Off Topic – McDonalds Big Macs & Fries….1/2 price?

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Okay, this is way off topic – Well, they do sell chicken! LOL!

Have any of you ever used or heard of Big Mac DealGroup-On’s? You most likely have. For those that haven’t it’s basically a really great offer (or maybe not so great depending on your personal tastes) that comes in your email. You set up your preferences for your area and you get offers for cool stuff at great prices. For example: I’ve gotten 2 movie tickets for $11.00, I’ve gotten oil changes for $10, I’ve gotten ebay $20 gift certificates for $10. I’ve gotten $20 Old Navy gift certificates for $10. I’ve gotten $40 restaurant gift certificates for $20. You get the idea. Almost every day I get some offer in my email, many days it’s nothing I’m interested in and I just hit delete. But other days it’s right up my alley and I buy it.

Well, some of you may have heard of another company that does pretty much the same type thing that’s called Living Social. Between the two, I get lots of great deals that I buy, for example the other day I bought a $20 Office Max gift certificate for $10 -

The reason I’m writing this today is because today’s offer from Living Social is absolutely the bomb (at least in my opinion) – It’s 5 vouchers for a Big Mac from McDonalds and 5 vouchers for a large Mcdonalds fries all for $13.00. That’s approximately half price. And it just so happens that Bic Mac’s are my favorite food at McDonalds. Lucky Me!

If you’d like to check it out for yourself you can use my link (To be totally honest here, if 3 people use my link I get my deal for free). Just click here to get in on this great savings. Or if you’d just like to find the deal and don’t want to help me out you can go to livingsocial.com and register and I’m sure you can look for today’s deal and find it.

Either way, I’m going to be eating some Bic Mac’s real soon! Hey, I work up an appetite creating posts for Plans for Hen House! Enjoy!

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My Chickens are Laying again!

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Well, I’m happy to say that my chickens appear to be laying pretty normally again. It seems that the light did the trick. Out of the four chickens we’re getting 3 eggs every day and 4 eggs pretty often. Can’t complain about that!

For those of you that have been having the same kind of problem I was it seems to me that adding the light to the coop made the difference but there was more to it than just putting the light in. I noticed that when I first added the light my timer wasn’t working and I was turning the light off and on manually. Well, you know how that goes, sometimes I wouldn’t remember to turn it on until around 7 pm and other times I would remember at 6 pm. One night I completely forgot to turn it off. After about 2 weeks of that I finally got another timer hooked up and I set it to come on at 5 pm and turn off at 11 pm. It seems that about a week of steady light at the same time each day (simulating actual daylight I assume) that the chickens went back to laying like they used to.

Now remember, I’m no scientist and I didn’t actually write anything down so I won’t swear that adding a light to your coop will help you or that putting it on a timer will be even better but I’m just explaining to you what I observed over the last few weeks and what seemed to help us get over it!

Chickens are Laying eggs again
by Jake Wasdin under CC BY  with wpseopix.com
Yea! Chickens are Laying Again!

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Some Progress but a Long way to Go!

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Chickens Still Not Laying Eggs!

Well, I installed the new light in the hen house and I bought a new timer for it and I’ve been running the light about 5 hours a night after the sun goes down. And honestly, I’m not sure if it has helped or not. I guess it has some, For quite a few weeks we didn’t get any eggs but now we’re getting at least one egg every day (with 4 hens) and most days we’re getting two eggs. That’s nowhere near as good as we were getting before but at least we’re getting some. I might kick the amount of time I’m running the light up and start running it around 7 hours and see what happens. If that doesn’t work I think I’ll see if I can find a stronger bulb to put in. I’m currently using a 60 watt bulb (it’s a fluorescent energy saver bulb) so maybe I’ll try going to a 100 watt bulb.

Meanwhile, the chickens seem to be very healthy and very content. When my little girls go out to see them they come running and practically jump into their arms. Just doesn’t seem like they are stressed or that anything is wrong. I hear them cackling during the day and I feel confident that they are preparing to lay but then they don’t. And I’m pretty certain that it’s the same two hens that are the ones that are laying.

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Update Your Plans for Hen House?

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I Updated My Plans For Hen House Building

Well, in light of the fact that we’ve gotten all of 3 eggs in the last 3 weeks I decided to make some changes to my plans for hen house construction! Again! Seems like I’m never going to be done with this thing! LOL

We (my wife and I) have been trying to figure out why our hens haven’t been laying and although I really have a hard time with this story I’m pretty much willing to try whatever to get them back to laying eggs regularly.

