Well the last week was lots of fun. All the snow and then the rain. First the snow took out my bird feeder and I had large drifts of snow in the first pen of the chickens. Mean while something scared the chickens, because when I went out to check on them I found around 6 of them on the floor not knowing what to do in the dark. So I put them one by one back up on the roost. I then noticed that the window was broken The glass was broken from the inside because of how the glass fell, and with all the snow out side there were no tracks in the snow and my looking around I could not find the reason. but I did notice that the chickens all had moved to one side of the roost, I could only conclude that what scared them was from that side of the coop. I have very strong wire on all of the windows so they were scared but safe. I replaced the glass window and put in plastic windows. if it should happen again they can't break the plastic, to thick. It took them several days to spread out across the roost again. things are getting back to normal. I have thought about the incident for several days, and I have taken one of two changes the first one is to put a very small Xmas lite pink in color so that they will not be completely in the dark and will be able to find their way back up the roost. The next thing I am going to do is something that I have been thinking about for some time now, I am going to put a very small radio in the coop and play it on their favorite station, chicken country. I think it might take away most of the outside noises and tend to keep them calm. these things I don't know if they will work or not but it won't hurt to try. The little light has caused some confusion, because the chickens seem to know about when the lights might come on so they get a little restless and because the nite light is on they will start to head down off the roost and outside. I found them in the outside pen walking around along the fence line looking lost trying to find their way into the second pen to eat the goodies I set out for them each night. To night when the chickens went to roost I removed all of the saw dust and wood chips and put new in, I was not sure how wet it was in the pen I was surprised to find it quite dry . that's it for now .

xmas eve at Rita's and Bob's 2008

Heres a short note if you go to my link on videos you can see a few videos on our xmas eve present opening thak you

xmas eve 2008 snowing. cleaning coop

Well ain't life fun! The weather here is quite a challenge not what we are accustom to , we have had approx. 13 inches. I was concerned about the build up on the trees and roof of the buildings but so far everything is fine . yesterday when the temp. was above freezing I went out and cleaned the inside of the coop out below the roosting area it went very easy. I don't remember if I have spoken about things inside of the coop or not but here goes. when Ibuilt the coop I gave a lot of thought on time saving. I did look and read a lot about what other people were doing and their pit falls. I wanted to prevent these things. So #1 I insulated the floor, walls and roof. I put vent at the top about 16 of them and by putting in a false roof on with a trap door that I could open and close at will I could control the air movement, and heat. The chicken waste can get pretty strong and cause breathing problems for the pullets, I also clean and remove the waste as much as i can approx. once a week. Everything in the coop area can be removed and cleaned outside. the floor and roost area have linoleum on to make it easy to clean, I do not hose the inside down, I only use rags and muscle power to clean. soap and bleach. so far the coop has been cleaned for a year and it still looks like it's new. the back wall is what catches a lot of waste so it is made of washable material and has worked excellent. coop area stays at approx 47 degrees. I use a organic natural spry to control bugs and stuff like that so far no bugs yet. keep it clean and the bugs won't come. the chickens are only inside to lay eggs and roost that is their choice and not mine. very little maintenance goes on inside the coop, except keeping the roosting area clean. the next blog i will try and speak on the outside in the yard and feeding.

new video link bobschickens65 in youtube.com

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news for the day I have set up a site on YouTube.com for you to view any videos that I have made. In my blog I have linked you to YouTube.com by using the bobschickens65 link once in,look up at the top for bobschickens65 and highlight it to view my video's. Thanks for visiting. this new link is my way to use my blog more effectively, now I can provide video's to all, enjoy. the picture of the flag and snow are from Stacia's house in Marysville. Soon I will have a link for pictures also.

wow what a difference a day makes 12-17-08

a little snow in back of coop a little inside from the north

chickens looking for the scratch i just gave them

some pictures of snow from the outside looking in

well here is the years first snow we don't see it very often even though we have a lot of close calls enjoy the pictures. I will use these pictures to improve my weather control. we had the storm come from the north which is different because it mostly comes in from the south. The weather temp. is around 32 degrees but the coop inside is almost 50 degrees a little heater is all that's used a little warmer than I wanted, but a little adjustment will take it down a little.

HERE ARE A FEW PICTURES OF THINGS AROUND AND IN THE COOP.

DEC. 08 DAY 15 COLD 26 DEGREES, A COUPLE OF EGGS CRACKED OPEN TO SHOW THEIR COLOR DOUBLE YOKE IS BECAUSE THE PULLETS ARE STILL TRYING TO GET IT RIGHT.

TWO PCTURES OF THE OVER HANG OF PEN i JUST PUT UP A TEMP. TO SEE WHAT WILL WORK.

Today I had an unusual incident at approx. 4am when I went to their coop to check on them like I always do when I heard a noise in the coop like chickens moving around which was a surprise to me because I always believed that as long as it was dark the chickens would not come off of the roost but I was wrong out into the yard came two of my pullets to get to the mash first and so I checked the nesting box and they had laid two eggs I took them out and they were very warm still Like I always say the minute you think you know everything they will surprise you.

November 2008 update

some of my ladies checking things out

my ladies wanting to know what is going on

should I go up or stay down on the floor

VIEW OF BOTTOM OF ROOST CLEANED

SECOND VIEW OF ROOST FLOOR

VIEW OF OTHER SIDE OF ROOST CLEANED

VIEW OF FLOOR OF ROOST CLEANED

HALF CLEANED

OTHER SIDE DIRTY

ONE SIDE CLEANED OTHER SIDE DIRTY

DIRTY SIDE

SECOND SiDE DIRTY

well hello everyone sorry that I have not blogged for all of Nov. no excuses. my ladies have been busy out of the 31 days in this month my hens have laid eggs as follows 12 eggs twice, 14 eggs eighteen times and 13 eggs eleven times that equals 419 eggs for the month. that's approx. 35 dozen, my customers buy them up faster than they can lay them some have even paid ahead of time. The cold weather has not slowed them down, even though my neighbors chickens have quit laying. If the conditions are right I will be surprised if mine stop. year to date totals 1,801. eggs, and 151 doz. all from just 14 chickens. I will be adding some pictures of my cleaning of the coop roosting area. so far the coop has not been cold even if temperatures have reached 32 and below with snow on the ground. the other day I was speaking to this nice lady at the store and I stated to her that I gave my chickens raisins some times in their mash and she was amazed she did not think that they could eat them. As we spoke on the subject of how to get rid of mites and bugs, she swear that the best thing that she was doing was putting diesel oil on the chickens roost. I for the life of me was surprised to hear that she thought that raisins were bad. All that I could think about is diesel oil? fires , chemicals Yikes! she was surprised that there were other natural things that she could use. I have read of these fixes before and they were in old books. Not for me. now don't get me wrong it's well known that there is more than one way to raise chickens. I have put my winter plan into effect and I am just keeping things dry,clean and keeping lots of food and water available at all times. these pictures show how the coop area looks when it is dirty and when it is cleaned. The chicken stuff has been removed and it cleans after one year like it is brand new. I do this approx. every week.