think I'll use the extra foot of wire I had left to put on the inside of the door.  After I removed the tin, I laid out my roll of wire and snipped the corners where the landscaping timbers go.  Then I stapled the end down and rolled it to the other end stapling as I went.  I then cut a foot of wire off the roll and again snipped the corners for the landscaping timbers.  I then proceeded to staple everywhere I could.  The more staples you put in it the more secure it is.  I wouldn't mind going back tomorrow and put a few more longer staples in it.  I sent my daughter to the store with her grandma to get me some more staples and made sure to tell her I wanted the longer ones.  For once she listened and got me just what I needed to finish the job.  I did go ahead and move the rabbit back into this one so I can do some maintenance on his pen.  One thing I want to do is remove the roofing tacks in the front of the pen holding the tin in place.  I will replace them with tin screws.  I also want to inspect the wire on the inside of this cage as well.  Before I put him back in it, I am going to cut the extra wire off the bottom like I did the other pen.  My next project is going to be the smaller cages.  I really want to make them the actual pen for my breeding pair.  I finally found me a new doe. Im going to get her this weekend, but first I've got some work to do on the pens.  Anyway, the two bigger pens will be for the grow outs.  I can separate the males from the females and have plenty of room for them to move around.  I don't intend to have a lot of rabbits, but it will really just depend how things go down the road. I just want two or three rabbits for breeding, no more.  I intend to let this be my daughters project.  It will be a good learning experience for her and a 4H/FFA project. Of course, I will get something out of it as well, because what she doesn't sell will end up in my freezer, just as my chicken project will do the same for me.  I intend to breed three different colors of orpington chickens, buff, blue and blue/buff crosses.  You can find out all about that in an earlier post.  Anyway, we have what I believe is a broken red new Zealand buck.  I don't think he's a standard rex.  His fur doesn't appear to look velvety to me.  I've found pictures of broken red new Zealand's that look a lot like him.  I could be very wrong though, as I've never seen a Standard Rex rabbit or even a Mini Rex up close.  I've only seen pictures on line.

This is a younger picture of him, right after I got him

This is a good picture of him now.

Family Command Center Update

Every home needs a family command center.  With all the different things going on and our schedules being so busy and hectic, it's nice to have it all organized.  Kids need a chore chart.  Bills need to be organized in a way that makes it easy to find, and sort.  An excellent way to do that is to have an incoming, outgoing and a to be filed area.  The blue box with the circles is my to be filed box.  I'm going to label it later.  I made it out of a box that goes on a book.  This was actually from my college years and I still had the book, don't need it or the case so I took the case and covered it with contact paper.  I wrapped it just like I would a gift except where the opening is at the top.  Then I put two holes in the back to hang it.  The board on the left was just one solid marker board on right and bulletin board on left.  I used washi tape to divide the marker board into sections.  My children's chores are listed in the two bottom sections and the upper section is for notes.  I glued and taped three envelopes together with washi tape to make individual files for things like coupons and receipts.  The to do list to the right of the notes and chore chart is a picture frame with a note card inside decorated with washi tape and check boxes drawn on.  To the right of that is where I tack up business cards and sort my incoming and outgoing mail.  At the bottom of that is a place to hang keys, but since I don't hang my keys up I used it to hang a basket to put dry erase markers and a marker board eraser in.  At the bottom is my calendar with a section on the left to make my grocery list.  I still have plenty of wall space available to the left but I haven't figured out what to do with it yet.  At the top of the wall, I plan on putting some inspiring words and a picture frame with a family photo.  I have seen a lot of different family command centers and all of them had great qualities, just not many that applied to me, so I made it my own.  I don't need a menu board as many of the command centers I've seen online.  I like to plan it all out that day not a week ahead or even a day ahead.  For moms who work out of the home though, a menu is probably a great idea that way you know what to lay out that morning before you leave for work.  For me I like instead the idea of having a grocery list here, because I can write stuff down as I discover I'm low on it or out of it.  Then when I go shopping, I just snap a picture with my phone.  As for the to be filed box, I hate filing things.  Its just easier to me to put it all in a box like this one and when it gets full, I have to make myself file it.  It would be ideal for me to have a desk under all of this so I can sit down and write out bills as needed, but there's no room for one because of the island.  Anyway, I usually pull them out and stand at the island sorting through them, going from one website or app to the next paying them, then I put them in the to be filed bin.  The two that I have to write a check for, do not have a website for me to go and pay, so I write those two out and stick them up in the outgoing mail section, until I get around to heading to the post office, usually the next day, or on the way to do my grocery shopping.  I like to run my errands all on the same day if possible.  I am still looking for new ideas to improve my command center.  Anything that will help me improve my hectic life with two kids is great for me.  Maybe some of these ideas will work for you or maybe you can throw some ideas my way. 

