more on the coop - coop

Update on Chicken Coop

     It’s a chicken coop for chickens to take a poop-poop , not a tee pee for little chicks to take a pee- pee , or a wig wam for old cocks to pound their tom- tom. Sorry for the mental slip or maybe it was a slide as I try to make my blog more user friendly, and fail some days as my past and old rhymes and other such stuff ultimately blurts its way out of my cramped cranium, just dying to be heard one more time only with some added embellishment pertinent to the subject at hand.

    I am not totally responsible for the above rhyme as in fact it was one of the few things my dad left me with. Well there are a lot more, but half are hardly user friendly, or are off color, racist, and otherwise unfit for human consumption, but still bring a smile when said to myself if for nothing else but to remember him. He had a phrase I will repeat just for shits and giggles and he would use in reference to doing any job as being ‘ harder than trying to pour hot butter up a wild cats ass’.

     He grew up in West Virginia and some say that may be the excuse that one may use for just such an occasion that one may pour hot butter up anything’s ass, still the thought of that happening has to have an origin somewhere and it is beyond me where that would come from. And hopefully it was always a thought and never an action. As I think more about the phrase I will let it alone and just throw it out there for your mind to digest and let you come up with your own thoughts on the subject. But surely the effort expended on thinking up this phrase would have better been put to writing ‘War and Peace’, as after reading this epic novel, I can surely see where it needed a few phrases as colorful as this to spice it up a little.

      Anyhow the chicken coop is coming along and had help from a lot of sources. I wouldn’t say help but instead inspectors from the animal kingdom, as Babe, my dog, Lily, my cat, Brucella, my confused goose,  and one of my chicks who is having problems with her balance, as they all checked out the new digs preferring to enter and exit where they should, almost as if they knew what a door was. I would work nailing and cussing at the staples as they would fall out of my hands, or were too small to hold effectively in my big fingers, causing me to smack my fingers more often than hitting the staple. At this they would all stir out of their bored slumber and wonder what I was bitching about now. More and more as it closed in, they would return to the inside and hope it wasn’t them that was going to be kept inside, seeing that possible means of escape was being limited as I went on.

    It isn’t so much as limiting their escape but also to prevent other animals like coons and foxes, and whatever else may kill the young chickens had I just let them roam freely. Also I need to limit their exposure to other wild birds due to the avian flu, and the chance wild birds may be carrying it. I have seen no signs of any dead or sick wild birds at my feeder, or anywhere else as I have been looking for them since I have heard of the link. I noticed a cute little black and white crested bird with a red breast that was gorgeous and a new visitor to my bird feeder, as well my first hummingbird of the year.

    I am reading more about the red dye and it is bad for the hummingbirds, and although it isn’t related to my story I feel it needs mentioned here so that you save your money and make your own nectar, by boiling water and then adding sugar at a 4: 1 proportion, for every cup of sugar add four cups of water. So boil 4 cups of water then add 1 cup of sugar and stir while hot until dissolved and chill. Boiling the water kills any bacteria, and then adding the sugar when hot will also make it sterile. This you can make as needed from your kitchen and is healthier than the red dye which messes with the hummingbirds’ renal system or kidneys, as it will eventually cause their kidneys to fail. And will eventually lead to their death. We can’t allow ourselves to do this to such a small hapless creature.

     Anyhow in the chicken coop I will be adding plastic and installing roosts for them to sit on at night, and then moving them to their new coop today which will be cooler than the greenhouse. Next up I will start working on the leak in the greenhouse, and get back to getting prepared for my open house and other projects I have in mind for event.