Cool white roof

Doc and I, with help from some likely youths, constructed a coop for the chicks. It has wire walls and shade cloth to keep the chicks cool. But with Texas temps going over 100, more thermal control was needed.

We tried a mister. It has worked well, but the soil, dry from 5 inches of rain in 7 months, has gone into stinky decomposition overdrive. And still the birds are slow roasting in the coop....

But my nephew arrived for a visit. Free labor, hooray!

We moved Jailbird Vo and the chicks into the adult pen. Buffy gave them a warm welcome.

Say hello to my little friend

Once the red chicks outnumbered the adults, things got calmer. The chicks liberated the mister and the adults withdrew to the coop to sulk about today's youth and their lack of respect.

Chicks in the mist

With the chicks squared away, we set to work on the roof. The nephew and I mounted ladders and braved the entangling poultry net of doom.

Only a fool would put a poultry net over of roof before painting it. Sadly, I am that fool.

There must be a better way

We used up a can of gummy white primer, sealing holes, covering metal, and sometimes painting the net. An hour on the ladders was all we could stand, so we declared victory and hastened to the house for iced tea.

Not as bad as I feared

We put the chicks back and fed them treats. Oh the chickeny joy!

The white roof cut the coop temperature by 5-10 degrees. Now the hot chicks are cool. Aaaaaaaay!

Jailbird Chicken

One of my chickens was eating her eggs. This is distressing because I prefer to eat those delicious eggs myself. Chickens are supposed to eat layer pellets and I refuse to switch diets with them.

Eventually the perpetrator was caught, yellow-beaked. Vo was sentenced to Chicken Jail.

She has her own roost, nest box, layer pellets, and water. All these things are in a wire cage inside the coop. As it happens, the cage top is higher than the main roost.

Now jail is the new normal for Jailbird Vo. She roosts on top of the cage. When she lays an egg, she goes inside to use her personal nest bucket.

She still fails to deliver eggs sometimes. If she has access to treats she will lay a shell-less egg the next day. But days where she eats nothing but pellets, I get an egg in her nest bucket.

The other chickens have reluctantly adjusted to her new jail privileges. Every night she gets on the roost with the others and then turns her back on them. She flies across the coop to the top of the cage. Then she turns to face them again, settles in, and smirks down on them.

She goes to sleep every night, relishing the envy of her peers and basking in the glow of stink eye.

Chicken Jail

One of my hens has started eating eggs. Wicked, wicked Vo!

But how to isolate one hen when there is only one nest box in use? Hmmmm, the other nest box is not in use....

Happily, the nest box was assembled with screws. I dismantled the unused upper nest box and extended the frame to support a 2x3 cage I had. This drew multiple feathery supervisors who made sure that everything was completed to their specifications.

I placed the cage in the support frame, added pine shavings, a nest box, food, and water.

So now I am ready for the big experiment. If Vo starts by laying shell-less eggs, but then starts laying hard eggs, then I will know that the pellet feed fixed her problem. If Vo continues to eat her eggs, I will know for sure it is her by the muck in her nest box.

After a little running around I got Vo into the coop, caught her, and placed her in the cage. Oh the chickeny consternation!

Egg Eating Inmate

She looked seriously perplexed. When I let the rest of the flock into the coop, they looked perplexed too, for about a minute. The only one to be really perturbed was Buffy, the alpha hen. She seemed angry that Vo was in a higher place than she was. If looks could kill....

Vo finished exploring her new digs and started munching on pellets. Buffy just kept giving me the stink eye.

Oh well, can't please everyone.


Update: I have started moving hens around based on whether they have laid their egg for the day. This way Vo gets out of jail and enjoys the relative freedom of the coop when the other two lay before her.

Update 2: Vo has taken on the mantle of Jailbird Chicken.