November 2008 - Posts

• Chook Pen Design - Chicken Coop/Hutch - Chook House - Casa de Pollo - Call it what you will!

  Actually some people call it the chicken palace - I call it IKEA because it can be flat-packed  I haven't been blogging for a while and now you know why! I have been spending every spare minute creating a chook pen so we can get a cycle of life going on our little 1/3 acre block. We wanted to get chooks for the multitude of benefits they provide. Create potent nitrogen fertiliser that can be added to your compost bin to help make great compost Provide protein in the form of eggs that are great for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike Provide some entertainment and enjoyment for the kids (and adults) But before you can get chooks, you need to make sure they have somewhere suitable to live. My priorities were: A chicken pen that can be fully enclosed at night to keep the chooks safe from birds of prey, foxes and snakes An easy access point for collecting eggs and cleaning out the coop A coop that is off the ground to enable the chickens to come down and scratch the earth before being let out. A design that can be totally pulled apart so it can be moved into place. I did a bit of research on the net of course and came up with this design for a chook house. I have made a few things before - mainly furniture - although I have no formal training or real world experience - so this is certainly in the realm of backyard chippies! THE BUILD The frame is made of hardwood. Although not cca treated (Copper-Chromium-Arsenate) as that can be fatal to chooks. I decided to make a slanted front to make the door stay open when it is swung out. The first steps were to make the framing and put in some bracing. This is made of 50mm x 25mm hardwood.   I then layed out each piece of frame on the ground and overlayed and cut out what is supposed to be aviary wire (12.4mm square I think), but works brilliantly as a more rigid and neater version of chicken wire. I hammered it onto the inside of the frame using galvanised u-nails (lot of em!) I screwed and glued the frame to its bracing using batten screws (hex head - silver in the image above) and liquid nails. I didn't however connect the four walls together as I wanted to be able to take the chook pen apart to move it whenever I wanted including the first installation. I then used pine prefab boards that locked together for the walls of the coop. I measured then up and screwed them into place from the side. Do this before hammering on the wire to the side sections so you can get leverage to use a drill. Here you can also see the roof framing. I was going to make an A-Frame roof but the wife made a suggestion to keep it simple and this was the excellent result. Perfect for a couple of sheet of corrogated iron. My workshop - well actually it is our car port and I need to back the cars out to to any work! Oh for a nice big workshop shed... Here you can see the door open. It sits on two hinges. There is a latch that automatically locks when you shut it. Although the chickens keep scratching rocks and dirt into the framing and they get trapped when you try to shut the door sometimes meaning you have to flick them out. There is a centre section of the coop in here where the coop floor and front wall drop out when you take off the four sides. You can see wheels on there if I every want to tilt it and move it like a chicken tractor once it is in place. I built a ladder for the chooks to get in and out of the coop and down to dirt floor. They actually enjoy using it I am happy to tell. Here I am testing how it clips onto the chicken coop. OK - now you are going to see how it comes apart and goes together. This was done at night as we picked up the chooks on the way to a birthday party and didn't get home till late (yes the chooks went into a friend's coop while the party was on). This is a side wall. You can see that the wood was been stained and sealed to make it look much better and make it weatherproof. I actually used a product called weatherproof and it is working well despite massive downpours. Here are the other sections. You can see the front wall and floor of the coop in the centre. They are the only parts that are connected. They will lift up and slot into place when the side are bolted together using removable furniture screws shown above.   Here is the roof - ready to put on - it is by far the heaviest part. 2 sheets of corrogated iron make up most of the weight along with a large piece of hardwood timber used for the front (because I ran out of the prefab pine) THE RESULT Here it is complete in a test build before we moved it to the garden. Side walls are on and centre part and roof are both held in with two furniture screws. Here you can see the rear of the chicken pen. I provides easy access to get to the coop to collect eggs, poo for your compost and to add clean bedding for the chooks. You can see that I mounted the pen on some ag-drain rocks of around 1cm diameter. This provides drainage and keeps the wood off the soil. I later added some more larger rocks on the inside of the pen to stop the chooks undermining these foundations. You can also see the guttering system I made out of pvc pipe - which drains down into a hanging water container with overflow. When it rains the chooks get fresh water and the excess drains away over some rocks. Make sure that you put some sort of netting over the top gutter inlet to stop material clogging it and mice getting in. When you open this door you will find... Eggs of course - a couple of them at that. I have since added a perch for the chooks too and I think one likes to sleep on the perch and one on the nesting box. Even though the perch is made for two. I hope you liked the tour. Sorry but I don't have plans as such as I kind of made it up as I went along. Feel free to make something similar if you feel like giving a chook a home. A charity collector that came to my home when I was making it actually asked if I could make him one. WIth the amount of time it took me - every weekend for a couple of months.. somehow I think this will be a one off for me... The basic size is 1400mm square with the coop being 700mm deep x 1400mm wide and the height of the coop 700mm- about 900mm due to the sloping roof. Cost of materials I think is around $350 (Australian dollars). ~ 35metres of 25mmx50mm hardwood - $2.20/metre = $77 ~25metres of pine prefab board - ~$3/metre = $75 ~50 batten screws 50mm+ long - = ~ $35 2 sheets of 1800mm x 900mm corrogated iron roofing @ ~$32/each = $64 ~12.4mm aviary wire - 1400 high - ~6-7 metres @ $7 per metre = ~$50 Assorted screws (furniture, roofing, timber etc.) & pvc piping, flexihose for guttering = $50 = $351   If your used pine in place of hardwood it would be cheaper but wouldn't last as long. Below you can see how the chook pen is now. They have a run of about 6 metres x 1.5 metres to scratch in and I built another gate mounted on star pickets that self-closes. The chook house is in the distance. Leave your comments - I would be interested to hear from you and what you use as a chook house. Posted Nov 14 2008, 08:30 PM by Ian with 21 comment(s) Filed under: Chooks, Chickens, Pen, construct, build, Chicken Coop

