Is Winter Really Over?

I actually got hot outside today while I was pruning the apple trees. It was 62 degrees and the snow is just about melted! Could winter be over? I don't think I can believe that since we have had record amounts of snow this year.

Here in Kentucky we didn't get near the snowfall that the east cost got, but we did get 27" in February and more that a foot of it all at once. It was hard to keep it off of the greenhouse.

My daughters favorite thing about having a greenhouse this winter was that when we were playing in the snow, we could go in there to warm up. It was also a great place to keep the sleds!

The only thing we could do in the garden was go sledding.

That picture was taken during one of our smaller snowfalls. Most of the time the garden beds have looked like this:

There was a lot more snow than we are used to. Even playing in it got us much more tired than usual.

It was our first winter as chicken owners. I learned that chickens do not like snow!

During the last snow, about eight inches blew into their pen and the girls refused to leave the coop. When they would jump down into the snow, they would squawk and flap around like they were being attacked! I actually had to shovel out the snow, put new wood chips down, and bait them out with lettuce from the greenhouse.

They still spent most of their time inside, but at least now they would come out to eat and drink. That's also about the time they start laying more eggs again. Now that it has been warmer, there are some days that every hen lays. Soon I will be able to let them back out in their grazing pen.

There will be a lot going on in the garden pretty soon too. I do have some early tomatoes and lettuce started and have much to share with you.

Most of the winter I have been writing pages for my new gardendesk.com site (as opposed to this blog). Now I plan to turn my attention back to blogging, so stay tuned here.

In the meantime, check out one of my new pages. The ones I have done are Seed Starting, Beneficial Insects, Composting, Garden Bargains and Tomatoes! I hope to write more as well - Spring can be very busy and exciting.

So what do you think? Is Winter almost over?

I want to build another chicken coop!

Our chickens are now giving us a good amount of eggs. We only have five hens and are averaging four eggs per day.

Recently I posted an update on our chickens and the coop that we built for them. In that post, I told you that I love having chickens far more than I expected. We have never kept chickens before, so we started out small. Now I'm wishing that we had more but I only built a small coop. We could fit a few more birds in there, but the best option would be to build a 2nd coop. Last year I had trouble finding info on how to build a chicken coop so I made with without plans. It worked out pretty well, but I think I can build a coop faster with some good plans. Again, I've been searching for info on building an easy chicken coop, and I think I may have found it!

Its a ebook simply titled Building A Chicken Coop. It promises easy step-by-step printable plans for coops of all different sizes. It also covers things that are not as usual to find in chicken books such as what the cheapest and best materials to build with are. The first line of their promo sounds great: "Discover How To Easily Build An Attractive And Affordable Chicken Coop That  Protects Your Chickens From Predators,Maintains Their Health And Delivers More Delicious Eggs". Wow, that covers all of the important stuff! I'm excited to check this out.

I can't wait to build something new for the chickens so we can get a bunch more in the spring. In the meantime, our five are enjoying the new grazing pen I made for them.

My current coop will have to do until I have time to read Building A Chicken Coop and decide which coop plan to follow.

 
If you want to see for yourself more about the book I'm talking about, you can Click Here!

Hopefully we will have a mild winter and I can get started building a new coop before spring. I'll let you know how it goes!

Update on our Chickens and the Coop

I just realized that I have never posted about our adult chickens on Garden Desk! That's crazy because we absolutely love our chickens. I never knew how much fun they would be, and the eggs are delicious!

 

We did manage a post back in April about raising our chicks. We raised the chicks in our garage while we built our outside coop. We built the coop mostly out of wood that we already had from an old deck that I took apart a couple years ago. The coop construction took much longer than anticipated but they have been in it for three or four months now. here it is:

We were able to put it right in front of the garden and beside the greenhouse.

When we would read about keeping chickens, it seemed that many people let them roam around during the day. Around here experienced farmers were telling us to watch out for the many predators, some even during the day. We have to watch out for hawks, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, opossums, weasels, rats and the neighbor's dogs. Many people told us that we wouldn't be able to keep our chickens alive.

