Bears and Bees

I named this bear Adam, as he is the first of his kind. He stands 5'6" tall and is 3'7" at his widest point. He is carved from white spruce.

This is the bear I thought I was going to able to carve on my first try some 14 years ago. Better late than never.

Eyes, claws and teeth are all hand carved. I used "Ebony" and "Sedona Red" stains in the mouth and I also dry-brushed some white enamel onto the teeth before I applied several coats of matte clear sealer.

The beehive was made of cedar boards and a cedar shake roof. I carved a cartoon-ish bee character on each side of every super.

Craig

Also, here's a quick teaser for our next post! Check back to see the full video of us unloading our package bees.

April Fools...

We were pranked early when we went to pick up our chicks early Tuesday morning. My husband ran inside the post office to get the chicks and came out several minutes later with two large boxes. I was a little surprised the hatchery would send such a large box, but it was way too early in the morning to think much beyond that. After he handed me the box, I peeked into the breathing holes and saw a duck bill! I told Bronson the hatchery had put a duck in by mistake,  which we were pretty excited about at first because we had already talked about picking up a duckling or two from the farm and fleet store. Then I noticed ALL of the "chickens" had duck bills. Confused, I looked at the recipient address on the box and found that the post office had given us the shipment of 80 ducklings the farm and fleet store had ordered! After jokingly discussing taking them home and a good laugh, Bronson ran back inside and exchanged them for our much more appropriately sized box of baby chicks.

The chicks all made it alive, which was a nice surprise. I had been preparing myself for the worst, but they seemed fairly comfortable. The packaging was nice and secure with plenty of fluffy paper stuff inside. After introducing them to the brooder and showing them the food and water, they settled in nicely. Then we went back to town and bought two of the ducks from the store. They're all adorable and I love the ducks!

We decided to buy a new tank for the chicks, our first batch of chicks are growing very fast and I don't think the babies would be safe with them. Whether they'd have to worry more about bullying or simply being trampled, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't make it. I'm a little nervous about integrating the two ages together when we move them out to the coop, but I'll have a better idea about that after a little google research.

We used the feeders we bought for the first batch of chicks, after washing them thoroughly, of course. I ordered nipple waterers online and Bronson built a waterer out of pvc pipe and an apple juice jug. We haven't put it in the tank yet, the glue needed to dry overnight, so I'm excited to see how it works. Keeping the water clean has been a pain and the chickens don't make any effort to avoid stepping in it, so it'll be nice to keep it off the ground.

The baby chicks have been pasty for the past couple of days, but I was expecting that. Things are slowly clearing up as they get more comfortable to the new environment. The ducks and chicks are doing fine together. The chicks were very confused and curious at first, but the ducks are bigger and avoided confrontation. They all seem to be living comfortably after getting used to each other.

As for the older chicks, as soon as they were big enough, they started jumping onto the waterers and feeders and trying to fly out. We solved that issue by taking out the feeders and putting in the large hanging feeder, we're exchanging the waterers with the pvc pipe, and then we threw a lid on the whole thing. Bronson and my dad made the lid out of some scrap wood we had lying around, 4 hinges, and some hardware cloth.

Those Easter Eggers on the right aren't dead. Their in a state of Euphoria over the sand we put in the brooder!

They continue to grow at a ridiculous pace. These first pictures were taken when we transferred them to the bigger tank last week.

These pictures were taken yesterday, March 30th. Within one week, they've somehow become awkward teens.

It's been a very busy two weeks for us, I spent all of last week testing DIY cleaning products, including: glass cleaner, laundry detergent, stain remover, and more. So check back soon to see what I found.

Chicken Update

It's been a full week since we first got our two little chickens. They've grown considerably, although you can't tell unless you compare it to a baby picture, or a baby chick, which we now have examples of both.

My parents went to town on Saturday and called me from the local country store. Well, apparently I inherited my impatience from my parents, they were calling to see how I would feel about buying some more chickens. My mom, T.Burnett, told me they had Americanas at the store and asked how many I wanted, so I said all of them. She also got two Rainbow chickens and four Gold Star, with our first two that makes thirteen chickens! The five Americanas are not Ameraucanas, the rare breed. These are Easter Eggers with a tricky name. I had to do a little research yesterday to figure out what the difference was, but Easter Eggers or fancy chicken, I'm excited!

