Our neighbor was nice enough to give us an old camper he didn’t want for free. I tried to talk him down more but he wouldn’t budge on the price. We’ve had it sitting in our field for the longest time thinking of using it for baby goats but since we have so many more new bird kids, it was time to move it and make a coop out of it. I first gutted most of the stuff out of it. The best part of this coop is most of the work was already done. It had doors, windows, cabinet nest boxes etc… and it didn’t take the work of building something from scratch.
I’m not sure about the outside cosmetics just yet. The wood you see on the outside was just some cheap auction wood we had lying un-used and I threw it up against the side. We had to level the camper out on pallets and 4x4’s to keep it from moving. It’s not the prettiest coop but it’s recycling at its best. It should house 20 plus birds since they only get locked up at night. The roosts worked out perfect ending up right in front of the windows and nest boxes. I took the stove out so they don’t have worries and nightmares about a stove.
Eventually the sink will lose the wood shavings and be a waterer I think. I couldn’t do it now since the rubber on the drain plug won’t hold water but eventually I think it will be a nice and easy way to drain and fill their water. We also use the sand out of our yard for the floor since it’s free and we can use a cat litter scoop to clean it. We save the wood shavings for the nest boxes.
These kids are going to be living in style thanks to our neighbor. Were just going to have to go old school and save the tent for that day when we can make it back into the mountains we all miss so much. It’s a sacrifice I made for our chicks. It’s not a chick magnet camper but I tried to hide it at the back of everything. I know I’m going to hear it that first day of camping when we wake up with sore backs out of a tent :p
The pictures are from beginning to end. I still have to put some hardware cloth over some windows that didn't have screens, paint the roosts and maybe dress up the outside somehow. Haven't thought that one through just yet.
~Ken~
Today was this batch of chicks first day of free-ranging and they did great. I thought they were going to get picked on but the older girls were just more curious than anything. They seem to grow so fast. It was so fun to watch them explore a whole new world for the first time. We have 13 Rhode Island Reds left that are a month old and 25 one week old chicks for sale. I hope we can find good homes for all of them soon but they have a home here for now. Babies are the best. I wish they would stay that small but it would make for some really tiny eggs. The ducks keep getting more stupid cute everyday.
In the photo below with the truck topper turned into coop is where we kept them with a heat lamp for a while and you can see the big girls made a mess out of the wood chips. The babies are sleeping in the big girl coop now. Also in one of the photos there is a chick that looks like its gagging. Our food really isn't that bad. She's just being overly dramatic :D
~Ken~
They sure took their time about it but we finally have our first two baby ducks. I know they take longer than chicks to hatch so we put them in the incubator a week earlier and since we only have one laying Pekins we could only do 7 eggs. I know for chicks the hatch rate declines after seven days. Two didn't make it the first week so we have three more that have Pipped the shell and they are making me wait on them. They are going to get the stink eye when they finally decide to show up.
We have a buyer for two and plan to keep three so we can hatch more in the future. They are so cute I hate them. The photos are fresh out of the incubator so they will only get more cute until they start pooping. Speaking of which, We have 7 turkeys in a tub and they eat more than our 25 baby chicks in the photo below yet they don't seem to poop... much at this point. I don't understand but I like the poop factor. We keep all our birds on towels the first week since they like to eat the wood chips.
I was awoken at 3am by what sounded like our metal fireplace stack being ripped off the roof by the wind. After running outside I couldn't see anything. I can only assume it must have been the neighbors car hitting it and it's too dark in the field to see it out there. Oh yeah.. in case your wondering, the news said today is going to be a cold bucket of suck and used the term hurricane force winds... plus schools are delaying. (Great) I been up since the car hit our fire stack cleaning tubs, changing waters, replenishing food, filling the next incubator with easter eggers (7 more ducks are a week along) and even breaking out the snow gear I stupidly put away too soon hoping it was over.
