Building a Hoop Coop 1 comment

One of our farm projects over the last couple weekends has been to build a “hoop coop” for the meat birds.  Our intent is to use it as a chicken tractor for them.

After doing some research, Bengt settled on roughly using this design.  I think in part because we already had the necessary stock panels.  We use them for creating temporary pastures for the goats occasionally and have plans to use them more permanently in the future.

Our parts list:

• 5 1×4’s ($3.82 each)
• 4 2×4’s ($2.76 each)
• 1 box of medium fence nails ($3.24)
• 1 box of large fence nails ($3.34)

Grand total of $40.10 with tax.  I don’t remember how much the stock panels actually cost us, and the poultry netting, zip ties, hinges, and latch are things we always seem to have around.  I think we also came out with an extra 1×4.

We still need to put up the tarps, roosts, complete the front wall with poultry netting, and add a “handle” for the tractor to pull it.  Unfortunately we also realized that we did the bottom wrong and will need to add skids.  The plan is for the meat birds to move in to the hoop coop this next weekend.  I’m a little nervous because it’s been getting relatively cold at night still and this design provides less protection from the colder temperatures than the range house.

Water and Chicks No comments yet

Baby chicks have arrived (again)!  Our 36 Cornish Roasters arrived early this morning along with F3’s order.  We got the call at 5:11am and drug ourselves to the post office.  We ordered enough to score a “double-wide” box this time!  As usual they tumbled out of their shipping box and went right to work eating and drinking like little fiends.

I also realized I had forgotten to mention that this past weekend we went to a bakery that was selling off food grade barrels (from storing artificial sweetener) for rain water catchement.  It was a steal compared to the $80 or so most folks charge for olive barrels that have been turned in to rain water catchement so we stocked up and got a couple for F3 as well.

We are excited to work on this project since it will (hopefully) alleviate the need for hauling quite as much water up and down the hill, especially now that the pink flock is up there by the goats.  The goal is to catch the water in large enough quantities and then truck it up the hill to keep us going for as long as possible.  We are only starting with a few while we work out the system.  I’m hoping to be able to build a gutter system on the goat barn so we can collect water up there as well.

Tighten Your Wasteline No comments yet

I recently posted on the topic of energy consumption and our sustainment systems. With a few homestead advances, I feel we’ve really started down the path to energy independence.  While the real first step directly stems from deciding we wanted to pursue a goal and identifying it, I feel we’ve only recently, taken the first “real” steps and have realized actual results.

As I highlighted in the last post, my short term goal was to drop our monthly consumption below 500 kWh/month. Skipping to the punchline, our June consumption was exactly 500 kWh/month!

The ultimate goal is to reduce our power usage to the point where local electricity production, passive solar water heating, and wood heat are enough to sustain our energy needs (and give us the choice of dropping off the grid).  An interim, and somewhat more practical goal, given our budget, is to net-meter our power usage/generation and to energy neutral.

Net metering allows electricity consumers to become electricity producers and sell back to the power company.  Ideally, we’d accumulate enough credit from the long super-sunny summer days to offset the dark overcast winters.  $0 power bills, nirvana.

My next few posts with walk through the progress we’ve made so far and I’ll occasionally post with updates. I think everything we’ve done is repeatable and I’d love to see others attack their energy waste, too!

Chicken Condos 4 comments

I’m going to have to break up my updates in to smaller posts to get all caught up…

Layers on range

After the loss of yet another laying hen we went back to the drawing board with regards to our free range chickens.  It was still very important to us that our chickens are able to range and be chickens, but the loses are hard to sustain.  With thorough consideration, and following our relative success with the broiler chicken’s house, we decided to build two range houses for the new (and old) layers.  The plan was (and still is) to move the layers in to the goat pasture, once we get the pasture fences up.  For most months out of the year this will work well for us.  For the few very cold months we sometimes get we are keeping the coop down by the house that also has the heater installed.  We can relocate the flock during the harsher weather if need be.

We stuck with the same design as the broiler’s range house with some minor modifications.  We raised the peak of the roof from 3 feet to 4 feet to create more room. 

Nesting house

In the first house we built in as many nesting boxes as we could fit which turned out to be eight.  We also put in exterior egg doors as well as hinged the roof as we had planned for the broiler’s range house.  Eight boxes is enough to support 24-32 layers so that gives us some room to grow.

In the second house we reversed the side the door was on so we could get the maximum space for roosts.  By doing so we could build in three tiered roosts which creates enough roosting space for about 15 chickens, which is how many layers we have in total.  On this house we also added heavier handles for mobility.  The nesting house shouldn’t need to be rotated often, but the roosting house will need to be moved to prevent manure build up.