These chickens were more stressed out than our first two. One had a pasty bum and that was dried and caked on, it was terrible. After cleaning her, she relieved herself and has been acting normal since. I put some Apple Cider Vinegar in their water, one tablespoon, I read that it helps keep their rear ends clean, so far so good. 

One of our Easter Eggers wasn't doing so well, however. She had an infection, evidenced by thick, bloody feces and a hydrogen peroxide swab. We quarantined her and dropper fed her some mashed up chicken food, honey and water and I bought one of those pedialyte for chickens things to put in her water. She didn't make it through the night, unfortunately, but we got the medicine for that problem, tetracycline hydroxide, today so we'd have it on hand next time. I was a little distraught over it this morning, but it's a good reminder that no matter how hard  you try to help, sometimes these things happen.

On a happier note, the other twelve chicks are healthy and my parents surprised me with a new chicken tank to put them in, it's a big solid, metal affair. It's 2'x4'x2', which is more than enough space for 13 chicks. We may have to keep the other chicks separate for a while when they get here, so we may still need to put them somewhere, but we'll just play it by ear for now.

Gold Star Chicken

We replaced the bedding with sand and hay, like my friend, Jesse, suggested. They didn't have regular hay at the store, so we just bought what they had, which was alfalfa hay. The chickens went nuts for it, so we may throw some alfalfa in once a week or something like that.

Aren't they cute?!

Chickens

About a week ago, I placed an order for 15 chickens. Five Buff Orpingtons, four Rhode Island Reds, three Barred Rocks, two White Rocks, and one Black Australorp male. I picked those breeds for specific reasons. One, they're all good layers; we want chickens for eggs, not for slaughter. Two, they're supposedly all relaxed and friendly breeds. Three, they are all cold weather tolerant. I do want at least a couple of other breeds. The Easter Eggers, and I do want a few actual Ameraucanas as well. I was looking at the ornamental breeds of chickens available and I'd probably want one or two, but I haven't decided which. I think I need to put that up to a vote with the family.

I don't have to tell you how excited I am to get our chickens in two weeks! I just happened to have an idea of what dates the local country store was getting chicks and I thought it would be a great idea to go look at them to get an idea of what to expect.... Well, let's be honest, we all knew it would happen, we came home with two little babies! I had already bought everything we needed for the chickens the day I ordered them, so we set up a little tub for them, and they made themselves at home.

We used a tupperware box for storage and put it in our bathroom. Like I said, it's pretty cold up here, so we have a space heater in there so they don't chill. We set up a reflector lamp with a clamp on the side of the bucket and the first day we used a regular 100 watt bulb, but today we're going to try a red Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL). I read that using a white light might excite them too much and stress them out.

We used pine shavings that we bought at the country store. Make sure that it's not cedar. The store in my town only has pine outside that you have to ask the clerk for like ice, everything else is cedar. I'm not an expert about chickens and since looking into the cedar thing further and finding that even pine is bad for chickens, I may just go get some sand from the river bank. But they seem fine, so I don't think my chickens will mutate or anything from standing on pine for a few days.

I bought two waterers and three feeders, one feeder for grit. I read that the water and food will get dirty and need to be cleaned several times a day, so I bought extra so we could change it out. Handy for the water, it got gross quickly; the food is still alright after 24 hours. I am going to buy the nipple waterers, however. I've read several places and a Backyard Chicken (BYC) user's random piece of advice was that these are a necessity for clean drinking water.

We're trying our hardest not to handle them too much, but they're really cute, so we're failing a little. We don't pick them up unless we have to, but they're usually pretty willing to climb up into our hands for a little nap.

We won't put all 17 of them in here, of course. We have a bigger tupperware storage box that we'll use. I think we may put them together, but we'll see how it goes. We'll keep the smaller box to put the chicks in when we have to clean though. They're messy babies! It needs to be cleaned daily, if not dumped, at least covered. With sand it may be simpler just to use a kitty litter scoop.

The coop remains a mystery at the moment. We're not quite ready to start a big project outside yet. It's still pretty chilly and there is a lot of chopping, clearing, and digging that needs to be done, so more on that later. Check back soon!

B.Burnett