The coop has walls!

Hubby spent over 10 hours in the basement today working on the coop; major process was made! The exterior walls are cut, insulated and reinforced. Interior walls are cut and in place. The door has hinges. We even duct taped it together so we could see how it's going to look. What would life be without duct tape?

In other news, the girls moved out of their zappos.com box and into a larger amazon.com box today. Tallulah, in particular, has been flapping her little wings and eyeing the top of the box. This is a photo taken not from the side, but from directly above her. Notice her shifty little eyes trying to plan an escape.

Also, the brooder is too dang hot. There is a 250W heat bulb supended above the box but even raising it up 3' above the brooder's top doesn't lower the temperature below 100 degrees. I'm going to replace it with a 75W incandecent bulb and see if that, combined with the 70 degree house temp, will keep them at a toasty 90-95 degrees.

Here is a lame video (no sound and crappy camerawoman) of the chicks eating and running amok. If I'd caught them pooping and sleeping, too, we would have the entirety of their day in 20 seconds.

A Preview of Parenthood

The little fluffballs are growing and are visibly bigger than they were just a few days ago. I suppose they won't stay cute forever. Several people have told me not to base my ability to care for our soon-to-arrive-child on my ability to raise baby chicks, primarily because chicks can drop dead of a myriad of diseases in their early days. While heeding this advice, I can't help but think that the chicks are offering a glimpse of two distasteful aspects of parenthood.

First, poop. Lots of it. I've spent the last few days hanging with the peeps for about an hour a day waiting for each one to poo so I know they are not pasted up. Poor Tallulah pasted up repeatedly from Wednesday until yesterday. ("Pasting up" means that the poo sticks to their fluffy behind and prevents the chick’s ability to poo further. It can be fatal if not “addressed”.) There has been more cleaning of chicken butts and picking poo off of Tallulah's rear than either one of us would like, although Tallulah has the worst of it. So, poop. Good times.

Second, I’m getting a lot of ungrateful featherball attitude. I feed them, change their water, have a thermometer in the box to ensure that it stays a toasty 95 degrees, protect them from the cats, and pick poo off their butts to prevent their untimely demise...and what do I get?! Attitude. I pick them up and they peep bloody murder and try to get away. I'm trying to bond with my chickens and they hate me. OK, OK, in fairness, given the relative size difference between us, I imagine they see my putting my hand into their box as the hand of god descending to smite them for their poultry sins. I would run from the hand of god, too. Also, I tend to anthropomorphize all of our creatures and, although I'm sure my chickens will grow up to be a smart and civilized lot, they are just little dinosaurs. I must remember this. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6548719.stm While it's possible that dinosaurs had a rich and deep emotional life, I suspect not, and I should not expect love and devotion from the chickens. I suppose it's much the same for children--I have to love the little dinosaur no matter what; she gets to decide whether or not to like or love me. That stinks.

Poop and attitude: the rewards of parenthood. But at least the chickens will lay eggs at some point. And children will eventually... put me in the home.

Hmm.... chickens 1, children 0.

Babies!

Oh.my.goodness. Is there anything cuter than a baby chick? Well, yes. But the chicks are pretty darn close to be the cutest creatures ever. Farmer Kathy called at 8am to say the post office had the chicks, and she was on her way to get them. I was at the farm by 8:20. While Farmer Kathy told me I would get to pick out which ones I wanted, when I spent more than 30 seconds looking at the Buff Orpingtons, she told me to hurry the hell up. So. I basically picked the ones that were on top of the chick pile. I drove them home in a pre-heated car, dipped their little beaks in the water, and plopped them in the box where it's 95 and sunny, thanks to the heat bulb. I watched them for a minute, closed the door, threatened the cats with a one-way ticket to the humane society if they ate the chickens, and reluctantly, left for work.

I was pleased to return to the house several hours later to find 3 living chicks and no blood-stained cats.

Anyway, the chicks are Tallulah (Barred Rock-black with white spot on head), Dixie (Buff Orpington-yellow), and Sydney (black Australorp-black with yellow and black head).

The US Postal Service has been entrusted with my peeps

My farmer friend called me at the crack of dawn (apparently she doesn't realize that we townies sleep past sunrise) to tell me that Hoover's Hatchery in Rudd, Iowa has shipped our chicks! They were supposed to arrive 2 weeks ago but Hoover's had a horrible hatch. It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book. I don't know if someone forgot to turn on the incubator or what, but for some reason, they had a low birth, or hatch, rate. Anyway, they are on their way. They come overnight mail via USPS, and should be at my farmer friend's post office tomorrow.

Update on the chicken coop: oy. So, Hubby didn't want much to do with these chickens. He was anti-chicken-in-the-backyard, and I have been on my own for the planning and building of the coop. The coop was to have been the first thing I've ever built. I am not handy, spatial, or precise in my work; in fact, my dear friend Kendall has (dis)assembled my futon frame and IKEA things for me. So, I spent the fall and winter reading up on chicken needs and planning the coop. I bought some supplies this spring, and with some trepidation, undertook my noble cause: to build a comfortable, warm, dry chicken coop. I was quite proud of myself for measuring and cutting the exterior walls, the window and door openings, and even building a nest box. Then I got stuck--I can't even remember what I needed help withbut I recruited Hubby.

Perhaps it is a difference between men and women, or perhaps it's just a difference between Hubby and me, but my idea of help is to do what is requested by the helpee and maybe offer encouragement or a suggestion or two. Hubby's idea of help has proven to be quite different. Not even half-way down the basement stairs, upon seeing the exterior walls he proclaims, "did you even try to cut those straight?" Long story short, Hubby is willing to endure the tedium required to do things precisely and perfectly. (I am more of a "it's good enough" kinda gal.) So, he re-cut all of the walls, and from there, has pretty much taken over the project. In fact, he deviated so far from my plans that I don't really know what he's doing; since it's all in his head, I can't really help. In other words, I have been relieved of my post and now enjoy my weekends and evenings spent not in the basement. I should take this opportunity to say what he is building surpasses anything I could have built, and come Armageddon, all that will remain are the rats, cockroaches, and our chicken coop.

Case in point, Hubby dear comes up from the basement the other night to ask if I have a calculator with a square root function. I'm sure all you smart people out there know why he needed it, but my first response was, "what the h$#% are you doing down there?!?" He handed me a piece of paper with A2 + B2= C2 written on it; the roof is going to be slanted, and he was trying to figure the length of the hypotenuse. Right. So, then he proceeds to tell me he's also making a change on the roof design because the wind comes from the South, and the wind speed plus the thermonuclear something-or-other plus the rotation on the Earth's axis was not ideal. OK, he didn't really say anything about thermonuclear whatever or the rotation of the Earth, but he may as well have. Thoroughly perplexed, I dusted off my good old TI-85 graphing calculator from high school algebra, handed it to him, and went back to reading "O magazine".

Hubby is uber smart, precise and likes things right. I appreciate that he has taken on this project; he is much more inclined to build something that won't collapse on the chickens and/or be an eyesore in our yard. (Thanks, Hubby.) Still, the chicks come tomorrow, and we don't have a finished coop. So, until they feather out, which occurs at about 5 weeks, the chicks will live--where else?--in the baby's nursery. I have a cardboard box with a heat lamp all set up. My hope is their getting bigger, smellier, and less cute (they get the awkward, ugly seventh-grader look at about 5-6 weeks) will act as a impetus to get the coop done and the chickens outside.

They'll have to be out of the baby's room by September when the real baby is due to arrive....