Suck It Pinterest...My Egg Storage is WAY Cuter Than All the Ideas on Pinterest

AND I made it for free.
The only "new" bits are the screws and they will get reused on the next project.  I had run out of decent used screws with normal head (too many hex heads, square heads, various sizes...couldn't keep up with bits).  So, I bought a cheapo box of philips head wood screws about 1 1/2 inches long.  Made the door with them.

I had been storing my eggs in an old egg carton or two.  Red rubber band on the one that is "ready to go" and a blue rubber band on the carton that is "building up".  It didn't work well because I don't have anywhere to set egg cartons.  So they were in a grocery basket hanging off my loft ladder.  But that basket ALSO had to hold groceries like fruit and veg, often heavy.  Annoying.  And the cartons wear out.

I saw one of these on a youtube and wanted to make it:



But, that was hard and I can't be bothered.  So, I thought about what I had on hand that I could use.

When I found a batch of eggs while doing another project with friends, I had an old mini muffin tin sitting around outside. It had been part of a bee feeder I'd cobbled up, and was then part of the apparatus keeping chickens out from under the shed.  I turned it up and put the eggs in it for temporary storage...it worked great and looked cute.

So, I took the muffin tin in (tested the eggs...all were plenty fresh enough to eat so I boiled them up and brought them to work for lunches that week) and sure enough, it fit pretty well between 2 studs in the shed (heh heh...studs).  I found an old plant stake, a 1x2, and cut it to length.  While doing all this, I found another mini muffin tin, same width.

In total I have 21 muffin-egg holder holes.  One tin is 9 muffins and one is 12.  They are old and I got them at thrift at least 4 years ago.  I usually won't spend over a dollar for a baking item so that is probably the original price to me.

The plant stake, I have no idea.  I got a big bundle years ago and use and reuse them until they get too weak to pound in the ground, then they are scrap lumber for propping things closed or propping up chicken wire fencing that is starting to bulge.  Maybe it cost a dollar originally.

Box of 250 screws was about 8$. I used 8.  You can do that math if you want.

The impact driver was free from Fred's stash of tools. 
The bits...I got a box of 10 for 12$ (nice magnetic ones) or so and have been using this one for about a month!  Must be better metal than the ones I used to buy because I'd strip those out quite a bit faster.

I guess it is a 3$ egg holder but I think we need to amortize that over the previous lives of the items involved and the future lives of some of them like the screws and the bit which will no doubt be reused.

It is pretty cute though.  Here's the big reveal.








































Sher said I should get out more...she is mean to me.

If You Build It, They Will Come

God I hate that movie!  

But, that crappy line is apparently true.

Coop 3.0 was barely settling in with the 3 red hens (ha!) when I got a call from the friend who gave me 2 of the red ones, Brittany and Suzanne (the chickens, not the friend, the friend is Cindy and human), had 11 hens given to her because the owner felt that the hens "bicker too much."...Uh...they are chickens.  Chickens are persnickety assholes.   Like most of the women in my family (sorry, but you know it's true).   Cindy has a full flock of heavy layers who don't eat much and these 11 weren't worth integrating to the big group, apparently.

Anyway, she called to see if I wanted more.  Given the size of Coop 3.0 and my unwillingness to build Coop 4.0 so soon, I said "no more than 3."
Cindy picked the 3 specialty breed hens and brought them over.

Here are the chickens. 

The reddish ones I've had for few weeks.  Others are new and very different.

Porky and Pearl

Porky is a Barred Rock (the black and white one).  She's big boned...actually, she's a fat ass.  Pearl is a Leghorn and quite shiny with an oddly large bosom just like Foghorn Leghorn in the cartoons.

Brittany and Suzanne with Porky and Pearl.

Brittany and Suzanne are "Novogen" breed.  A cross between Rhode Island reds and Leghorns.  They are super tame and lay HUGE brown eggs.  Porky, I think, also lays brown eggs.  Pearl is the only one laying white.  