Added Electric and a Light to My Plans for Hen House

Every where we look (books, internet, friends) it seems as though the change in daylight hours might be the culprit. Yesterday I took a close look at my coop and decided it might be a combination of a few different things all at once that’s causing a major change in the amount of daylight they are getting. For one thing, when I built the hen house, I built it around a small tree, I did my best not to disturb the tree too much and it really looks nice. But it’s been a few months now and the tree has been sprouting a lot of branches and leaves and when I look closely I realize that the coop is getting a lot more shade now than it used to be. So I trimmed it up a bit while I was out there. In addition, I decided to bite the bullet and add a light.

So now I’ve added the following items to my plans for hen house: 35 feet of Romex (2 wire plus ground wire all sheathed together), an electrical box (to mount the electrical outlet on), an electrical outlet (just used el cheapo basic bulb outlet), and a super efficient fluorescent light bulb (I used one of those corkscrew looking bulbs, it’s rated at 60 watts but only uses 13 watts of energy). Oh, and I almost forgot, I also used a cheap timer that I had purchased at Wal Mart for my pool pump.  Fortunately I had all of this stuff just laying around in my work shop. (yes, I’m a pack rat!) LOL   The wire was left over from the last time I added some lights in my back yard, I only needed about 35 feet or so but it was so much cheaper to buy in a 100 foot package that I went ahead and bought the extra. The fixture and box was actually mounted in my garage when I moved into my house but I added 8 foot fluorescent light fixtures not long after we moved in so we no longer used that old incandescent fixture. I disconnected it and relocated it to the coop. The timer was being used on my above ground pool but I started emptying it yesterday because it’s now too cold to swim. (Might as well quit paying for the chlorine and the electric that I’ve been using to keep it from turning green).

A couple of hours later the work was done, I set the timer and wandered off to do other things. 6:00 p.m. came and went and the timer never turned the lights on. Dang! What next? I went checking and found a breaker off, I reset it and moved on. Got up this morning and looked out and the hen house was still lit up! Dang it, the timer should have turned the light off at 11:00 p.m.. I guess 2 years outside by the pool was too much for this cheap timer, I’ll have to get another. This time I’ll have to drop the money, I don’t have any more laying around! It’s the kind with the dial you spin and set to the right time, then plug your light or whatever into it and then plug the whole thing into the outlet. I think I only paid about $6 or $8 for it when it was new.

Plans for hen house completed?

Hopefully my plans for hen house building are at a stand still. I personally have had just about enough of it. I do like taking on projects like that but after a while I’m done with it and want to move on to something different. I don’t like to have to keep revisiting the same project. And I’ll tell you, the girls (my hens) were not impressed that the light was on all night either. When I went out to turn it off they were roaming around in there and maybe it was my imagination but they looked a bit disgusted! LOL

Well, hopefully the little buggers will start laying again. It’s funny, eggs weren’t really the main reason we got chickens but now that we’ve gotten used to having fresh eggs coming in every day it’s annoying to not be getting them. It kind of sucks to have to buy feed and then buy eggs too! I’ll keep you posted on whether this light fixes my problem or not! And hopefully this blog will help you to make sure your plans for hen house building are more complete than mine were when I started out.

 

 

 

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My Chickens Not Laying Eggs!

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Chickens Not Laying Eggs

Chickens not laying eggsWe went on a little mini vacation for about 4 days a few weeks ago and I asked one of my neighbors to check our coop and get the eggs. Naturally I told them they could keep whatever eggs they found. Seemed like a pretty decent deal for them and me and has the added plus of their small children really like doing it. We have 5 hens and normally we get 4 to 5 eggs a day and have been pretty much since they started laying. So imagine my surprise when we got back and the neighbor told me …. your chickens not laying!

Why Are My Chickens Not Laying Eggs?

Yep, it’s true, while we were gone they only laid 1 egg. And worse than that, they haven’t laid an egg for over two weeks now. Why are my chickens not laying eggs? I don’t have the foggiest! But it sure is a bummer! I’ve asked around to some friends that have had chickens and also to some friends who grew up raising chickens and I’ve also searched around on the internet. I’ve gotten several different answers and quite honestly I don’t think any of the answers are very good.

Chickens Not Laying
by Rachel Coleman Finch under CC BY-SA  with wpseopix.com
Chickens Not Laying!

