Bar K Ranch - The Blog

Toasty Chickens

Caitlyn — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:42:50 +0000

Flock Update

Caitlyn — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:05:25 +0000

Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. Everyone is starting to look like a full-grown chicken now, and it’s funny to look back on some of their pictures and think of how tiny they were when we got them.

Sadly, we lost one of the girls a few weeks ago. John and I came home late one night and found the Ameraucana laying in the run. Everyone puts themselves away around 8:45 in the evenings, so we knew coming up on the coop and seeing one out, much less laying down, that something was wrong. We think that she may have had an underlying issue or illness and the heat was too much stress for her. John buried her in the yard for me.

Speaking of heat, it’s been about a million degrees lately, and we’re trying some things to keep the chickens cool. With 27 straight days of 100+ temperatures (yesterday was only 97 in Austin), even the cactus and oak trees are starting to feel it.

We’ve bought some sand and put it in a corner of the run, and try to hose it down to keep it cool. The chickens seem to enjoy it and like to walk around and dig their little resting holes in it. They peck around in it too, so I’m guessing it works as a grit as well. We’ve also put a small trash can lid in the run, turned upside-down and fill it with water. The Sex-Link especially enjoys cooling her feet in it.

We’ve also been mixing some Sav-A-Chick (basically Vitamin Water for chickens) into their drinking water to help keep them going through the heat.

Anyway, here are some photos taken today, hopefully it won’t be too long before the next update!

Our slightly older Polish, may or may not be a rooster.

“Cookie” aka “Fuzzy-Feet”, a Cochin, our only named chicken so far.

Production Red. She is the most reserved out of the group.

The younger Polish. Curious and tame, likes her photo taken!

Black Sex-Link, the bug-catcher out of the group.

Chicken Haus

Caitlyn — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:56:00 +0000

When John told me he would build me a chicken coop, I pictured something small and modest. Room for maybe three or four chickens.

I got this.

I got an 8′x8′ chicken suite with an attached 8′x16′ run. We still have a few minor details to finish (some trim, putting more stone around the run), but otherwise it’s complete.

If I ever have to hang chicken wire again, I will die.

Here is the “pop” door. The cable runs up through a pulley, and then outside the coop so you can raise and lower the door without having to go in. The chickens have it figured out pretty well.

The nest boxes. I drew the plans and John cut the wood and lent me a helping hand during assembly. We haven’t built a ramp yet, but plan to. IKEA Hackers has a post where they use a bottle rack as a ramp to the nest boxes, which I’d really like to try out because it would mean a million less hours of cutting wood. We are also going to add roosts.

By the way, this is our newest addition. She is a Cochin, and our friendliest.

First Things First

Caitlyn — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 03:35:00 +0000

Welcome to the blog. I decided to start one up to chronicle the life of our chickens, which we purchased on June 4, 2011.

First off, the name. Bar-K Chickens. Living out in the country will do two things to you. One, it will make you never want to dust again because it doesn’t even matter and you’ll never have more than 12 hours of being dust-free anyway. Two, it will make you feel left out if you don’t have a name for your homestead.

Or maybe those are just me. Anyway.

There are a lot of places out here with cattle brands and ranch names. Flying X, River Ranch, etc. Before we got married, my husband had a name thought out for his ten acres, “Diamond C”. Diamond being the name of his Akita dog that he had owned, and C for his last initial.

A short time after I moved in, he suggested the name of Pawpad Ranch, because of my email address, “pawpad”. Obviously I liked it because it was my email after all, but it just didn’t have that country vibe to it.

I hadn’t thought about it for a while until one day I was reading up on cattle brands for the fun of it (am I cool or what?). The symbols are read top to bottom, and so if you have a short line over a letter or symbol, it is read as “bar-” and then whatever is underneath it. Then it hit me. If you have the letter K with a bar over it, it’s read as Bar-K. BarK. Bark. BRILLIANT.

If you knew me, you’d know that I am somewhat interested in totally obsessed with dogs. Bar-K was country sounding and a subtle dog reference; it was perfect. Thankfully my husband agreed to the name and maybe some day when we have our ten hill-country acres filled with farm animals, we will officially have our Bar-K Ranch.

But for now, we’ll have to stick with chickens (and our two dogs, of course).

These are our original chickens. We purchased them from the feed store on June 4, 2011. They are one Black Sex-Link, one Ameraucana, one Production Red, two Polish, and one Brahma.

I say original, because three days after we got them, a rat snake found them, and unfortunately for the rat snake, the boys found him first.

The beautiful Brahma on the right was the one that was eaten. I hope she was tasty, at least. My husband said, “The snake owed me $3.”

And then we had five.