Roosting house prepped

We stopped by the local hardware store and picked up some exterior “oops” paint in a bright miami teal green.  Once completed and painted we started the task of moving the houses up the hill to where we anticipate the goat pasture to go.   We got the heaviest, the nesting house, moved with some serious effort.  Unfortunately, building the range houses took longer than expected and we didn’t get the pasture fences up as well.  Since then the calendar has kept us busy and we still haven’t had a chance to put up the pasture fences.  Instead of moving the roosting house up the hill we moved it to the yard with the broiler’s range house and moved the new layers out in to the yard as well.  It’s an acceptable hold over location until we can get the pasture fences up which will probably still be a couple weeks out.

Here’s the cost breakdown:

We used scraps that we had already, which aren’t included in the price list, for the nesting boxes as well as some of the scraps that resulted from the project .

And for paint and supplies:

Our grand total including paint and hardware came to approximately $70 per house (plus tax of course). Overall it’s still a very good deal.

Home, home on the range No comments yet

One of this weekend’s projects was to build a range house for the broiler chickens. 

This year we are only slaughtering for personal use, but we’d like to be able to consider slaughter for on farm sales in the future.  In order to comply with the Temporary Permit to Slaughter Pastured Chickens the chickens have to spend at least half of their life span on “pasture, range, or ground covered with vegetation that is suitable for grazing”.  The average broiler raised for slaughter is around 8 weeks of age so we targeted our broilers to go out to range at 4 weeks of age.

The chicken coop for the layers isn’t well suited for the broilers not to mention the full-grown layers wouldn’t look on it kindly.  We also didn’t really want the broilers free-ranging since they are pretty fat and slow moving.  Our range solution was pretty simplistic, but could be adapated pretty easily for a few layers if you wanted to do so by adding flooring and a nesting box.

Broiler Range House

We simply took two sheets of plywood and cut a 3 foot x 4 foot section off the end of one sheet to form the front.  We trimmed an additional 6 inchs off the 4 foot side so we would have roof overhang on the sides and cut a 1 foot by 1 foot door.  For the remainder of the sheet we cut diagonally across from the 2 foot and 3 foot marks creating the two side panels (3 feet tall in the front and 2 feet tall in the back).  We cut a 2 foot x  4 foot section off the end of the second sheet to form the back and then trimmed an additional 6 inches off of the 4 foot side so we would have roof overhang on the sides.  We used 2×2’s to brace all four corners and for braces for the roof.   We also used the 2×2’s for two roosts.  We trimmed down the door cut out and attached it with cabinent hinges and added a hook and eye latch.  We also drilled air holes under the eaves in the front and back to help regulate the temperature and air flow.  With the remainder of the second sheet forming a 4 foot by 6 foot roof we positioned it such that it formed a little “porch” on the front.  We originally wanted to do that so we could put the food and water under it, but quickly realized that the food would need to actually go inside.

Everyone inside

We put both the layers and broilers in the little “pasture” with the range house while we cleaned out the brooder box and removed the divider before moving the layers back in to the brooder box.  You can still watch the Baby Chick Cam.  They both clearly liked the range house because after a few hours of wandering the yard they all climbed inside for an afternoon nap.

So far the broilers seem to be doing quite well despite the overnight temperatures dropping to 40 degrees the first night.  I stuck a thermometer in one of the ventilation holes and it registered at least 10+ degrees over the air temperature despite it being overcast and drizzly.  We open the door during the day, but when it rains they only come out to enjoy the proteced area under the porch before eventually heading back in to the comfort of their range house.  It seems to be working great though. 

Enjoying the fresh air

After this season we plan to hinge the roof (we screwed it down) so we can access the inside of the range house if needed.  It would also allow us to prop open the roof if the day got particularly warm.  We also plan to try to add wheels and handles/supports to lift the range house so we can easily move it around making it more of an actual chicken tractor.  We’ve already had to move the house once this week because the broiler hens have been spending most of their time inside generating waste due to the weather taking a turn for the worst this week.  You will notice we have a small tarp on top of the range house.  The only reason for that is because the hardware store was out of actual plywood and only had OSB which won’t withstand the rain we get in the spring.  We plan to replace the OSB with actual plywood and paint the entire range house with exterior paint when we do.

I’m very pleased with how it all worked out and you can’t really beat the cost or the fact that it took less than an hour to assemble. 

