The Chickens Are Coming The Chickens Are Coming

Well, actually the chickens arrived on Sep 1 - boss Caruso and 5 pullets.The nice lady we got them from brought them all here and offered some very good ideas for improvements to the coop as well as replacement guarantee on the birds.

Caruso is about 1 yr old and the girls were born (hehe, of course not - birds can't be born, they hatch) on April 26. According to their former owner, Caruso was so named because "he wouldn't shut up" (there may have been an expletive somewhere in that sentence, too), which Caruso immediately proved. We love him though - we wanted a crowing rooster plus he starts to crow about six, which is pretty reasonable. The breed is "a cross of Plymouth Rock roo and Silver Laced Wyandott roo where mothers are Plymouth, Cukoo Maran, Silver Laced Wyandott and Australorp". So, I'm not sure what do you call it but all ingredients are good dual purpose breeds, so the result should be good pullets full of hybrid vigor. We'll see.

The whole crew spent two days locked in the new coop and was allowed to go out today. The rooster almost immediately went out to explore and crow. The girls took their time but then they went out to explore and scratch. When about 8 pm I went to see if I need to get them inside the coop, they all were already there. Smart birds.

The coop is my own design (as should be obvious from its shortcomings) but before I drew the first version I got a lot of ideas from http://www.backyardchickens.com/coopdesigns.html and The Movable Coop pamphlet by John Grogan, .pdf of which I picked up somewhere on the internet. Differences in my design are because our three major problems are heat, predators and uneven pastures, where the coop is supposed to travel. And yeah, I'm a cheap bastard and don't really care for all the niceties in some designs. I mean, seriously - some chicken coops there look better (and probably cost more :) than our house. Although in trying to make it strong AND light I had to spend more than I wanted on metal braces and store-bought PT lumber.

Yes, I said PT - it's Florida, dude. Any non-treated wood will last about a month outside and other ways to protect the wood were either too expensive or too time consuming or even more chemically dangerous than using PT wood. I checked on the raging debate about using PT wood in chicken coops and it seems that the biggest argument against it is that chemicals leach from the posts and then chicken eat that dirt with the chemicals and so on. Well, this design doesn't have posts and it will be moved, so hopefully the concentration will never get to the dangerous point. Another point (somewhat silly, I think) is that chickens get bored and start peking the wood. Really? Anyway, our chickens will only sleep inside, so hopefully they want be bored, not with all the bugs on the pasture. Also, most of the problems seems to be with old wood that was treated several years ago when they used different chemicals. Finally, as far as I can tell from their ads and pictures, all companies who sell wooden coops use PT wood. We'll see.