Chicken Run

It’s time to move the chickens.

Our 40 chickens diminished to 37, and then last week we found another dead one so we’re down to 36. Then Bruce saw this black snake sprawled across the brooding box trying it’s luck. By the time we got there, he was halfway inside the box. We can’t really count the chickens right now, but maybe there are fewer than 36? Everything likes chicken!

Thing is, we didn’t find just one snake. We caught the first one and released it on our farm, about four miles away. Then the next day we found it’s mate trying to get into the kitchen.

We caught and released the second one, to be reunited with its companion on the farm.

We thought we did. We wrapped it in a sheet, put it in a cardboard file box with a brick on the lid and the hand holds taped shut, and put it in the back of the truck and took it down to the stream, same as the other one the day before. Placed the box on the ground and stood back while Bruce opened it and shook out the bedsheet.

There was no snake. It took a few seconds of standing there slack-jawed before we realized that the missing snake must be somewhere in the truck.

Well, wouldn’t that be fun! I had visions of her coiled up behind the brake pedal, but we found her in the back by the garden hose. (Click on the photo below.)

With the snakes gone, now was the time to move these girls out of our garage and into a bigger (snake proof?) space on the farm.

Thing was, we’d have to make nest boxes and a predator-proof chicken house for them before we transferred them.

Long ago before Bruce and I were married, I built him a chicken tractor for his birthday. During the eight years we were in Africa the wire had rusted away and the wood was breaking down. We tossed it onto a burn pile. But now, maybe we could rehabilitate part of it into nest boxes? A recent trip to the lumber store had allerted me to the fact that a two-by-four was now about 10 dollars, and I was loathe to buy anything when I might be able to repurpose something else. We pulled it out of the burn pile and dragged it to the machine shed.

I was a novice builder, and the tractor was monstrously heavy, and it failed as a tractor that got pulled around the yard every day. But it worked well to keep the birds safe. Mostly.

We had snakes back then, too, every bit as big. We noticed we were getting fewer eggs than we should, and caught this big girl in the act. We named her Well Enough, and predictably, the kids couldn’t leave Well Enough alone.

One thing we do well is grow large snakes, apparently!

Enough about snakes. What about growing large chickens? Jacob and Bruce pounded in a wire mesh fence next to the pole barn for the chicken run, and I set about reinvisioning the old chicken tractor as nest boxes.

Baisically, we tore off the front end of the cage and spruced up the rest. We had to cut a few new boards for the roof (we used scrap lumber we found in the loft in the shed). The nest boxes would be accessible from the outside of the chicken run. I had designed a chicken coop in Ethiopia and discovered that you could get nice clean eggs by having the hens walk across a bed of sand before entering the boxes to lay their eggs. Any mud or poop on their feet would fall off in the sand bed. So the hens would walk up a little ladder in the back, track across the sand, enter the boxes, and voila! Nice clean eggs.

The nest house was still monstrously heavy (all that nice, unnecessary roofing!) but, shoot. That’s why we have a tractor, to carry around awkward stuff.

We still have a bit of work to do on the hen house where the birds will be locked in overnight. For that, I’m repurposing the turkey shed that has been mouldering away in the weather for the last decade. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’m hoping everything well be ready to move the birds next week. Just in time for the quail.

Quail?

More about them later!

And just one more thing. We were celebrating Mother’s Day lunch with Bruce’s family–isn’t it incredible to be fully vaccinated and meet safely with family and loved ones again?!? and one of the kids found this sunning on the back patio…

I give up. I guess we’ll keep this one as a house snake. Just stay out of the chickens!

UPDATE

We moved the chickens today and were able to count them. We can confirm that we lost none to the snakes. Thirty-six remain.

This is my favorite, a blue chicken! We have two. I forgot to write down the names of the breeds I bought and I can’t identify these blue-gray birds. I know I bought Rhode Island reds, black sex-links, buffs, barred rocks, and Easter egg chickens. There might have been some other varieties. Is this one of the Easter egg birds? She has a few feathers on her feet, and she’s not nearly as big as she looks here!