Well, we have a rat problem.
We should have known. It started a while ago, when rats got into our 50-pound bag of chicken food in the garage. We should have known that 50 pounds of poultry feed in a paper sack would be tempting for any varmits around. Still, we solved that one pretty quickly by putting the food in a plastic tub with a snap-on lid. End of story.
Well, not quite. I went out on one of our snow days and discovered rat pellets in the chicken's food trough underneath the coop. Because of the snow, it was pretty easy to figure out where they were coming in -- there was a hole in the snowpack where they'd dug through it and into a gap in the coop's outer wall. I put a few bricks in place there, but the next night they repeated the trick by digging into a different area.
Since then, I've started taking the food out of the coop and putting it in an airtight bin on the porch. Annoying, but I figured that would solve the problem. However, when I went out the other night at 5 p.m. to shut the chickens up for the evening, I found rat droppings in the food. They'd either gotten into it during daylight hours or right at dusk, in the hour of darkness before I removed the food.
Greg bought the latest in rat-catching techniques, something that some people we met at a party told us all about. (It was a good party, really, even though we spent a lot of time talking about chickens and rats.) The trap is basically a piece of plastic coated with uber-sticky gel. The package even touts a "natural anesthetic" in the gel, presumably to calm the rat in its death throes as it discovers it is permanently adhered to a piece of plastic.
We'll see what he finds in the trap tomorrow. Here's one thing I cannot do -- I can build a chicken coop with power tools, but I cannot deal with a rat.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Gertrude doesn't make it
Sadly, one of our chickens died on Christmas Eve.
Gertrude, the little bantie, had been moving slowly and acting a little off ever since the cold weather hit -- perhaps longer than that, now that we think of it. Her comb had lost its bright red color and turned pink and gray. On Dec. 23, we found her lying on her side outside the coop in an awkward and ominous position. We took her into the house and tried to warm her up in the laundry room, but 24 hours later she died. We buried her under the dogwood tree.
We'll never know why she died. We did have an epic stretch of cold and snowy weather, almost historic by Seattle standards, with five rounds of snow and temperatures into the teens. Still, the coop temperature always remained above 32, and Greg worked hard to clear the run of snow and give them extra food and treats, including warm oatmeal every morning.
When we embarked on our little chicken project, one of the books I read said that when you begin keeping domestic farm animals, you're inevitably going to have to deal with life and death issues more directly than when you have pets living indoors with you. You're not likely to take a chicken to the vet and you may not know something is wrong until they drop over. They're exposed to the wind, rain and cold, and their environment can only be made just so clean and sterile.
Gertrude was a sweet chicken, but she was the least productive layer of the flock, giving us only about a dozen eggs before she stopped laying for the season. We always noticed that she seemed less "social," if you will, and less aggressive about eating. Maybe the cold was not a factor, and she was just in poor health all around. I guess we'll never know.
Gertrude, the little bantie, had been moving slowly and acting a little off ever since the cold weather hit -- perhaps longer than that, now that we think of it. Her comb had lost its bright red color and turned pink and gray. On Dec. 23, we found her lying on her side outside the coop in an awkward and ominous position. We took her into the house and tried to warm her up in the laundry room, but 24 hours later she died. We buried her under the dogwood tree.
We'll never know why she died. We did have an epic stretch of cold and snowy weather, almost historic by Seattle standards, with five rounds of snow and temperatures into the teens. Still, the coop temperature always remained above 32, and Greg worked hard to clear the run of snow and give them extra food and treats, including warm oatmeal every morning.
When we embarked on our little chicken project, one of the books I read said that when you begin keeping domestic farm animals, you're inevitably going to have to deal with life and death issues more directly than when you have pets living indoors with you. You're not likely to take a chicken to the vet and you may not know something is wrong until they drop over. They're exposed to the wind, rain and cold, and their environment can only be made just so clean and sterile.
Gertrude was a sweet chicken, but she was the least productive layer of the flock, giving us only about a dozen eggs before she stopped laying for the season. We always noticed that she seemed less "social," if you will, and less aggressive about eating. Maybe the cold was not a factor, and she was just in poor health all around. I guess we'll never know.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Snow birds
The henhouse now has heat. Greg rigged a light bulb in the chicken coop on Friday night. The coop has a cleverly-designed roof that lifts right off, so it's easy to get inside and make modifications.