Parts list:

• Two 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of 1/2 or 3/4″ plywood (don’t recommend OSB even though you’ll see we used a sheet) – ~$20 each
• Three 8 foot long 2″x”‘ boards – $2 each
• Pair of inexpensive cabinent hinges – $4 to $7 total
• One hook and eye latch – $2
• Draw pull door handle (optional)
• Roof hinge (optional)

Our total came in around $60 dollars.  If you were to add a single nesting box (good for up to 3 hens) you’d add another $10-15 dollars.

We’ve Got The Power 1 comment

While picking out the farm property/house, obvious points of interest were the electric, water supply, sewer, water heating, and house heating. I think about each of these as “supply systems” and have been working to build plans to improve the “sustainability” of each.

The term “sustainable” used in marketing misses the mark when used to describe our goals.  Yes, we want what we do to have a minimal ecological footprint and examine the source, transportation, and materials used to produce what we buy… but that’s not the only way I’m using the word. I want our “supply systems” to a) help us survive (supply clean potable water, keep us from freezing, keep us out of the dark, etc.) and b) require little input to continue function.

sus·tain·a·ble [ sə stáynəb'l ]
1. able to be maintained: able to be maintained
2. maintaining ecological balance: exploiting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of an area

My primary focus for the past year has been on water, electric power (for lighting, cooking, computing and entertainment), and heating. The house is on Puget Sound Energy utility power, a well, and septic tank. It has forced-air electric heat, a small Jøtul wood stove, and a big propane hot water heater.

I posted about my water woes in December, but haven’t posted the full impact that this had on our electric consumption. The shocking thing to me is how much of our electricity usage is driven by our water consumption. The well is fed by a 79 foot deep 1.5HP submersible pump and a 9 amp Franklin Electric pump control box. To put this in perspective, that’s the equivalent of flipping on 10 100 watt light bulbs, when it runs! For much of the month of December, the pressure switch was misadjusted and even when working property, we were running the water to try to clear the sediment out of the lines. The effect is clearly visible in the “January 09″ bill. What’s going on in that Jan-Apr 08 timeframe?! Our well was broken. There was a crack in the pipe leading from the well to the house. That was fixed in late Feb. and you can see the drop in usage immediately after.

My goal for the summer is to draw less than 500 kWh/month. To do this, it’s going to take some diligence, but I think it’s doable. The house has several very large skylights that almost eliminate the need for interior lighting until after sundown. We put a clothes line, last summer and that should supplant our clothes dryer. We’ll probably even use the solar oven (caramelized onions, Israeli cous cous, and lentils work well).

I’ll post again, about our overall energy conservation (and which definition of that word I’m using) and some more metrics another day. I also endeavor to post more about the rest of our “supply systems.” I have to run, though… there’s a light on in the kitchen.

Goat Coats 2 comments

Molly modeling her coat

We’ve been checking on the goats several times a day with the frequency increasing as the temperatures have dipped to record lows.  Molly, our Oberhassli, has a very thick coat (and a layer of fat on account of being a bit spoiled) that seems to be serving her quite well.  I haven’t noticed any signs that she’s bothered by the cold.  Obsidian, our Nubian, however kidded this year and we milked her until a few weeks ago.  She’s been putting on weight and is probably at about her ideal weight, but doesn’t have quite the thick coat that Molly does.  We’ve noticed her shivering when we are up to visit them which has worried me.  When we aren’t around they spend inclement weather in their “barn” and they sleep together to warm each other, but when she comes in to the yard she starts shivering.

I had seen many reference to goats in coats or sweaters in the winter.  Many folks simply use regular human clothes for them with relative success.  I decided with this weather that I would feel better if Obie had a coat.  Due to our tendency to hoard garish and outlandish scrap fabrics on discount for various Burning Man related projects I knew that we had at least some scraps of fleece in the stash.  Fortunately I happened upon several yards of a tie-dye like pattern that Bengt had purchased and quickly guilted him out of it in order to make goat coats. 

I used this link as a start, although I think my “design” is simpler:  http://kinne.net/goatcoat.htm

I made no darts and no belly flaps.  I did use the recommendation to make the ties high on

Molly and Obsidian playing in their coats

 one side so they’d be under the coat and less likely to snag or be pulled on though.  I left a vent in the front seam to allow for more movement while not sacraficing length.  The ties were double stitched and I did a X reinforcement, they shouldn’t come loose easily.  They are simply tied in a square knot off to the girl’s side.  The ties themsleves are made of scrap fleece in the hopes that it would be more comfortable than alternatives.

Molly’s ended up being a little short (neck to tail), but otherwise they seem to fit well.  We did two fittings before I sewed them.  I think it worked out pretty well for probably 30 minutes worth of work.  We’ll see how clean they actually keep them.  The fleece should wash up well, but I don’t have enough fabric to make a second set so I can swap them for washing while it remains cold.