Chicken Coop Conversion

I've been working on converting my doghouse into a chicken coop for many weeks now. Last week I finally finished. It was a challenge to customize an already existing structure and to use as many free materials as I could.

I started by elevating the structure on cinder blocks and wood I scavenged. I did this because it is my understanding that chickens like to roost off the ground and almost every coop I've seen is elevated. Raising the coop without assistance was a chore because the doghouse was pretty heavy. I used a combination of levering and my car's jack to elevate it into place. It was also a pain to get all four corners level since it is on a slight hill.

I next cut out the side to add on a nesting box. This provided a few benefits. First it made the overall size of the coop larger to comfortably accommodate more birds. Second it will allow me to gather eggs from outside the coop and soon to be added run.



The nesting box was completed with wood that I already had. The two sides were recycled from the pieces I cut from the doghouse wall. The box is very large compared to the recommended size I read and should have more than enough room for the six chickens I plan to buy.



The part that took me the most time was the removable droppings boxes. It took some time and money to figure out how to make them work. I'm satisfied with the final product. The benefits of my design are as follows. First, the screens are removable so I can clean the droppings out of the boxes. Second, the boxes are sized so I can remove them from the coop for easier cleaning. The final product is a floor that is easy to clean and prevents the chickens from walking around in their own poop.

You can see the box on the left has the removable screen on it and the one on the right doesn't.


I added a removable piece to make the doorway chicken-sized. It should help retain chicken body heat in the winter, prevent drafts and make the chickens feel more secure. I screwed in a wood block that swivels to lock the piece in place. I then added a ramp to assist the birds in entering the coop. I may need to add some more rungs.

Luckily the roof of the doghouse extended many inches to cover the nesting box add-on so I didn't have to waterproof it.


Inside I added two roosts cut to size from some dead branches I found in the forest. They are mounted using clothes-hanger-rod hardware in case I ever need to remove them or replace them. I also rounded the edges of the 2x4 rafters with a rasp to make them comfortable for roosting. Finally, I found the pretty pink paint that was left in the shed and coated the new parts.



She ain't the prettiest, but I think she'll work great. I'm currently working on the run. At first I thought of letting the chicken roam the whole fenced in yard, but I've seen too many hawks and owls around, not to mention all the predators I haven't seen and my friend's dog who likes to destroy things of mine.

Glass Buttes Trip - Fall 2009

Last weekend we made another trip to Glass Buttes. This time we had a bigger crew. In total there were ten of us in three vehicles, but the five crammed into the Honda were off on their own once we got there. We saw them once a few hours before we left to go home on Sunday.

The crew I hung with is pictured below: Shawn, Andrew K, Shaun, Andrew P and me. I guess I should have been named "Sean" to keep the pattern going. :) In the background you can see Big Glass Butte.


When not cooking various non-refrigerated pork products, we spent most of our time on my favourite hilltop gathering and breaking rock.


I love this hilltop because it offers modest-sized surface rocks for easy picking or mystery-sized underground rock for some extra effort. It's odd because as you walk around it's mostly grasses, shrubs, and dirt but then every 60 yards there is a stream of rocks running down the hill.


Sometimes when you dig you get a nice reward for not too much work. Shawn found this monolith partially excavated. After some work he pulled out a big'n. Sometimes you dig and hit just the tip of an iceberg and work on it for hours with nothing to show for it.


Here Shaun teaches his friend Shawn the principles of flintknapping.


Andrew K studying his rock to decide where to make the first strike.


Saturday afternoon The Andes ("Hot Fuzz" reference) and I drove to another location where a different type of rock was available. Dacite is like obsidian but a little harder and less brittle. We collected a lot of it. We collected enough to make my car bottom out trying to get from the quarry to the main dirt road. We had to unload the rock to get my car out.

In the picture below, Andrew K and I reduce the big rocks down to usable pieces. This reduced the overall weight of the load while, in theory, still allowing enough material for a nice finished product.


In then end we each got enough rock to last for awhile. I'm excited to get to work on the dacite. There is just so much to do at the new place especially since hunting season started last Friday.

These pictures are from my new camera. Tonight I should have internet access at home. So now I have no more excuses for not posting more often.

New House

A week ago I moved from Portland out to the country. I scored a pretty sweet deal. I am living in a 3 bedroom house at the entrance to a 140 acre private forest. In exchange for below average rent, I just have to mow the lawn and keep an eye out for funny business. I always dreamed of living somewhere where I could walk out my door and into the woods and now I can.

In this aerial photo courtesy of Google maps, you can see my house and the approximate boundary of the property. It's all available for me to play in! You can learn more about the forest here. It is open to the public for hiking and learning about nature and forestry.


Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what the place is like.

It's kind of wasteful to have such a big lawn, but I've already started planting crops in the raised beds and hopefully I can add more beds next spring.


This is the view from the front porch. Beyond the tree line is a parking lot and facilities buildings. The raised bed full of weeds in the bottom right corner is going get replanted with veggies.


The backyard is pretty nice. I'm going to try to convert the doghouse into a chicken coop. When I get chickens they will free range in the ample fenced in area. And yes, that's a horseshoe pitch. Not sure how much use that will get.