On Friday night we used a 40-watt bulb, but on Saturday morning, with the paper predicting a stretch of sub-zero temperatures, we broke out the 60-watt bulb.
It was a kick to be able to see the chickens in their little glowing house in the evening. You could see see them settling in for the night, preening their feathers in front of the warmth of the light.
The lighted coop glowed in the dark.
On Saturday night we went to a party; as we were leaving it was starting to snow. When we got home around midnight, there was a magical layer of about an inch of of snow on the ground. The next morning, the henhouse was covered in snow, and there were icicles hanging off the roof. I gave them a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Explosive cyclogenesis coming
We've had an unusually mild fall so far, and even the rains haven't been so bad -- they've come in bursts, followed by days of relative dryness. But now the weather forecasters are warning that cold is on its way, and possibly snow as well.
I've put off rigging up a system to keep the chickens warm 'til now. A 40-watt light bulb in one of those caged outdoor/shop fixtures is now sitting by the door. Greg is going to try to affix it to the roof of the chicken coop tomorrow, while I'm at work. I hope it's enough to keep the chickens warm.
One of my coworkers with chickens is going to leave his birds as is -- he pointed me to a discussion on backyardchicken.com in which the author said he just let his birds adapt to cold weather and thought it made them hardier.
I don't know enough about meteorology to completely understand what the National Weather Service is talking about in its forecast discussion, but it sounds dramatic and interesting!
MODELS ARE ALL CONVERGING ON EXPLOSIVE CYCLOGENESIS ALONG THIS OLD BOUNDARY AS NORTHERN STREAM ENERGY DROPS SE ONTO THIS BOUNDARY. ALL GLOBAL AND MESO MODELS DROP SURFACE PRESSURES WITH THIS DEVELOPING SYSTEM FROM AROUND 1024 MB AT THIS TIME...TO BETWEEN 978 AND 985 MB AS THE LOW MOVES INLAND ALONG THE CENTRAL WA COAST 00Z FRI. THAT IS NEARLY 40 MB IN ABOUT 30 HRS!
But wait, there's more:
THERE IS STILL A GREAT DEAL OF UNCERTAINTY IN THIS VERY DIFFICULT WEATHER FORECAST SITUATION. JUST A DEGREE OR TWO TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE...AND A SLIGHT TRACK SHIFT OF THE LOW CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE ON HIGH WIND OR NOT ALONG THE COAST AND IN THE STRAIT...AND IN THE POSSIBILITY OF LOWLAND SNOW LATE FRI AFTERNOON AND FRI NIGHT OVER PORTIONS OF THE INTERIOR LOWLANDS.
I love snow.
I've put off rigging up a system to keep the chickens warm 'til now. A 40-watt light bulb in one of those caged outdoor/shop fixtures is now sitting by the door. Greg is going to try to affix it to the roof of the chicken coop tomorrow, while I'm at work. I hope it's enough to keep the chickens warm.
One of my coworkers with chickens is going to leave his birds as is -- he pointed me to a discussion on backyardchicken.com in which the author said he just let his birds adapt to cold weather and thought it made them hardier.
I don't know enough about meteorology to completely understand what the National Weather Service is talking about in its forecast discussion, but it sounds dramatic and interesting!
MODELS ARE ALL CONVERGING ON EXPLOSIVE CYCLOGENESIS ALONG THIS OLD BOUNDARY AS NORTHERN STREAM ENERGY DROPS SE ONTO THIS BOUNDARY. ALL GLOBAL AND MESO MODELS DROP SURFACE PRESSURES WITH THIS DEVELOPING SYSTEM FROM AROUND 1024 MB AT THIS TIME...TO BETWEEN 978 AND 985 MB AS THE LOW MOVES INLAND ALONG THE CENTRAL WA COAST 00Z FRI. THAT IS NEARLY 40 MB IN ABOUT 30 HRS!
But wait, there's more:
THERE IS STILL A GREAT DEAL OF UNCERTAINTY IN THIS VERY DIFFICULT WEATHER FORECAST SITUATION. JUST A DEGREE OR TWO TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE...AND A SLIGHT TRACK SHIFT OF THE LOW CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE ON HIGH WIND OR NOT ALONG THE COAST AND IN THE STRAIT...AND IN THE POSSIBILITY OF LOWLAND SNOW LATE FRI AFTERNOON AND FRI NIGHT OVER PORTIONS OF THE INTERIOR LOWLANDS.
I love snow.
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