• Organic Gardening - Improving Soil Fertility with Beneficial Bacteria and Fungi

  Just a short note to start - here is a cool frog who peeked his head into what I was doing in the garden. He's hanging off the branch of a tree fern. Looks like a baby tree frog. Frogs are a good sign that something is right in your garden. They are amongst the most sensitive creatures to non-organic substances - herbicides and pesticides.   I decided to try a BFA certified (Biological Farmers of Australia) product this week that apparently promotes nitrogen fixation, increased phosphorous availability and helps to create humus soil in your garden. It is a product that contains bacteria and fungi that are beneficial to your garden. Believe it or not, but 90% of soil is bacteria and fungus. It is a little like your gut. There are good and bad bacteria there too. More of the good stuff keep the bad stuff at bay. By brewing a couple of teaspoons of this product in a compost brewer, it creates billions of these good bacteria and fungi that can then be poured on your garden or fruit/nut trees to give them a helping hand. Being a totally organic product, it is in fact killed by herbicides and pesticides. I have made compost teas in the past in which I have brewed compost for a couple of days to good effect. This product uses a similar process and I had all the gear so I thought I would try it out. Here is what I used for this brew. A simple plastic bin, an aquarium aerator with flexible air stone tubing, an aquarium heater, some rock minerals containing essential minerals, a seaweed solution - always great for the vegie patch, some of the product - Nutri-Life 4/20 from Nutri-Tech, and some molasses. Ok here we go... Make a loop out of the air tubing. This is an alternative to an air 'stone' and is flexible tubing with tiny holes - perfect for a job like this. I have a two outlet aerator here that pushes out twice as much air. Coil the tubing inside the base of the container so that it will create bubbles all the way round. Insert the aquarium heater. Fill up with water and set the aerator and heater running. I set the heater at about 25 degree celcius. It can be set higher or lower depending upon whether you are looking for a brew with more bacteria or more fungus. Add a couple of tablespoons of rock minerals. Add some seaweed solution diluted to what is states on your package. Some are pre-diluted and some are concentrate so look carefully. Then add the molasses. This is the food for the bacteria and fungus. They basically use that and the oxygen to reproduce. I added about a cup full here (250ml). That seemed to be enough although truthfully I was just guessing. The packaging for the Nutri-Life 4-20 stated that I should use their branded specific food but it is not organic certified, so I thought I would try using something that does a similar job and is organic. I put in a heaped teaspoon and a half. I have a 250ml pack which is apparently enough for a few hectares and my plot is a few metres! Here is the brew in action. Bingo! The packet said 1 day later, but I cooked it up for two because it wasn't frothing up much. It was actually frothing a lot more the night before but I wasn't about to spread it on the garden in the dark! The water had a lot of white particles floating in it - a good sign that the brew had allowed the bacteria and fungus to reproduce. The lower I got into the barrel the more particles there were. I mixed the brew at a ratio of about 1/4 brew to 3/4 water and watered it onto the garden and fruit trees. I will post the results and any improvement in soil quality or plant health that I observe. The soil here is quite clay and it is slowly improving as I add compost/manures/lime etc. Remember - when performing all tasks with bacteria and fungi - wear a mask because they love to reproduce in warm, dark areas - just like your lungs! Posted Nov 12 2008, 12:20 PM by Ian with 3 comment(s) Filed under: organic gardening, bacteria, soil, fungi