This is the view from the back porch. Last night I sat behind the rail and watched two blacktail deer feed. They made their way from the left side of the field and came all the way to the fence before heading to the blackberry patch out of view on the right side of the picture.


The sky is the limit for this place.

• Hunting? - Hopefully I will be allowed to hunt there this fall
• Room to practice skills (no more tanning bison hides in an apartment)
• Ample materials - I was told more than once I can cut wood and gather pretty much whatever I want
  
• Foraging - From the blackberry patch in my backyard to the apple tree in the front, there is so much out there, I just have to find it
• Homesteading - chickens, garden, wood stove, water well, hunting, goat?

I've been there a little over a week and I've already seen a lot without exploring very much. It's pretty exciting. I hope to get back to posting about projects I'm working on, but first I need internet access and a camera.

Bison Soap

Today I made my first ever batch of soap. My brother took a soapmaking class a number of months ago so he guided me through the process. First I looked for a recipe using bison fat but couldn't find one. I guess not many people get their hands on bison fat these days. Meanwhile my brother and I have 5-gallon buckets full. :)

I substituted beef fat when looking up how much lye to use. Hopefully I calculated it correctly. It's something you really don't want to mess around with. If your lye to fat ratio is wrong then you might end up with a chemical burn like Ed Norton in Fight Club. I had the balsamic vinegar standing by just in case.

The recipe I created was:

• 1 cup rendered bison fat
• 60.8 grams lye
• 1/3 cup water
• paprika added generously for color
• ~ 1 teaspoon vanilla essential oil for scent

One cup of rendered bison fat from the bison we butchered.


I weighed the lye crystals on the coffee filter carefully using the electronic scale. Then I mixed them into the bowl with 1/3 cup of water on the right. The water and lye reacted chemically and heated up.



Meanwhile I melted the bison fat and started monitoring the temperature of both the fat and the lye mixture.



It took some jockeying to get both temperatures to drop to 98 degrees at the same time. I ended up chilling and reheating the fat, but eventually I zeroed in on the target temperature. Once the temperature of the fat and the lye were both around 98 degrees I poured the lye into the fat and mixed.

I stirred for about 10-15 minutes to fully mix the lye with the fat. As it cooled it started to thicken. Once a drip from the spoon lingered on the surface of the mixture I knew it was time to pour.



I quickly mixed in the paprika and vanilla oil and then poured it into a plastic mold.



I'm kind of surprised at how much the ingredients made. Now I will let these set up for 3-4 days. Then I will knock them out and let them cure for 3 weeks. Hopefully the final products will not burn me.

Bison Hide Tanning Part 2

Two weeks ago my brother and I made our first attempt at tanning the bison hide. We were given access to the TrackersNW facility so we were able to move the project from our apartment to a more adequate setting. We started Friday evening by cleaning the hair with shampoo and conditioner. As recommended on the bottle, we rinsed and repeated (about 8 times). When we finished we left it to dry overnight.



Saturday afternoon we took a short kayaking trip on which I capsized and got my brother's camera a little wet. As a result I wasn't able to get pictures of the tanning process which is a shame because they would have been good. Luckily, the camera is fine. After the trip we returned to the hide to apply the dressing. We mixed up soap, neat's foot oil and the bison's brain (a traditional tanning dressing) and spread it on the hide to soak in. We used a softening stick we made to push the dressing into the hide. A softening stick has a wide flat end so you can massage the hide with more surface area. We left the dressing on the hide overnight to give it more time to saturate.

Sunday morning we started the drying and stretching process. This is usually the most tedious part of the process because you have to continually stretch the hide until it is completely dry lest it become stiff. This can take many hours. The sheer size of the bison hide made this especially difficult. Luckily the weather was warm and we had sunlight to help speed up the process. We started by leaning the frame up against a tree. At this point the hide was still dripping with the dressing. We used the softening sticks we made to stretch the hide.

We were happy with how quickly the surface seemed to dry out. The hide got really stretchy and it took a lot of force to give it a full stretch. Eventually we laid the frame on 5 gallon buckets like a trampoline and used our body weight to fully stretch the hide. This is where it would have been nice to have some pictures. :( We took turns walking around on the hide. The hide stretched so much in the middle that it touched the ground and we had to raise the frame higher with some wood risers. We also rubbed it with pumice stones to soften it.

As the day wore on we realized that while the middle was fairly soft and stretchy, the sides were rather stiff. We decided to call it a day. We took it off the frame. The next morning the middle was still pretty soft. The rest was pliable, but still pretty stiff. For example, you could wrap it around you if you had to but you couldn't make clothes out of it. So that is the current state. We may try to tan it again, but we are afraid it might start to fall apart. We already lost some hair and put a few more holes in it while stretching it.

There are a few reasons why I think the sides may have been stiff. First, we may not have had enough dressing. When we left it overnight it settled in the center of the hide. Second, it was harder to stretch the sides because they are closer to the frame. On a trampoline the middle is where you get the most bounce. Next time I think we need to make sure the sides get saturated with dressing. Maybe we can loosen the hide in the frame so we can stretch the sides more.