Brittany is a scrawny red-neck runaway.  Suzanne is a follower who wants you to think she's tough, but she's not.

T-Bone giving the camera the stank eye, and Prudence looking put out behind her.

T-Bone came from the community garden in Worley.  All the rest are from my friend Cindy who is the bomb.  T-Bone was a runner who spent her days escaping the chicken run and digging up the garden.  I don't have a chicken run so she saves that escape time and spends it in the garden...digging shit up.  T-Bone is tough.  10 minutes after I let her out of the transport cage on my property, she had a mouthful of Brittany's feathers.   10 minutes after the 3 new chickens (Porky, Pearl and Prudence) arrived, she had a mouthful of Pru's feathers.  Suzanne just follows T-Bone around all day and gets panicky if she loses sight of T-Bone...basically Suzanne is T-Bone's bitch.

Prudence (Pru) is an Ameraucana big, and prissy (hence "Prudence").  

Pru lays BIG pale blue eggs that are a bit on the green side.

They were laying in the laying boxes, but today, no one could be bothered, apparently.  So I got one egg from the floor and covered in poo!  Jerks.  Tomorrow they will have to stay in the coop until there are eggs...at least 5 (they don't all lay every day...I think 5 eggs per week per bird is pretty good).  They will have plenty of food and water.  And it's a big coop and there is a giant storm tomorrow so I'm sure they will all be in there most of the day anyway.  When it rains they either sit under a table I have outside or go back in the coop.

UPDATE:  I actually wrote this last week.  The hens lay more in the coop now, but not entirely.  We may need more prison days (not full days...) to encourage them to lay in the coop.  Today (for real today) Pru spent HOURS just sitting in a nesting box not laying an egg.  What the hell?  The original 3 were busy sitting under the table I got out of a dumpster a few years ago:

Coop 3.0: Another Adventure in Crapentry

So, I've got those new hens...Brittany, Suzanne and T-Bone.
They are hilarious and do weird sh*t all day when I'm home...and probably when I'm not home.

They had been in a really crap coop that forced them to sit in...well, crap.
SO, I decided to remodel and upgrade and reuse bits of the old one, some really excellent pallets I'd found, and some bits-n-bobs from elsewhere.

Design upgrades:
1) Bigger. It needed to be bigger.  The old one, coop 2.0, had room for 3 hens, but NOT for me to access it easily for clean out.  And 1 more hen or a rooster would put it over capacity.

2)  Easier access.  The old one I had to crawl around and reach in through the door for the chickens.  Awkward and meant chicken sh*t on the knees of my work pants.   Not all that much fun.  Really hard to rake the poo out or get the eggs.  But, it had been empty since Eula Goodnight finally croaked...the last hen from last year's misfit chicken ranch.With the new more active chickens, it wasn't great.


SO...I mentally designed and redesigned for about a month.
Then, I grabbed the bull by the pallets, and gave it a shot.

I had a 6 foot long, nearly 4 wide pallet with almost solid decking!  One missing board.
This ended up being the north wall.  I moved the decking boards around to make the one missing board area at the right height for the laying boxes.  Managed to carefully pry a board off, move it down a bit, and screw it back on.  Worked great.

I pounded a couple of t-posts in the ground and put that nice pallet up on them.
Then I added the east and west walls...regular size pallets I had around the property.  Each is anchored on a t-post, and screwed into the north wall.

For nest boxes, I took some 3 gallon plastic buckets, 2 actually, and screwed them, bottom to the north, open end to the south, onto the north wall pallet.  With my reciprocating saw I cut out most of the back side of the buckets.  These are lined up with the gap in the north wall pallet.

I used an old 2x2 to run horizontally across the bottom of the south, open, end of the bucket next boxes so the straw I put in there, and any eggs the ladies leave me, won't roll out.  Cut to length with the trusty reciprocating saw and screwed it on (I like screws because you can take them out and redo things as you change your mind).  It goes fully east to west and the boxes only take up half the east-west distance in the coop so there is about 3' of it the hens can roost on.

