Homemade Coop

We had a desk we got...somewhere... We no longer needed it but it was still serviceable, so I turned it into something we can never have too many of: A COOP!!

I figured it would be a tri-level coop so I cut holes in the ceiling/floor. 

The cable holes in the back of the desk were patched with pieces of a coop that was destroyed in a wind storm. That door was perfectly usable.

Now they have a back window! 

I covered the top portion with chicken wire, but we have had issues with chickens hurting themselves on tips of chicken wire. This was an easy fix with some scrap wood and nails. (Normally, I like to use screws, but I didn't have any short enough and this was to be a project made from existing material on the farm.)

BAM! more secure than staples and safer for the birds! 

Coops need perches. I drilled holes in the sides of the desk and used PVC pipe cut a little longer than the width of the desk. I capped them with PVC caps (all stuff we have lying around the farm). I did not glue the caps on so I can remove the perches for cleaning as needed. 

If we have issues with the perches spinning, I can use silicone between the cap and the desk wall. It would make it permanent, but they can still be wiped down. 

We had to add a lock...one I took from a rabbit hutch we no longer use. 

There! All done!

Parfy gives it her seal of approval. 

After spending the night in it, it became clear that it was too small for a full size chicken, but it will be perfect for chicks that are too big for the brooder but not big enough to survive in the flock. I am pretty darn proud of this project. It took me only a few hours and cost us exactly $0! 

A Real Chicken Project

As we continue to develop and refine what Mediocre Acres is and what we need and want with the current property, one thing continues to come up: Poultry. We have discussed raising pigs and goats again. We have played with the idea of a Dexter cow. We have explored the possibility of expanding the rabbit colony. We have talked about kitchen gardens and market gardens. We have talked improving the structures on the property and everything falls by the wayside except poultry. 

There are a couple reasons for this. Number one is poultry is easy! A close second is it's inexpensive. Meat poultry grows out fast: 10 weeks from hatch to harvest. This year we have a goal to harvest between 50 and 75 meat chickens.

We have learned from past failures that ordering 50 in one run and raising them all at once is a recipe for disaster. We have done that twice and only about a half to two thirds make it to slaughter.

This year we are planning on ordering 15 ever five weeks from now through August. Our last harvest will be the second week in October. That enables us to take the winter off meat chickens as the heating and feeding expense is high in the winter. 

Today we got our first batch of 15 meat birds! 

I always forget how small they are. They grow so fast! 

And they are so stinking cute!

In addition to ordering meat chicks we have been collecting fertilized eggs from our own flock and hatching them in our incubators. We have been having pretty good luck too! 

A wide variety of chicks have hatched. Both our roosters are Rhode Island Reds so the are all red crosses. This one is most likely a RIR/cornish cross. Two others hatched with this one and they and the meat chicks are living quite happily in the shed. 

In about five weeks we hope to move the meat birds into outdoor chicken tractors. We hope to allow them to graze and in return allow them to fertilize the property. 

I am so looking forward to having this chicken project in full swing in about 10-12 weeks! 

Goodbye Mary Jane

Today we lost a very dear member of Mediocre Acres. Mary Jane died after a very short illness. Our best guess was she died of polio as a complication of bloat. I miss her so much.

She was my very first goat and I had her from the time she was 12 weeks old. She was less than 2 when she died. I love how she used to baaa every time I opened the door. It was so regular that we used to joke that that was the sound the door made. Opening the door to silence will take some getting used to. 

She was also a frequent visitor to the kitchen. If the door was not firmly closed she would wander in like she was one of the dogs! 

She spent the last hours before she died snuggling with her daughters. I believe they all knew her time was near. Daphne and Velma nuzzled her and would not leave her side. 

The girls are quite obviously missing their mom. Their appetite has been bad and they spend most of the day just snuggling each other. 

I am grateful for Mary Jane and what a ambassador for her species she has been. I will always have goats, most likely Nubians. Thank you Mary Jane. You have made me the crazy goat lady. You will be missed. 

Juno

On the 10th of October I found a little shepherd mix in my front yard. I thought she had a sticker in her back foot because she was limping. I went to pull the sticker out and noticed that her hip was dislocated. I brought her inside and put her all over Facebook. Very shortly I was contacted by Sierra Vista Animal Control and told that there was an open case from three months ago concerning the dog. She had had her leg broken in 3 places and her hip dislocated. The owners not only failed to get her the proper medical care, they then disappeared with the dog. This little dog had had a broken leg for over 3 months! I contacted a local dog rescue called Little League Rescue. I offered to foster her if they could pay for her medical bills. She settled into our house immediately. The kids named her Juno, after the Roman goddess. 

She had her back leg amputated on the 30th and is recovering amazingly. Two days after she had her surgery, she was able to chase down and pin one of our ducks (the duck was fine). One of the ladies at the feed store said that dogs are born with three legs and a spare. Juno just didn't need her spare anymore! 

We thought she looked like she was dressed up like the leg lamp from Christmas Story. 

The goats were pretty interested in her cone. 

She is the sweetest dog ever. She gets along wonderfully with dogs, cats and she adores our kids. If you know anyone looking to adopt please let me know. Also, the rescue is looking for donations to help offset her medical bills. If you can help, please visit their Facebook donation page or call Cochise Animal Hospital (the hospital that did the surgery) at 520-432-3296. 

Water Debacle

We bought an old house. It was built in the late '60's. But we liked it that way. We are not fans of the open floor plan that is popular in all new houses these days. Maybe that is because it is easier to contain mess and noise and chaos if there are walls dividing the rooms. I don't know, but great rooms stress me out!  

