Chicken Math...

So, this was a weekend from Hell. I suppose the end result is worth it, but I'm learning that I'm way too old to be starting out as a farmer. Sure, it's all fun and games when you're pulling weeds and planting stuff, or feeding chickens and rabbits, but it's another thing entirely when your wife makes you actually build the chicken coop in the barn that you promised to do before the first chicken arrived on the farm.

Especially when the flock doubles in size from seven birds to fourteen in two days.

I didn't get any pictures of the work we did, but it was a lot over the past two days. We dug a two-foot-deep trench in the barn, twenty-four feet long by ten feet to make a long rectangle in the corner. We also put a set of posts in, with cross-boards buried at the bottom of the trench with hardware cloth attached to keep the predators from digging their way in. It would have to be a persistent fox to dig down two feet to get under and into the coop.

We've got the top of the coop framed as well, thanks to the help of the son of one of my friends and his own friends, who came over around lunch time and helped us frame out the rest of the coop and get the top prepped. We still need to put the roof on, the door, and the fence boards around the sides before the chickens can move in. We're going to use hardware cloth for the roof to keep the aerial predators out, as well as any adventurous raccoons.

Now, about the chicken math I mentioned... We had a strong suspicion that our four Rhode Island Red birds were all roosters. We asked the guy who sold them to us, and he never gave us a clear answer as to how to tell hens from roosters. This got my hackles up a bit; I know that there are ways to determine if a hatchling is a male or female, or at least make a reasonable guess. In fact, that's how we got our Cemani birds, by doing a quick and simple test to give us a reasonable guess as to whether or not they were hens or roosters. And we were right; we ended up with two hens and a rooster.

However, with the Rhodies, we weren't given any chance to test the birds; we weren't even allowed to pick out the birds. The farmer just handed us six chicks, with no input from us as to whether or not they were suitable. Something about 'bio-medical' procedures or something. One of them died the next morning, a second one got taken by a fox before we fixed a weak spot in the chicken tractor. The odds that, out of six randomly chosen birds, four survivors would be roosters? Slim at best. I'm convinced that he purposely gave us six roosters, even though we had requested hens for laying, not meat birds.

Anyway, our suspicions were confirmed by the young lady who sold us three hens on Friday. She told us how to tell the difference between roosters and hens, and after checking their feathers, we knew we had four roosters. Fortunately, we also got three hens, one of which is already providing us with eggs! We had our first egg this morning in pancake mix, so the investment is already paying off.

But here's where the chicken math comes in. My wife had originally told me we were getting two hens; she just casually remarked on the phone on Friday that we were picking up three instead. Like I wasn't going to notice. But then she also let me know that on Saturday, she was going to pick up four more birds for free!

Now, I'm not complaining about free birds (it's a bit overrated, but it's a decent song), but I can do math in my head. And a chicken tractor designed to hold six to eight chickens isn't going to do as well with eleven. So, Ashton and I build a quick little holding pen out of four pallets. It's not foolproof, or even chicken-proof, since a couple of the little buggers squeezed out and took off running. I did my best impression of Rocky Balboa in Rocky II, while my wife laughed at the sight of her husband futilely chasing two roosters around the vast yard in a vain attempt to corral them and put them in overnight pens (dog carriers from when we brought our puppies out here from Ontario).

So, our chicken population doubled in two days, and we spent the weekend building the coop. We've still got at least two full days of work to do on it; we need fence boards for the sides, hardware cloth for the roof, and the door needs to be attached.

One of the nice things of buying an old, semi-abandoned farm is that you find a whole lot of interesting and useful stuff that can be repurposed. There was a pile of old fencing left in the yard that is now being torn apart to use for the chicken coop. We also found some old poles that we're going to use for an outdoor fenced area for the chickens to roam, as well as for creating some lattice for the peas and tomato plants. There's plenty of scrap metal and wood around to work with, which saves us money as well as letting us get creative.

There's only one thing that worries me about the size of our chicken flock. We've got two Flemish rabbits that are going to move into their own little hutch next to the chickens before much longer. And when they see how many chickens there are next door... "Challenge accepted."