A few serviceberry branches that had come off bushes in the winter were added at odd angles here and there inside for more roosting.

I used my reciprocating saw to cut the north end of the east/west walls down to the level of the north wall, leaving the south sides a few inches taller. 
Onto this I hoisted (at great risk to my back...) an 8 foot long pallet I found behind bicycle shop about a year ago. It slopes down toward the north wall and was a bit "short" north to south, but that sorted itself out with the roofing...more anon.

The south wall was just open at this point.  I wanted to be able to access the entire inside through that wall if need be, AND I wanted the floor to be the bottom part of a car-top carrier that I found at the recycling center a year ago (it had been the roof of Coop 2.0)  The 6 foot long pallet, minus the widths of the east/west pallet walls was just about 8" longer than the car-top carrier, and the width was close enough to the width of the east/west wall pallets.  I made sure the east wall of the coop was moved in to match that which gives the hens a small sheltered area just outside their door, which is cut into the east pallet-wall (with the reciprocating saw...of course).

SO...I took a board off my wonky wood rack for the pick up (needed upgrading badly anyway) and screwed it along the top part of the east west wall pallets.  Another board from the wonky wood rack was screwed on at a level that would allow the car-top carrier to be a removable floor and slide out, poo and straw and all, under the main wall.  Like a trundle bed of chicken poo!  I put  few mini pallets (from my sawdust logs I buy for the wood stove) under the car-top carrier for better slidage.  Triple checked the height of the lower south wall horizontal board and added more screws and a few support boards.

I had made some crap panels of cedar boards salvaged off a discarded fence gate I found in an alley last year down in Moscow.  They were about the right height to make a passable south wall for the coop!  I trimmed the 3 panels down to the right height...actually, they are about 1/4" too tall but I will sort that out one of these days.

To make the south wall an access for getting into the coop for cleaning, I used cedar fence slats I got free off of craigslist to make the horizontal south wall boards into little slots for the panels to slide in.  Once I get the panels trimmed up, I will be able to slide them out the east and west ends and rake out any nonsense the hens put in there.

Finally, I used a few of the cedar fence slats to make runners for some scrap boards behind the nest boxes in that missing-board area of the north wall pallet!  I just slide the board to the west and grab the eggs without having to get in the coop.

Then it was on to the roof.  My builders for my future imaginary house let me have 3 pieces of salvaged metal roofing.  They just fit the roof.  One is a bit long and makes an overhang on the south side which will eventually use to accidentally poke my own eye out.

Finally finally I used the rest of the cedar fence slats to side between the slats of the pallet on the west wall and east wall, and to make a chicken ladder for the door (which the hens didn't care about)  The ladder gets picked up at night and jammed into the pallet gap to close the hens inside.

I contacted the cedar slat guy and he had some more.  I got those a few days later and they are laying in the hen-yard waiting to finish up covering some gaps in the siding if I get to it.

Over all, I really like how the coop works.
The slider thingy for egg access gets a bit snug when it rains, but it was free and easier to deal with than lining up hinges.
Sliding the poo-tray out works well.

I had to trap the hens in the coop with food and water for a couple of days until they laid their eggs in there (once the eggs appeared they were cut loose) just to get them in the habit. 
There are 4 eggs in this picture because I'm leaving 1 egg in the laying box as bait...it's marked so I don't eat it.  It's getting OLD...

They had been just pooping eggs out whereever they happened to be and they roam over about 15 acres.  Now 2 of them (T-Bone and I think Suzanne) consistently lay in one of the buckets.



The hens didn't care for the ladder and tore the little steps off it so now it's just the door.
And, the south wall panels need trimming so they slide better.  The hens seem happy enough in it.  It's somewhere they can relax and take a break when they are sick of digging up my gardens.

Will It Wipe? Testing Coffee Filters

REMEMBER: DO NOT FLUSH COFFEE FILTERS.  Also, don't drink bleach.

WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS with soap and water for 20 seconds.  The suds strip the virus of its greasy outer layer and kill it.

