DIY: New Lightbox [with wooden frame]

I spent an hour last week constructing this light-box. Basically, it’s a lot like this one except a little bit sturdier as it has a wooden bottom and support structure. 

I used 2x2s for the frame and 1/2 plywood for the bottom. Twelve screws later, and viola! A lightbox. 

Tissue paper is on the sides and top, while a large sheet of butcher paper makes up the backdrop. At some point I’ll probably change out the butcher paper for something with a little more visual interest. 

It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. Clearly I need to monkey around with the lighting a bit more.

You might remember that I had one of these back when the chickens were wee little chicks but it bit the dust - the birds kept pooping on the butcher paper and well, that doesn’t make the for prettiest of backdrops. Wax duck candles are much tidier. 

Au revoir dear Chickies

My Lovelies - 

Our days as chicken owners have come to an end. 

Our girls were pushing 2.5 years old and Phoebe (below) stopped laying a few months ago. With the advent of winter, Winnie’s production had also dropped. 

Winnie is off on a new adventure; she is currently making the acquaintance of a hen that lost her flock mates to a raccoon attack.  

Little Phoebe, however, is no more.

She was a good chicken and our family is thankful for the many, many tasty eggs she produced in her time. 

The girls had one glorious last day at La Casa J: they galavanted around the yard, took dust baths in their spot under the stairs, and chased bugs near the compost pile. Then they camped out for a snooze, cozied up together in their nesting box. 

Thank you, girls. 

The Halloween Costume Saga

My Dears!

If you saw our halloween post yesterday, including Benjamin in his rooster get-up, you probably noticed that there is a wee bit of difference between that one and the final version. This is what the end product looked like:

Here’s the scoop: Benjamin thought his original costume, the one with real feathers, was just about the best thing in the entire world. It short, he was well on his way to plucking himself into one very naked little chicken. He managed to de-feather about half his costume in the space of about 20 minutes. The living room looked like a feather snow storm had blown through. The darn thing was also impossible to get off. 

The Girls

I was raking leaves the other day and invited the chickens out for a few minutes of playtime. They like scratching through leaf litter. Plus they've started eating slugs so they're welcome additions to the garden. 

Winnie is so pretty. 

And Phoebe? 

Well...she's a champion egg-layer. 

Maybe just not a cover model. 

The other day I described her to my sister-in-law as rivaling Usain Bolt, in terms of speed. This girl is a sprinter. It took me a good ten minutes to pin her down against the fence so we could have our little photo session. Based on the squawks emitting from our yard, I'm sure my neighbor John assumed that I was processing our Thanksgiving turkey chicken. 

This Weekend...

...was busy. 

Brunch, football game, bees, chickens, and an afternoon with the HNA gals.

Here's the evidence: 

 I think perhaps I've mentioned that pregnant ladies can't clean chicken coops? And that we decided that coffee chaff was not the ideal bedding, given our garden shed/coop combo?

No? Well, if not, a) I can't and b) no, it's not (for us, at any rate). So there you have it. 

 Chris cleaned out the coop this weekend AND applied a protective coating of paint on the floorboards.  

 And then we bought ourselves a bale of hay. A new experience for me. I felt very country. You can now call me Cowgirl Sonja. Except that we placed our newly purchased hay bale into...our prius. Hmmm, maybe not so country. 

Yuppie chic? 

City nerd? 

Yes. 

 Anyway, the girls didn't seem to notice that their bedding had been replaced. Our little piggies have a one track mind. 

Have you brought us food? Yes? Good. 

 I went over to Mom's house for a quick bee check. 

Last time I reported that the ladies were a little behind on the honey storage front. The supers were pretty empty and we had very few cells of capped (ready) honey. I was disappointed but not too terribly surprised. This time around was a bit more heartening. The girls have used these first few days of September to cap a bit more of their stores. 

Keep up the good work, ladies. 

So we decided to slap Mom's newest toy onto the upper supers. This nifty device, placed between the lower boxes and the upper honey supers, is supposed to usher the girls out of the supers and down into their brood chambers. Similar to a fume board in purpose, but without the chemicals. However, I should note that it take a few days to be effective. One consideration to weigh when looking at bee exiting options. 

 It reminds me a bit of a have-a-heart device. Or maybe a lobster trap: you can go in, but you can't go out. Except that in this case they can only go out. 