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I’ve had folks tell me it’s because the days are getting shorter. Well, I hate to tell you this but another friend of mine that has chickens only lives about 4 miles from me and her days are pretty much the same length as mine and her chickens are still laying eggs. Another answer I’ve gotten is that they’re not getting enough light – Again, I’m not buying that, their coop windows are large and get plenty of light in. In addition, the coop door is always open to the run and the chickens are out a good portion of the day getting light. Other folks have said that my chickens not laying eggs because they’re stressed out – Ha! The little buggers have nothing to stress about, nice coop, nice run, plenty of food, ) good feed too, not just what they can scratch up),  plenty of fresh water, coop is cleaned often, they don’t have to get up and go to work, No rooster or dog chasing them! If only I had such a stress free life! LOL    And they get to laugh at me for buying feed and eggs! I told one of my neighbors that my chickens not laying eggs and he very matter of factly said “Time to cook them for dinner!” – I’m sure the Colonel would agree but unfortunately my six year old twins have pretty much made pets of these little hens and I don’t think that would go over too well! LOL

If you have any ideas why my chickens are on strike I sure would appreciate you dropping me a note and letting me know!

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Awesome Hen House Building Video!

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Here is a great video of a guy building a hen house from mostly wood that he found. Lots of work involved doing it this way but a great way to keep down the cost and also great for the environment when you consider how much wood he saved!

And to give credit where credit is due, I found this video on youtube, it’s called: “How to Build House for the Hens” (using mostly recycled materials) and it’s by djsandoors.

Oh, but just one thing, if any of you do decide to make your own coop be sure to use a guard on your table saw. This guy didn’t! – I actually know people who cut themselves pretty badly by not using a guard! Enjoy the video, it’s too cool!

 

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I’d Buy Plans For Hen House Construction Next Time!

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Professionally Drawn Plans for Hen House Building

A friend of mine and I were talking about some of the things we would do differently if we were to build another hen house. (He built a chicken coop about two weeks before me) One of the things that I said I would do differently would be to purchase professionally drawn plans for hen house construction next time. I think it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Even though I’m pretty proud of the way my coop came out I know that I would have saved a lot of work and even some cash (extra building materials) if I had been following plans for hen house construction that somebody else had tested out before me! LOL  For example, I built the roosting area twice. The first time I built it my wife took one look at it and said it would never work! She was probably right, I had the ramp going up to the roosting area too steep and probably a bit too narrow. At the end of the ramp the chickens were going to have to make a U-turn to get onto the roost. Off to the drawing board again! But hey, I was making this up as I went along, I never raised chickens before and had never even set foot inside a chicken coop until I built one. The nearest thing to a hen house I’d ever seen before was on Looney Tunes!

Plans For Hen House

Afterthoughts on Plans for Hen House

After I finished the project, the birds were happily settled into their new home, the chicken pen was built and all was said and done I spent some time looking at different plans that could be purchased and I was pretty impressed. There were some companies selling plans for hen house designs that came with a whole bunch of different designs so that you could pick and choose the one that you thought would work the best for your area and for your particular situation. I’m pretty sure that if I had 50 different plans to look at, I could have found at least one ramp that I could have used to get to my roost! LOL

If you’re thinking about building a hen house then I would seriously advise you to purchase your hen house plans. Unless, of course, you already have a lot of experience in this area. For me, never owning, using, or even really seeing a chicken coop before (except pictures of course) left me making a lot of guesses as to what I’d really need. And a some of the companies that are selling plans also provide quite a bit of information on raising chickens too. Oh, and here’s another tip…. If you do decide to purchase plans, make sure they cover nesting boxes. If I had a plan for nesting boxes I probably would have saved a few hours build time. The perfect combination for a beginner in the chicken raising world! Now that I’m writing this, I’ll take another look at plans that are available and see if I can come up with a couple of places that have good packages available!

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Here come the chickens!

