It’s not so much that Steve wanted to eat them as much as he wanted to get them out of the house. So we hooked up a light and put them in the coop yesterday. And that means it’s official: We are now empty nesters
Here they are, all snug last night.
Here’s the coop, which I painted today.
And here they are, cavorting around the lower section of the coop. These are some HAPPY little chickies.
Or, why I am becoming a crazy chicken lady.
Blue chicken genetics is fascinating. You may remember that I purchased four blue birchen marans chicks a few weeks ago, and also got four free crosses. Blue birchen marans are pretty rare, and it’s hard finding good pictures of them online. Just to describe what they are, here’s a quick rundown.
Marans (always with the “s,” even if there’s only one of them) is the breed of chicken. It’s a French breed that lays chocolate brown eggs. (This is fascinating in and of itself because the brown color isn’t in the shell as with most eggs; instead, it’s a pigment that the chicken overlays on the egg in the oviduct. Basically, it’s spray painted on. I have absolutely no idea what the genetic, survival of the fittest purpose of this extra step is.)
Birchen is a pattern of either gold or silver on the head that shows up as this kind of netted effect from the crown through the neck on the hens. Google birchen hens to see what it looks like.
And then there’s the blue. Blue in chickens is more of a gray with a blue tinge. It’s a lovely color. The blue gene is a recessive dominant, which basically means this: If a chicken has one blue gene, any black coloring is lightened to this blue color. If a chicken has two blue genes, any black coloring is lightened to white. Two-gened chickens are referred to as splash because they are predominantly white with some blue splashes.
Okay, this is where I get really obsessive. I have found a chicken calculator online.
Yes. A chicken calculator. You plug in the phenotype (or actual genes if you know them) of the parents, and get a punnet square of the resultant offspring. Then you can continue with the line.
I was really curious about the crosses I got, and what they would look like.
This is their father, a splash marans (well, a picture of what the father looks like–not the actual father:
And this is what their mother looks like, a silver laced wyandotte bantam:
According to the chicken calculator, all the offspring should be unicolor. Which bummed me out because I was hoping for some lacing, which I think is beautiful. But, keep in mind that there are lots of genes that can achieve the same effect–and these genes don’t necessarily all show up in the phenotypes you’re describing.
And lookee here. This little percher appears to have blue lacing.
So it’s been about a year since I started bellydancing classes, and I’m more in love with it than ever. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been bad about getting to class, but good about practicing–and as part of that, I dug up the DVDs I bought last summer. And the whole purpose of this post is to tell you that if you’re in the market for bellydance DVDs, stay away from Veena and Neena.
You may have heard about these people. Dubbed the “belly twins,” they are undeniably thin and gorgeous. But I think they’re automatons; they have no soul; they’re like little bellydancing robots. Actually, I remember doing this a couple of times last summer and being bored out of my skull. Like they’ll do snake arms on one side for 30 full seconds. Then the other. Then both. Yawn.
But when I dug it out again and did it, I realized something. I’ve had this rotary cuff thing going on for a few months, and blamed it on my obsessive two miles a day in the pool habit of my twenties. NOW I realize that it has nothing to do with a repetitive crawl, and more to do with the fact that I’d been doing the shoulder shimmies and snake arms they way they did. Which they do with a snapping movement that’s almost violent. (I finally broke free of this habit not so long ago–basically letting the shoulder blade do the pulling rather than the shoulder itself–and lo and behold, no more pain.)
In other words, they have no soul AND they’ll damage your body. So what’s left? Not much. I would give this DVD away, but you know, I really think they’re a hazard.
I believe the rest of the song goes, “Right back where we started from.” And really, that’s quite appropriate because way back when we first started talking countertops lo these many years ago, I was really pushing concrete. I like it. I don’t like granite. Most of it is way too shiny and busy, and my own theory is that in about five years people will scoff, “Oh that’s SO oughties.” (Or rather it would if that tripped off the tongue the way 70s or 80s does.)
Speaking of scoffing, that’s EXACTLY what Steve did. To be fair, it wasn’t so much about the material as much as it was about the sheer cost. The material itself is cheap, but it’s incredibly labor-intensive. So we told ourselves it would be slate. ‘Cause really, slate looks kinda like concrete. And after two years or so of discussion, we still have the plywood substrate as our surface. Lovely, really.
Anyway, now that Steve is out of work, he has time. Two weeks ago, he looked at me with that maniacal gleam I know so well–the one that presages a new obsession. “You know what?” he said “I think we’re going to do concrete countertops.”
Like this was an original idea.
So we got books from the library, and now he’s practicing.
He doesn’t want to start with the countertops, so he’s building a side table for the Kamado:
Here’s a cardboard cutout of the shape, complete with holes for grilling implements (and yes, the base is the stump):
And here’s the mold:
Let the adventures in concrete begin …
Still a couple of tweaks needed here and there (mainly the chicken door to the outside area that will have electric netting) and I have yet to give the place a good coat of paint. But for the most part, the Home for Wayward Hens is done and ready for occupancy.
Of course, I strongly suspect I have something like seven roosters. But anyway.
I know some might scoff at this chicken coop, given the gorgeous plans that abound online. So I feel compelled to add that this coop–not including our labor obviously–cost a total of $47 to build: $32 for the chicken wire and and additional $15 for a piece of board that Steve needed for right below the roof. The rest of the material was scrap. I believe the hip word is “reclaimed.” The frame is all from the old decking Steve replaced a couple years ago. The roof is made from metal panels he got free from a job. And the, what do you call them, little piling things at the base? Those we scavenged from the alley.
So here we go. Remember how Steve (who you note has lost his customary title of Mr. Demo) replaced all the doors and trim in the house? This is the old door from the kitchen along with its trim. That’s where the wainscot came from too.
The “egg door” here is from the old and decrepit built in from the kitchen that we replaced a month or two ago. Again, the trim is from inside the house, while the boards are sections of old fencing.
More fencing.
You know how you pass a construction site and there are all these huge panels blocking off access to the site and advertising the building it is about to become? That’s what the doors to the actual hen house are made of–Avenue One at First and Clay, which is the first job he worked on when we moved to Seattle. 
And here’s inside the hen house. Six nesting boxes, made of the shelving from that cabinet at the end of the kitchen we ripped out. The actual roost is a little high, but that’s easily fixed.
And of course, the chickens need a way to get up into the house:
So there we have it.
Now, the only question is what color to paint it. I know I should continue with the whole reclaimed thing and just use the putty colored exterior paint we have in the garage. But it’s so boring …..
Steve and I went to Del’s on Friday afternoon to get chicken wire. There were tubs and tubs of chicks–chicken, ducks, and turkey. I clutched at Steve’s arm, cooing, “Remember when ours were that cute?”
Because the fact is that baby chicks are cute for about three minutes. Then they become gawky pre-teen pooping machines. They eat, they drink, they poop. They eat their poop. They poop in their water. They drink their poopy water. Poop monsters, pure and simple.
I can’t wait to get them into the coop–which is actually not that far from being done. I know I keep promising, but pix coming soon …
Oh yes, and Anita, I never responded to your comment–Harry pretty much ignores them because he can’t see them now that I’ve put them in a super large carboard box. When I change the bedding, he sees them and barks his silly little head off.