Chicken Tractor Update Part Two

outdoor paneling covering the nest box and roost pole

Since my last post about my chicken tractor being torn into by an animal, I have finally found the culprit.  I still don't know what happened to my rooster but I'm still going with a broken neck judging by the looks of him. You will never believe it when I tell you. You are probably thinking a dog or a wild animal but if you are, you would be wrong. Nope, its none of those things. The culprit is my thousand pound horse who thinks chicken feed is horse feed. Yep I realized this a few nights ago. I laid some wood over the two wholes and attempted to use chicken feed to lure one of my roosters into the pen. This didn't work of course and I gave up trying to catch him but later that night I heard the tin on the pen being knocked around and the dogs started barking. I went outside and found my horse trying to get to the feed. After I run her off, I went to look at my pen and sure enough there was a new hole on the other end of the pen that looked suspiciously like the other two holes from before. Well now that I know the culprit is actually a horse and not a wild animal, I feel safe using my pen. I just needed to patch the holes. As I was walking around outside today, I remembered that I had a long narrow piece of dog wire laying around somewhere. It was just the right size in height to cover the whole lower front where the three holes were. So I stapled it on and trimmed off the excess. As I was doing this I decided there were a few more things I wanted to change. For example I decided the tin on the one side with the section totally and completely covered with wire wasn't necessary.  So I removed it and over the nest box I screwed a piece of outdoor paneling. Then to keep it from getting wet at the top I put a piece of flashing or whatever it's called. It's the piece that you put at the upper most pitch of your tin roof. I call it flashing but that's probably not right. (Shrugs shoulders) it doesn't matter as long as its leak proof to keep the rain off of them. Now, one reason I wanted to remove the tin was to allow more sun light in.  Chickens need plenty of sun and it just makes more sense to remove the tin as opposed to propping it up and worrying about the wind catching it. After all this could be how my rooster died. As I said it looked like his neck was broken and the tin which had been up earlier had been knocked down or blown down. The rooster was laying on that side with his head next to the tin. Its quite possible that when it fell he had his head out the wire and the tin hit him killing him. There was no sign of sickness, no bloody mess which is why I believe his neck was broke. If I am correct then by removing this tin I will be able to prevent this from happening again. However, I left the tin over the opening on the opposite side.  It makes it easily accessible for me to get in and change the water, remove chickens or put them in.  This piece can be faced North if the wind is too much, but for now it is facing west.  The nest box wall is facing North, so there's no chance of wind getting to them from that direction either.  They should be warm enough and out of the rain enough the way I did it.  One of the things about my chicken tractor is that its a constant work in progress.  I can change things as I determine they need to be changed.  I love the idea of a chicken tractor, because you can easily move it, you can update it as you need to and you can free range without actually free ranging.  I like my stationary pen.  It's not that it's impossible to move.  The pen itself pulls up from the ground and folds in half.  It's the coop that's difficult to move.  I've contemplated putting a wire bottom on it and adding wheels to it.  The thing about the coop and pen is that it can easily be landscaped to be something beautiful.  Mine may not be that pretty but there are some I've seen pictures of that are gorgeous.  People plant pretty flowers around them, grow vines on them.  You can do all kinds of things to make them beautiful, or you can have it be as ugly as sin.  It's whatever your preference.  If we move, like I'm hoping we can, we'll have more room to build pens and things.  I would love to build three or four larger A frame chicken tractors, to separate the different colors of orpingtons, that I want.  I would love to have a pen for my buffs, a pen for my blues, a pen for lavenders and so on and so forth.  I might even like to have some silkies just because.  Right now, the three colors I have mentioned are the ones I want, but I might like to start a blue/buff pen as well.  Once I figure out what works with my chicken tractor, I will know exactly how to build my new pens if and when I get that opportunity.  Another possibility for the current chicken tractor is that I could add onto the bottom.  I have thought about this, recently as I know that my pen will need to grow eventually.  Of course I can always just build a brand new one but it is possible to add on to the existing one.  

dog wire covering the holes in the chicken wire, under the opening.  

tin removed on the opposite side to provide sunlight

One of the buffs checking out the nest box