And now for our 7th Contestant!

Coffee Filters left over from an old coffee pot at work that no one uses because there is a 1-cup type maker now which is producing enough plastic waste to bury that layer of disposable diapers in the landfill...but I digress.

Coffee Filters...I'm using this style for a 20 cup basket:



PREP:
Bit slick, and yet, not smooth.   I find 3 or 4 are a good number and crunch them up a bit.

SCRATCH FACTOR:  3.5/5
Surprisingly NOT scratchy!  I thought they would be because the paper is stiff-ish.  But not bad at all.  Good scrubbing power without scratching.

EASE OF USE:  3.5/5
Don't need any rubbing between hands to soften up, just scrunching and separating into individual filters for more fluffiness.

PAPER-CUT SAFETY:  4.5/5
I can't picture how someone might cut themselves on these, but I also couldn't imagine anyone thinking you could drink bleach to cure a virus...so, assuming SOMEONE could figure out a way to do it, I cut a half point here.

ABSORBENCY:  4.5/5
REALLY good!  Surprisingly good.

CLEANSING POWER:  5/5
You will be clean.

AVAILABILITY:  4/5
Since lots of offices have switched to the single cup brewers with the stupid plastic cup thingies that you have to throw out ...don't tell me they make refillable ones, no one actually uses those in a group office setting because Steve leaves it in there until it's moldy...most offices have a bunch of these stuck in back corners of supply closets and kitchenettes.  Just look around!  If you don't work at an office, I suppose you could buy them but I have no idea how the price compares to TP or other options, but last time I was at the store, there was no limit on the number of coffee filter packages you could buy.  TP, paper towels and napkins were limited to one package per customer.

Coffee Filters COMPOSITE SCORE: 25/30

So, more suggestions please.
Or perhaps someone disagrees with my assessment?

New Bees for 2020

I have 1 hive of bees that did well over winter and are still surviving.  They were "saskatraz" breed, supposedly...bees are notoriously and necessarily promiscuous. 

I tried to order caucasian breed bees, but that got nixed even before the quarantine and travel discouragement, so I went for a local bee source.

Waller Apiary out  of Clarkston, Washington.

The order process SEEMED fine but I did have to follow up on my own initiative to find out when and where I could pick up the bees. 

Today was the day and Clarkston, Washington, was the location.  I combined the trip with a social distance visit to friends in Lewiston (adjacent to Clarkston), a pick up of an order at the hardware store in Moscow, Idaho (and grabbed 2 bags of cheap hinges and one of cotter pins...both things on my list), a bit of gas for the subaru and a pre-planned treat of iced cold brew coffee.

Now to the bee report.
The bees were advertised as 5 frames, a "nuc" in the bee biz lingo which seems to be short for 'nucleus hive', full of honey and brood from a fresh 2020 queen who has been through 1 full brood cycle.

Uh..."full" would not be my term. 
There is precious little honey.  Maybe 1/2 frame total if I put it all together, more likely 1/4 frame but I want to estimate generously. 

ZERO capped worker brood, about 2 dozen capped drone cells (drones are the dudes and only there to mate with some other hive's new queen, they are not what you want to see),  NO eggs, no larvae.

I could not spot a queen and she should have had a big blue dot on her back and been double the size of the other bees.  Hmmm...

There ARE plenty of bees in there so that's good.

Being me, and being old, I sent these pictures and the above info about the lack of eggs, brood and honey to the seller   Beekeeping is a crap shoot, but taking 150$ for something that might croak in a month is not cool. 
I'll give it a week.  I  fed them heavily and will keep up with sugar syrup.  There is plenty of pollen around for their protein source.  If there are no eggs by next Saturday, it will mean the hive is queenless.

There ARE signs that they have a queen.  Those are:
1) they are calm
2) they are organized not randomly running around or flying willy nilly while the frames were moved from the "nuc" box to the real hive box in my beeyard


Only time will tell.