If you know anyone that want's chickens, the next hatch of ducks, or baby goats due in the next 2 to 3 weeks, we are getting over run and please pass the word. Our work load is incredible. Were going to hold onto the turkeys for breeders if possible and future meat birds.
~Ken~
We just recently moved 20 birds to their new outside coop and tonight we have more Rhode Island Reds and Ducks starting to hatch. : ) We're up to 10 turkeys now. Some are shown in the picture in their own tub. Chickens are going in their own tub and ducks get their own since they can't have medicated chick feed. As you can see we made our Front door totally useless :p It seemed like a good idea at the time. The incubators are behind the chair and yes that is a bath tub that we got at auction for five bucks lol. At first I made all those covers too keep the cat out but it turns out that if we didn't put them on top we would have turkeys running around the house. They keep trying to jump out and the cat could care less about the birds. The black chick that I'm holding is an experiment were trying to see if we can cross a green egg laying Easter Egger with our Black Copper Maran rooster with the goal of having Olive eggers. We will have to wait a while to see but it is adorable none the less. I need to take some photos of the older kids we moved outside. They grow so fast! By morning we should have a lot more Reds and some Ducks : ) Once the incubator gets cleaned we have 7 more ducks and 35 Easter eggers going in for the next hatch.
~Ken~
We finally had some nice weather to get our trouble-maker rooster in a pot. It ended up taking way longer than it should have. Everything went wrong, of course :p Our nice and shiny new turkey fryer wouldn't stay lit for some severe pain in the butt reason. I still don't know why. We had to resort to boiling a bunch of water on the stove and then carting it out to the turkey fryer until we finally got the right temperature. Of course during this process I had to burn my fingers on a handle.
Then, since we were not ready to do chickens just yet, I decided instead of setting up a cone for the killing part I would use some rope that was in my shed... Yup. It had to break. Only after finding out the knives I chose were too dull to cut anything (The neck), I then had a rooster on the loose to chase. After getting him tied back up and finding a sharp knife then taking a nice blood splatter all in my face (So Very Not cool) I then found out my hose sprayer was broken. The hand plucking wasn't too hard. It's going to be nice to build that Whizbang plucker but for the time being the plucking was the easiest part oddly enough.
I had my boy out there with me to help and learn his first experience of what it takes to make a meal. It really makes you appreciate how hard farmers had to work to feed their families years ago. Today was a good lesson on things I need to fix and things to make it easier for the next time. Diana has the rooster all nicely dressed up in a pot to be cooking while were out at a Farm Auction tomorrow. It's gonna be nice to have a real home grown meal ready when we get home. Those auctions are fun but they leave you so worn out at the end of the day. We're so thankful to finally have this nice weather to work in.
Thanks to Nicole from Sweet and Eurich farm for the new 20 more Rhode Island Red Hens to get our egg production higher and for the Beautiful Americana Rooster. He has been great already and were looking forward to hatching some Easter Eggers in the near future. Those hens were amazingly friendly today and not scared one bit. We have them all in their own coop for the night to adjust and were hoping to let them all run free tomorrow. Our neighbors must think we're crazy. Below are some pictures I took today... there was no way to get them all in one picture. We even have 22 peeps, 3 turkeys and two more incubators cooking up 80 more in the house which will put us at 181 birds of different breeds including ducks! It sounds like a pet store in here at times. The other pictures of the goat yard is of the baby proofing we have been doing with babies expected to come in the next month. The 4x4 squares in the field fencing are too wide to keep baby goats in so I am essentially re-fencing our fence. (Such a pain) We used some free chain link fence and wired it to the majority of the field fencing. Then we used some pallets at the back and in the front were using some cheap wood we got at auction to fill in the squares. We also have tons of soap making and gardening in the works. No time for breaks. It's 8:00 pm and I'm about to set up another brooder tub for our next hatching hens and ducks. I gotta admit it's been pretty fun ; )
They are so adorable, full of energy and growing fast. The three bigger blond ones are the Turkeys. I wish they would stay that cute.
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