Pasty Butt and Peachy Orange

This weekend I spent a LOT of time with my chickens. Stopping them from flying out the brooder, keeping them entertained, re filling their yogurt bowl and cleaning their vents. This was the nastiest part. When chickens are young they often get this thing called "pasty butt" which is where their droppings clog their intestines. This causes them to become lethargic and not want to eat or drink. This is where I come in. When this happens you have to pick up the chicken, run them under warm running water and clean their vents with paper towels and Q-Tips, gross right? Well, gross or not it is crucial, if not taken care of it can be fatal. Well, this weekend two of my chickens got pasty butt, because of this I spent some of my weekend running my chicken's butts under warm water and believe me, they really don't like it!

Knowing this could be fatal I really wanted to help my chickens and prevent them from getting pasty butt. I researched the best solution and almost every website I read said adding some yogurt or smashed hard boiled eggs to their diet will really help. So, I added a bowl of plain full fat yogurt. At first all they did was walk through it and spill it all over the wood chips (this took some cleaning as you can imagine). Finally one if the chickens discovered the yogurt. She decided to lay down in front of it and eat. She must have eaten a whole 3/4 teaspoon of yogurt (that is a lot when you are only 4 days old!).

The rest of the weekend I spent finishing the frame for the chicken coop and choosing the color. This was not an easy task. At first I wanted orange, then I wanted green. I then considered purple and blue. Then I thought about gray and green. Once we had gone through about every color on the sample wall we took the samples up the paint counter. I was still deciding when we got there. Coincidentally the man working at the paint counter also raised chickens. After a lot of back and forth he convinced me that orange was they way to go. The color is below:

Orange

Sample wall - what a lot of choices!

In total we spent about 3 1/2 hours over the course of the day at Home Depot. We looked at siding, roofing, rat wire and hinges. It all seemed SO expensive. I have raised all the money for this coop babysitting and I am really counting every penny.  As we were driving home I was looking at buildings and thinking that if it costs this much to build a chicken coop I can not imagine how much money one of those would cost!

When we got home and started painting I discovered the orange was a big mistake, it looked really bad!  It was an ugly peachy color and was a huge eyesore. It looked almost like a big cube of cheddar cheese in the middle of our backyard. We are reconsidering and thinking we may paint it the same earthy green as our shed. Overall we had a very busy weekend! Right now my chickens are peeping happily in the brooder box in the basement and eating yogurt. Here are some pictures:

Stay tuned for more pictures and updates!