| Soon after I got the chickens, I noticed that one had what appeared to be infected ears. I let it go for a few days, but last Monday, I decided it was enough of a worry that I should get it checked out. I put her in a box lined with straw (with some weeds from the yard to keep her entertained) and brought her to the vet. The receptionist, who used to have chickens herself, oohed and aahed over her, and the vet very faithfully checked her out even though he doesn't see a lot of chicken patients and had no clue what was wrong with her.
He went out of the exam room to his computer and returned with a list of possible diseases. Basically, she's sneezy and has infected ears. He prescribed antibiotics and TLC and told me to watch the other chickens to see if they get sick too. Based on the incubation period and duration of several possible diseases, we can start ruling things out. (Avian flu has a very short incubation period, so we already know it's not that since the other chickens didn't get sick after a few days. By the time I brought the chicken to the vet, she'd already been sick at least a week.) The vet also noted that she seems thin, so make sure she's eating.
I began by trying to give her the antibiotics with the eyedropper as recommended, but after a few tries of that, I switched to putting the medicine on a piece of bread and giving it to her that way. I've also been giving her worms as a treat to see if it will help her gain some weight.
Meanwhile, after many people told me that my chickens won't be safe in the coop I had rigged up, a friend offered to loan me her tools and her time and help me to build a coop, so long as I would get the plans and the supplies. I looked and looked and looked online and found NOTHING suitable, particularly because our coop needs to be short enough that you can't see it from over the fence (it's a city ordinance). But someone on the Backyard Chickens Forum recommended a few designs and one of them was perfect. The plans were about $20 to buy online and they came in a wonderful PDF with instructions and photos.
I took the supply list to Dixieline and told the man that I am probably his stupidest customer to date and I need my hand held. He helped me gather up all of the supplies and order the wood, cut to the specifications of the plan. Having the wood cut was $.80 per cut and well worth the accuracy and precision that we got for it.
I ordered the wood Monday, picked it up (with the help of my roommate and his minivan) on Wednesday, and planned to start building on Friday. Also on Friday, it started raining. Since my chickens had nearly no shelter, I put my sick chicken back in her box and brought her inside to spend the night in the bathtub. She decided to roost on the shower ledge and proceeded to shit all over the bathtub... but at least it was easy to wash.
After a few hours of work on Friday and a full day of work on Saturday, the coop was nearly ready for the chickens. I brought the pieces out to the yard and began to assemble them there. Unfortunately, it wasn't ready enough for the chickens, because one piece had to be trimmed to fit in place, and I needed daylight to see what I had to trim. My poor, wet chickens had to spend another full night in their crappy coop.
Today, I managed to take apart the old coop and move the new one into place. Then I built and put in the "chicken ladder" and placed the roof on top (it's not attached but at least it will keep my girls dry. The rooster, who I've named Prince William, helped me every step of the way. Actually, I think he was looking for the food that he was dead certain I had in my hands.
The coop build was not without mishaps. We built the back coop wall entirely backwards, and I didn't discover it until I was trying to assemble the entire coop last night. I just left it as-is and added a few pieces of wood to make up for the resulting problems. Also, when I went to grab the last piece of wood - which, by process of elimination should have been the coop floor - I found that the wood was labeled "Back Coop Wall." Um... oops. So where was the coop floor? Strangely enough, the leftover plywood (the "Back Coop Wall") fit just fine as the floor.
Another booboo I made was nailing the door to the coop shut while trying to attach the lock that would secure it shut. Whoops. And I broke off the drill bit into the back of the chicken stairs (and then covered up the broken piece sticking out by nailing some wood over it). Plus, the door to the coop doesn't quite fit. Oh well. I'll fix it after it stops raining. For now, the chickens have a nice warm place to hang out, if they want it.
The door to the coop.
The whole coop. The part sticking out is the nest box. The part that's entirely enclosed in plywood is the coop, and the rest will be the run once I finish it.
Inside the nest box
The view from inside the chicken run.
I still need some help setting up the perch that will go inside the coop for the chickens to roost on, and I don't think the chickens have figured out their chicken ladder quite yet. I found out the hard way that the chicken food pellets dissolve when they get wet, so I put all of the food inside the coop where it will stay dry. I kept the water outside in the run, on a cinder block. I'll add more straw once everything's finished, but for now I figured it might get in the way later when we come back to attach the chicken wire and such. And I'm not doing ANYTHING until it stops raining. (For the next several days, San Diego will resemble Seattle, according to the forecasts.)
Last, since I've been jokingly calling the coop "Cluckingham Palace," I'm going to see if I can convince the kids to name the chickens after the British royal family. We'll have Elizabeth, Diana, Kate, and Victoria... after we ditch Prince William and replace him, that is. I took the liberty of naming the rooster because we won't be able to keep him anyway. The kids, particularly the little one, will not get it, since they have no idea who the British royal family is... and the older girl has already decided she wants to name the sick pullet "Fatty," although she's conceded that maybe "Fatty" will just be her nickname. So we'll see what happens with the chickens' names.
It's been an eventful week for our wet nameless chickens, that's for sure. For me, the best parts were when I found a slug and a Japanese beetle larva in the yard and I fed them to the chickens, to be pooped out as fertilizer. Awesome! |