We love our slightly haphazardly assembled home. We like that it was built by a man (who's son we have met) and not by a developer. We like that, by coincidence, we have met every previous owner of this house (all 4 of them!). We DO NOT like that the components of our house are original (read: old) or of crappy "flip house" quality. We are trying to slowly (and without accruing more debt) replace the cheap with quality. 

We were hurried along in that respect when the water company contacted me and told me that my bill was over $200 this month and that, in addition, I have used over 44,000 gallons of water in a week. Obviously I had a leak. We have been experiencing torrential rain these past few weeks so this "lake" of water I should be seeing from the leaky pipe was being hidden by the lakes of water the rain has left. I had no idea where this leak was.

I contacted a plumber and when a 17 year old kid stepped out of the truck I was a little apprehensive. Zack was wonderfully professional, helpful, and was great about the fact the kids wanted to watch every move he made. He was able to locate the leak, unfortunately it was one of many...down the length of a pipe about 1/2 an acre long. 

This was the first place he found it. I didn't have my camera when he showed it to me and water was shooting out in all directions. This was after we turned the water off to the house. 

Ya. So my pipe was a little rusted and corroded and all around nasty. Ya, all our water...to include the water we drink, was flowing through this pipe. They don't use this kind of pipe any more...

 They came and dug a huge trench and upgraded my house's main line. 

2 days and $3000 later, Elliot thinks it was totally worth is because he got to see a backhoe up close. 

I'm just glad this month's water bill will not be $200. 

Farm Update!

I love farm updates because I feel I can see some changes (and successes) that I often miss doing the day to day maintenance. As always, we have some really nice sunflowers. If you look close, you can see some of our bees hard at work on this flower. 

A bright yellow sunflower against the bright blue Arizona sky makes such a pretty picture!

Last year's corn crop was terrible! This year we actually grew some really nice ears. Leigh was so proud of it. We barbecued it with some home-grown ribs and chops. It made a perfect dinner! 

Our duck population has been doing very well. We have made them their own pen. We also decided they needed their own pond. 

Pez is one happy duck. All the other ducks use the pond too. 

Ducks that fly are not fun. They kept flying out of the pen and when we would come out in the morning they would fly madly around. Clipping wings is painless for them and keeps them confined and safe in their enclosure. Catching them was an adventure I do not look froward to repeating, but we got them all! 

This is Orchid. She has gotten a reprieve from the slaughterhouse by being the most personable pig we have ever had. She busted out of the pigpen and has been happily cruising around our backyard for over a week. We have decided to stop raising pigs for meat for the foreseeable future (they are expensive and smelly) but we need a living garbage disposal. We also plan on using her to till the garden in between crops and deter the crap-head teenagers that jump our fence and open our pens, She is almost 250 lbs now and can get to be up to 1200 lbs. I'm hoping to keep her smaller than that! 

Right after I took this picture (in which she was snoring like a chainsaw) I walked up to her and started scratching her belly. She rolled over on her back just like a dog and I swear she smiled! She's a good piggy!

The rabbit colony is my masterpiece! The little rabbit military houseing I built did not hold up well though monsoons. (I also did nothing to seal or protect the wood.) I prefer raising my rabbits in a colony setting anyway, but we were having a hard time finding a way that was truly escape proof. We finally figured it out!

1/2 inch hardware cloth, heavy duty garden stakes, and hog ring clips make an incredibly secure enclosure! 

All but 4 of these females will be harvested this week and then we will introduce our male, a New Zealand named Arnold. We will be making nests out of buckets with lids and 6 inch PVC pipe. Of course I will add pictures when I do that. I like that the rabbits can live socially and exercise freely. I also like the ease of chucking a bale of Timothy in and knowing they are fed for a week. The maintenance of colony living is sooooo much less. I highly recommend it. So much easier than cages. 

Boone-Doggy

I have always thought the German Short-hair Pointers are beautiful dogs. I have never been able to justify the cost of a purebred dog either. They are supposed to be amazing running companions because they can run for days!! Leigh has been wanting one for hunting purposes for a while too, but having 3 dogs and no money to burn, a GSP was not really in our future.

That was until my friend Stephanie had to re-home hers because of an idiot neighbor who complained that her dog barked (or whined or whimpered) too much (during the day mind you). He worked nights and the existence of noise in his neighborhood in the middle of the day was annoying enough to call the cops. 

She offered Boone to me for free...I just had to drive to Oakley and get him. So I did!! Liam and I decided to go on a road trip together. 

We drove up in one day and back the next. It was a crappy two days but we did it! And we got a great dog out of it! 

Boone likes Leigh the best! Which is okay with me because he is kind of an "in-your-face" kind of guy. 

When he gets hungry he sits at the table like one of the kids. 

He has also claimed Liam's bed as his own. 

The only real issue we have with him is that when we try and give any of the kids a bath we have to crate him or put him outside because otherwise he hops right in. 

He is also a pretty persistent little guy. He drops his ball politely and will wait, but if you take too long he will remind you it is there.

Boone gets a long great with the other dogs and does very will with the livestock. He has actually not killed anything and our chickens, turkeys and ducks are all free in the backyard. When we tell him to, the can flush all the chickens back into the coop. It is actually really handy! 

I was really impressed the other day because he was by the woodpile and would not come when called. He continued to bark and point so I went over to the pile. I dug through the pile and at the very bottom was 7 abandoned quail eggs. He has a great nose. 

He will start training in a few months. We have been trying to put weight on him. He is now eating twice the recommended amount of "extreme athlete" food and slowly gaining weight. I have NEVER seen a dog who has this kind of sustained energy. He fits in great at Mediocre Acres!