ANOTHER Chicken

Apparently there are lots of a--hole chickens in the world.
I helped at the community garden on Saturday, installing bees there.  Love the bees!

A chicken, they have like 100 chickens and give the eggs to those accessing the local food distribution systems like Second Harvest and sell them at 3$ a dozen to the rest of us.

ANYWAY, so the garden boss and I are installing bees and one chicken keeps getting out of the chicken run and into the garden.   The garden boss is threatening to kill it so I say "If she lays, I'll take her"...I had brought my chicken carrier made from an old bee box.   She offered a rooster too but I didn't want to stuff them both in the box.  The rooster is HUGE.

Within minutes of putting her in the run with Brittany and Suzanne, this new hen has a mouth full of feathers and is randomly beating the other two up.  Then she's out and running onto my porch and messing around in the garden.

She's tough and mean so I named her "T-Bone".  She's the head prisoner in the chicken run.  Suzanne continues to be mellow and so far today hasn't bothered to get out.   Brittany is constantly out, but easy to catch.  T-Bone is also easy to catch, but more likely to hide and spending too much time on the porch.  I will warn her that one chicken turd on the porch and I'll be having soup, same day.

The garden boss sent me home with veg that was past human consumption ...except for 2 romaine lettuce heads that were find for human consumption, so I ate those.   Greens, pears, a couple of sweet peppers.  All with lots of mold.  They were from the Second Harvest delivery.  Some were past it on arrival and some just didn't make it to the next distribution date.  The distribution center is on the same lot as the garden and they share staff/storage.   To maintain social distance fewer people can come for food at once and they can no longer tour the building picking what they want.  So, some of the fresh isn't making it.  I think the staff will find ways to sort this out.   When stuff arrives rotten, there isn't hope, and with fewer staff on hand at once (to maintain distance), it's hard to get it boxed up ahead of people coming.  The usual system is people come in and pick what they want, but now it's all car delivery.  Most other food distributions have gone to pre-boxed stuff and if people get say lettuce and hate lettuce, well, throw it out or compost it or give it away.  It might not all get eaten but it will have more of a shot!

I fed the slightly moldy veg to the hens.  They have some wheat berries, are eating worms and things.  I threw in a dead mouse I'd trapped in the garden.  And I have some cheapo bulk oatmeal to get through until I see if they are going to need real feed. 

I got 2 eggs yesterday!  Had them for breakfast today.  Nice!  If the shells get weak I'll go for some pre-fab feed, but they are free ranging so should get plenty of whatever they need.   Lord knows if they eat gophers or mice they will end up fat!

So, off to start on the upgraded coop and to fence off the raised beds that already have stuff planted in them.  And figure out something to keep the hens out of the enclosed porch bit.  I am not capable of making a screen door....but I'm going to try!

CHICKENS!!!! 2020 Edition

So, I got chickens.  These are the ones my friend (HI Cindy) tagged as the chronic runaways so not worthy of her egg business (which is going NUTS during the quarantine...YAY local food!!! )

I have had them LESS than 24 hours.  About 20 hours actually since we put them in my cool chicken carrier in the back of the pick up.  About 18 hours since they went in my crappy coop.

Well, the main runner was already OUT of the chicken run.  She wasn't in the garden yet, but you know, matter of time.   These two are SUPER tame so easy to catch.  Perhaps my new exercise regime is chick'n chas'n. 

Still, really glad to have them.  I need to get some real feed because I actually would like eggs this time.  I may have to make more of a "fort knox" type chicken run.

I think it is the red-necked one in the picture, the one without her butt toward the camera.  So, what would you name a red-neck runaway teenager?  .....  Brittany!   The other one is more mellow so I'm thinking Suzanne.    Welcome to Brittany and Suzanne.  They are enjoying wheat berries, a banana peel and some clementine peels for breakfast. 

Later, they get a mouse I trapped in the upper raised bed.  I had to use some of my pandemic peanut butter ...GOOD organic all natural stuff... to bait the trap.  Must remember to get crappy cheap peanut butter for mouse bait.