We'll keep you posted on its effectiveness. [update: this thing is awesome! read about our results here]

 Unfortunately, last time I did a hive check, I made a rookie mistake. Which would be understandable, were I a rookie. [did you see that superb use of sports lingo?! There is hope. A glimmer, perhaps]. 

I removed the queen excluder that we'd placed on the hive a month ago, after we'd observed some eggs in cells that were reserved for honey. 

I had decided that  the excluder wasn't needed because our monarch had lots of empty room down in her brood chambers. Since she was residing in the lowest one, I figured it unlikely that she'd climb all the way up into the honey supers for egg-laying purposes. Also, some Beeks (that's beekeepers, for you non bee people) are of the opinion that placing queen excluders on hives hinders bee movement and delays honey storage activities. Hoping to encourage our girls in their storage efforts, I took it off. 

In hindsight, that was really dumb. Because this is what we ended up with:

 Larvae (and drones, to boot!) in our honey supers. 

 Bad news. Bad queen. 

 Sorry mom. 

 The good news is that we do have some harvestable honey, so that's what we're going to focus on extracting this week. 

 And that, my dears, is the end of our pictures from this weekend. 

 Except for these two of a sweet little mystery flower that we have growing in the backyard. 

We will Chaff No More [Chicken related]

 So I hate to say it, but I think our run with the coffee chaff as bedding for the chickens is coming to a close.

I love the chaff: it's smells great, blocks odors, composts easily and best of all, it's free. The major downside is that it's so light and fluffy that it travels well. 

Too well. 

Winnie will give herself a shake and suddenly there is a cloud of chaff in the water bowl, the food dish, and in the nesting chamber. 

I would happily put up with all of that if the girls lived in an isolated coop. Instead, their interior area is part of our larger garden shed and is separated by 1/2 inch hardware cloth. So the chaff migrates out of the chicken coop and onto the various tools, machines, and potting paraphernalia that we have stored in the shed. It's making a mess. 

So I guess the big question now is, what are we going to replace it with? We could go back to the pine shavings, but they were expensive and molded easily. Maybe straw/hay? Not sure...

They've got the munchies

At the Alaska Zoo we called them Behavioral Enrichment Tools but they could have just as easily gone by another name: toys.

Entertainment. 

Stimuli.

Popsicles made with frozen fish for the seals, honey drizzled down a tree stump in the black bear's den, human scents rubbed on a rock in the snow leopard exhibit. 

Zoos, research centers, and rescue shelters face a dilemma: how do they keep caged animals, particularly those with vast natural territories, from suffering from extreme boredom? This isn't a minor problem. Animals, just like humans, can develop severe and crippling physical and psychological traumas from long stretches in captivity. I quite clearly remember the polar bear at the Oregon Zoo that took three steps forward and three steps back, for hours at a time. Or the elephant (at the Honolulu Zoo?) that stood in one place and crossed and uncrossed its back legs, over and over again. 

It is only recently that caregivers have made significant headway in addressing some of these challenges.  

Stepping off the soapbox now...

The girls haven't had a chance to go outside much lately, thanks to a neighbor's cat that has suddenly discovered their coop. This is no friendly pussy cat, either. It's a predator. All it has to do is stalk by the run and suddenly our girls are in a tizzy, running around the enclosure, feathers flying everywhere. I'm amazed that we haven't yet experienced any broken legs or bent wings. We've certainly lost enough feathers to assemble a few down pillows.

Not exactly the kind of enrichment I'm looking for. 

In lieu of a free-ranging existence, I usually provide the girls with a handful of tasty weeds that are poked, stem-first, through the mesh of the coop every morning. This is a challenge: they must draw the plants through the mesh by the stem before reaching the tasty goodness at the other end. Nothing is free in life, ladies. You gotta work for that reward. 

Now, what should I do about that cat? Any suggestions?

Gobble, gobble

The girls are like piggies at a trough when it comes to treats. I had a container of strawberries that I'd buried in the back of the fridge and promptly forgotten about. A quick puree in the food processor turned them into a nice mush. The girls, appropriately, went hog wild.

Living Roof Update

I jumped up onto the roof last night for a quick round of weeding and a checkup.

Overall, things are generally looking good. 

We've had a few obvious failures:

And individuals of some species are thriving, while others are suffering:

And a few are growing like mad: 

 Chris also finished nailing down the coop walls. I cannot wait until we get the siding up and we can be DONE with this project.

Happy Birthday Girls.

The chickies turn 1 today. Remember back to when they were this big?