Complete Failure-Coop Update September 18, 2008

Warning-This is a little gruesome.

I was walking home today from my bus stop thinking to myself that finally my day had gone how I wanted it to go. After seven straight bad ones this good one was much appreciated and desperately needed. I entered the front gate and found it strange that the dogs didn’t greet me as they normally do. That is until I remembered that Andres had mentioned in an email that four hens had been dropped off at our house this morning. I had been surprised when I heard this as I didn’t feel like the coop was completed, but didn’t give it much thought. That is until I got inside the gate and no dogs appeared.

I didn’t want to, but I felt like I had to go and see. I walked toward the coop and sure enough, there were all three dogs, on the wrong side of the fence, finishing there feast. Out of the four hens that were living this morning one was completely gone, I mean not even a foot or feather left. The second one was dead and half devoured. The third one was having his still beating heart licked by the boxer and the fourth one hovered in the corner, with a hole in his side. 

I don’t do well with gore and I don’t do well with dogs who are so badly trained. I went bizerk. The dogs wouldn’t get out of the coop and I started to beat them with a stick (ok, not really beat them, but pretty close). It took me a good 10 minutes to get them out. I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack in that time. I’m sure the whole neighborhood could hear me screaming. As I screamed, cried and tried not to look at the chicken whose entire insides were sitting on top of his still alive body, I wanted more than anything else to completely disappear. I wanted to never have come to this place and I wanted to never have thought about building a chicken coop.

What failures we are. We started the dumb project over one month ago and all we’ve accomplished is to have caused extreme distress to four poor hens. 

I could have given you a lot worse pictures, but I couldn’t bring myself to take them. Andres took a picture of them this morning when they were beautiful, alive and still had years of egg laying in front of them. I will post one soon. 

Bad week for me…..worse for the once beautiful hens. 

Moral of the story: buy your eggs at the supermarket, or learn how to train your dogs, or finish what you start before launching it. 

Doubt I will have much more to write about the coop. Too bad it has to sit there and remind me of today.

Coop Update August 19, 2008

Progress has been made on the coop. It’s not quite done and we are a couple weeks behind, but soon, I think… hopefully.  Andres is going back to the United States for some business and I am not sure if it will be done by then, but soon. 

It is still missing the wire around it, a solid ramp, the inside bedding and food/water dispenser but what is there is solid. It has 2 good sized beds inside and a good sign warning the chickens’ predator:

Coop Cont. August 1, 2008

We are making progress on the coop. Slower than we had hoped, but I can see it getting closer to being a coop. I am finally getting around to posting what we want it to look like. 

Andres created this mock using a program called Sketchup. We have cut the walls and posts and are assembling the sides. I still don’t completely get how the floor will work, but Andres seems to have this figured out. We got the wood yesterday from a small store in Tumbaco, not far from where we are living. Sr. Don Nacho helped us keep our plans for this gallinero moving along. Thanks Don!

 

To Protect a Chicken July 25, 2008

I was working on the design of our coop. I wasn’t sure how rat-proof I needed to make it. The Pacheco family has had chickens in the past, but never with a coop like we are building. It was a bit more casual 12 years ago and they didn’t have problems with predators for some reason. But now I think we might have a problem. I have been thinking about how to make sure it’s safe the last couple of days as I cleaned out the area for the yard. This morning I got up and my concerns about predators was confirmed with this: 

Really nice rats. They eat a portion of the best fruit we have in the yard and then poop on it, as to make sure it’s clear they really don’t care. I’ll take it as a good reminder to make the coop really rat proof. Or maybe I’ll try to figure out how to deal with the rat problem. We also have another kind of predator. I am researching how to train dogs not to eat chickens. Let’s hope I can figure it out. 

 

The pictures below show the area I have cleaned out for the coop and yard.  The raised area is going to be the yard for the chickens and their house will go in the corner. The posts sitting there are not the posts that we are going to use. We are confirming the design by Monday and hoping to finish it quickly. 

 

Below is a close up of the yard where the chickens will hang out.

We obviously have a long way to go.