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Bringing in the Chickens

So after building and redesigning and rebuilding and redesigning our chickens new home several times I finally got the main building built to my satisfaction. But I still had some things left to do before I could transfer the chickens from the big box in my garage to the coop. And I was running out of time since these birds were now about 6 weeks old and growing fast. They were quickly outgrowing the box that we’d been keeping them in. And I gotta tell ya, once they start getting a bit larger, chickens start to smell when they are in an enclosed area. Nuff said! LOL

Final touches for the chickens new home

What I still had left to do was to build a perch for the chickens to sleep on at night, build a ramp leading up to the perch, and build a ramp from the ground outside up into the hen house. I had never really been around chickens much and I was wondering if they were even smart enough to figure out how to use the ramps. In addition, I still needed to build an outside pen since these were not going to be free range chickens.  We had decided to use a couple of scoops of sand for inside the coop and inside the pen, this was at the advice of a friend who had grown up with chickens in her life. She said that you could get a cat litter box scoop and easily clean the sand – She was so right, the sand is very easy to maintain and keep clean. The chickens pen posed another problem, I really didn’t want to use chicken wire, I’ve used it in the past, I hate the stuff. It’s not that easy to work with, it’s a pain to cut because you’re constantly getting poked with cut ends, it’s difficult to get to look tight and nice and after a period of time it starts to rust a bit. Yuck! I went to the hardware store and found some plastic poultry netting, it was black, and the label said it was guaranteed not to fade or rot. I bought a roll. Then I dug some post holes and stuck 2 x 4′s in some cement, after they set up I painted them dark brown, then strung the black poultry netting tightly from post to post with a staple gun. Awesome! Looked fantastic!

Training the chickens!

Chickens

Next I took a piece of plywood about 8 inches wide and I added 1 inch strips to it about every 6 inches or so to make the ramps up to the roost and to get into the coop from the ground. But alas, chickens aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed and I started wondering if they were even going to figure out how to use the ramps. My six year olds (twins) started putting the chickens on the ramp about half way up. Finally one of the chickens walked up the ramp and into the coop. She was pretty proud of herself and then she proceeded to teach the other chickens how to do it. Once they figured that out they were pretty cocky about it! It really was funny to watch them, you could tell they thought they were pretty smart! I was starting to be charmed by the chickens, they each had their own little personalities and they run to greet you when you call them. I never would have guessed that chickens could make such nice pets!

 

 

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Plans For Hen House?

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Wanted: Plans for Hen House!

I decided to start Plans for Hen house after I spent about 3 weeks looking for information on how to build a chicken coop. It wasn’t something I’d ever even considered before, I’m not really much of an animal guy, especially not farm animals!

But, one day my wife mentioned that one of her friends had bought some baby chicks and her friend ‘s husband was building a coop for them and “You could build a coop, couldn’t you, honey?”. “The kids would just love it and what a great experience for them”. And there you have it, I now found myself searching for plans on building a hen house.

Plans For Hen house

Free Plans for Hen house…

So, I started searching around on the internet and found quite a bit of information. (Actually, I was pretty surprised at just how popular keeping chickens in your backyard was becoming.) And I found quite a few sites that acted like they had some free plans but when I went to check them out they were pretty lame overall. I found a few sites that charged money for chicken coop plans but I blew them off pretty fast, After all, I thought I knew a little about building (I’ve had a woodworking hobby for many years and I’m a tool collector from way back) and it’s only a chicken coop, right? I’d find a free plan and modify it to fit my needs!

I did find a free plan, well actually I had to pay a small amount to be able to download it and print it out and it wasn’t a bad plan actually. I learned a lot from it. But there were a few things I didn’t really like, I wanted to make it bigger, I wanted to add a couple windows etc. And so I sat down at my computer and I learned how to use Google sketchup and I started drawing my own plans. And I drew, and I erased, and I drew and I erased and finally I pretty much had a plan in mind and most of it on paper! Plans for hen house? More like plans for a trip to the funny farm! LOL This was turning out to be harder than I thought.

Putting my plans for hen house Building into action

Next I took my plan and sat down and made a list of everything I needed to go to the hardware store for! I wanted to do this all in one trip – Yeah right! What a joke, I think I made about 5 to 6 trips before I got it completely finished! And finally I started building, after about an hour and a half I had leveled the ground, laid out the cinder blocks, laid out and leveled some 4 x 4′s for a foundation for the floor and nailed down the floor. Then I started adding some of the upright posts and after seeing how flimsy they looked I started making changes to my plan. The changes involved having to tear down the posts, pull up the flooring and add more bracing for the floor. Big setback, cost me a lot of time and had to go purchase more lumber! Pretty much this was how it went for two straight weekends with me making adjustments to my plans for hen house building on the fly. I guess draftsman and engineer are not in my job description after all! LOL

Finally, it was finished and I have to pat myself on the back, I think it came out pretty good. But looking back I think I really spent a lot of time modifying things that I might have saved if I had been using a plan that was put together by somebody that knew what they were doing. I most definitely would have save some trips to the store and probably I would have save some money also. Live & Learn!

 

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