With this in mind, we tried to build a very secure coop. The building that they sleep in is in the very center, up on stilts with no outside walls. The small window openings have two layers of wire over them and we even put wire mesh down under the floor boards.

The rest of the coop is all under tin roofing with two kinds of wire around the perimeter. The wire is also buried in concrete at the bottom about 18 inches under ground! The door has a second latch about a foot off the ground so nothing can squeeze in.

If anything does manage to sneak in during the night, they shouldn't be able to get in the wood building. The chickens have a small door that they use during the day.

They go inside at dusk and then I lock their door.

Here they are coming into their building:

The other wall is hinged for us to get inside for cleaning. It also has the nest boxes built into it. When closed it also has a heavy duty latch. Here is what it looks like from the outside:

Here is the nestbox part of the inside:

 

The chickens' main feeder and water hang from the building under the nest boxes.

All summer we fed them plenty of fruits and vegetables, an occasional worm or grasshopper and grass that we pulled. Recently, I thought they should get to graze in the grass on their own. In order to keep them safe while grazing, I constructed this crude grazing pen:

I can lock them in if I want to clean out their coop, or I can connect the two units with portable chicken wire sides and top that roll out of the way when not in use. You can see what I mean from this angle:

 

The chickens love grazing in their new pen in the evenings. At nightfall, they go back inside to their roosts and I disconnect the pen and lock them safely in their coop.

The chicken coop and grazing pen are working out pretty well, especially since I built it without any real plans. The chickens have adapted well to it and are laying eggs almost daily now. As good as getting fresh organic eggs is, I think my favorite part about our chickens is that they are super friendly. They are more like pets than farm animals. They actually enjoy being held and get excited when they see us.

Raising chickens is great! As long as winter goes well, I hope to get more next spring. Of course then I'll have to build another chicken coop!

Thanks for reading!

Raising Chickens; New to GardenDesk!

We finally have baby chicks, so our new adventure in raising chickens has officially begun!

We have never kept any kind of farm animal before but have been gardening for over 20 years now. It seems that raising chickens is a natural extension to vegetable gardening as I've seen many other garden blogs discuss chickens. I suppose it is similar in that just like with vegetable plants, you care for the chickens and then "harvest" the eggs.

Our chicken coop will be located right in front of the garden and next to the greenhouse, so they will actually become part of the garden. We will be able watch them and tend to them while in the garden and it will be easy to supplement their diet with veggies and insects from the garden. I am looking forward to having them as my garden companions.

For now, they are in our garage in the homemade brooder that my father-in-law built:

We have 17 chicks in all but there are 5 breeds represented. Among them are Buff Orpington, Silver Laced Wyondotte, Dominiques, Black Austrolorp, and some Polish Crested. I don't know how many we will be keeping. Some of them will join the flock that Renee's parents have. For now we are enjoying them all and watching them change and grow daily in the brooder.

Since we really don't know what we're doing yet, we have been reading a lot about raising chickens. Whenever I start something new, I like to find the great books on the subject. I go to several libraries and check out as many books as I can on the subject - usually twenty books or more. Then we browse through each book and pick out our favorites. Then I read those books in their entirety and usually buy two or three of them for future reference. To begin our chicken adventure, I found many books and have selected these four as my favorites:

The book that most people would recommend is Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens. I agree that it is a wealth of information and I will be buying it.

Another great book for me right now is Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock since I still have to build our coop. It has lots of great ideas.

My third selection is Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide because it has good information and beautiful pictures of the chickens and different coop ideas. This is helpful to our family because we are not yet familiar with even how our adult chickens will look.

Last but not least, I am enjoying Barnyard in Your Backyard . It is great because it is written as a guide for beginners. It also covers raising other small animals including rabbits. Rabbits will be our next addition, so I will be buying this book as well.

I love the combination of learning by doing at the same time you learn what to do from books. We will be learning how to raise chickens successfully in this way and we are pretty excited. Hopefully I will have the coop and yard built soon to show you.

There has been much going on in the garden too, which I am behind on posting about. Get ready for rapid-fire posts as the gardening season (and chicken season) is now moving into high gear!

Happy Gardening!

- Marc