Review: Lehman's Leather Flyswatter

@dasparky: Dear flies: while you're in my house, know that I don't want you to suffer. I just want you to DIE. Sincerely, me.

I recognize the worth of flies in the ecosystem, the cycle of life. They play a very important role in decomposition of various materials, and their young are a food source for other animal species. In fact, as I've mentioned here before, we don't even own a can of bug spray in the house. We catch and release as much as possible. Flies, however, are not amenable to "catch & release", and act like a herd cats when attempting to shoo them out a window or door. Just. Ain't. Happening.

Spouse and I have gone through numerous plastic flyswatters. None lasted more than a month or so before breaking. Terro has an aluminum mesh flyswatter which lasts much longer than the plastic ones, but uses a sewn paper border which frays quickly. Once the paper frays, the mesh starts to unravel with further swattings. 

Which leads to the subject of this review: Lehman's leather flyswatter. A piece of leather, tanned on one side, punched through with holes for faster swatting ability. Sewn & riveted onto a handle of twisted, thick wire. It's been getting quite the workout lately, as the newly repaired screens on the windows have been ripped out once again by the geese, which then let in the flies. Time to figure out some protection for those windows...

Flyswatter pros:

1. Leather - it ain't gonna break.
2. Repairable - I can hand sew it back onto the wire handle if the thread wears out.
3. Wire handle - can be replaced with a twisted, thick wire hangar if need be.

Flyswatter cons:

1. Leather is only tanned & smooth on one side. The other side is "raw",  so fly guts don't clean off as easily.

The swatter is $4.95, and dang well worth the money. We bought two.

[pics: the leather swatters, natch]

Hen Haus - Version 2.0

[Many images, this will take some time to load.]

What can I say, we’re a couple of geeks.

• “Beta” was the big box hardware store 10'x10' shed, delivered in a flat pack.
• Version 1.0 was the strengthening of the shed infrastructure with additional lumber, plus the initial modifications of doors, roosts, and added windows.
• Version 2.0 is the current Hen Haus as it stands.

Here's the breakdown of the coop...

Doors: The original shed doors are solid - well, as solid as pressboard and 2x3's (original hardware) can be. We added latches to the outer shed walls to attach & keep the outer doors open when desired. On the inside entry right is a recycled screen door; had to shorten it to 70”, then used hardware cloth instead of regular screen cloth for durability. The second screen door on the left was made from scrap lumber and various pieces of hardware cloth remnants. There’s a small entrance in the bottom middle of the left door; we’re hoping it's small enough to keep our egg-poaching dogs OUT. If not, easy enough to put in another piece of wood to make even smaller - it would still be plenty big for the chickens to get through. Anyhow, the screen doors swing outwards as well, so the sawdust litter stays in place, and we can easily sweep everything out when it’s time to clean. The inner & outer doors latch snugly together in various configurations, to guard against predators trying to squeeze into the coop from this direction.

Windows: the window covers flip down, as there’s no easy way to have the covers open & stay upright. Plus, with the strong winds we get around here, making the covers into some sort of awning is just asking for them to be ripped off the building, I kid you not. The window openings were cut open with a Sawz-All, and the cut-outs were attached and reinforced with wood, hinges and latches. The window openings, like the screen doors, are also covered by hardware cloth - more expensive than chicken wire, but much sturdier. The windows that go across the length of the back of the coop face South. The wall that has the smaller windows face East, which is the same side that has the second (main) entrance.

Main Chicken Portal: this is the entrance where we let the chickens out in the morning, facing the Eastern rising sun. Currently a manual opening system, but Spouse has plans & parts for a solar-powered automated door (which I’ll make sure he posts when the project is installed).

Inside... Roost & Ramp: the roosts are made from pine rounds (look like closet poles, but less expensive). They thread through 2x4's on the sides of the coop, and are supported in the middle by 2x4’s, attached to a 4x4 upright that is toed-in to the floor. The ramp & “young chicken” roost below the main roost is one piece. It is removable for cleaning, and connects to the main roost via rubber-coated bicycle hooks. Non-skid tape was used on the ramp, and cedar branches roosts. Legs are 4x4’s.

A skylight was cut out of the roof on the East (left) side, and covered with a piece of blue-tinted corrugated roofing. This will provide additional light in the Winter, when the girls are inclined to lay less during the shorter days. It also keeps the inside from looking gloomy. All things in beauty for the ladies!

Laying boxes: picked up a ten-cubicle laying unit at a roadside antique store for a third of what we would have paid for new. The cubicles are roomy: even the Jersey Giant hens have no problems sitting comfortably inside to lay. You can see the east-side entrance in the back.

Food & water: hung from ropes attached to the ceiling, and with the food/water containers attached to the ropes via spring hooks. Easy-peasy to remove/refill. 

Feed storage: on the right of the coop is where the feed is being stored. Still trying to decide if we want to put metal cans beneath the cabinet space for open bags of feed. That same space could also be used for a chick brooder, or to store bags of pine shavings for floor litter. There's a screened door covering the feed cabinet, but there’s also still enough room on top for one particularly determined pullet to fly up & roost. We’ll need to put a wide piece of wood across the top opening to keep her from doing so.

Yet a few more mods are in the queue:

• A flip-down cover for the front screen door opening. The more breeze we can let into the coop during the summer, the better. Or if the automatic door works out on the East entrance, perhaps make a second one for the screen door...
• Rainwater gutters, with water directed into an aboveground metal cistern. Rainwater would be used for the animals - much nicer tasting than our mineral-heavy well water. Mmmm, cloud juice!
• Pergolas/arbors on the East and South sides of the coop, with deciduous vines. This would keep the coop nice & cool in the Summer, but allow sun to warm the coop in the Winter when the vine leaves drop. The vines could be grapes, honeysuckle, or maypops/passionflowers.

Between Spouse’s construction know-how, Uncle’s assistance, and my over-engineered projects, this ticky-tacky shed has turned into one solid coop. And now, after all this construction, I want a compound miter saw. Serslay.

[Addendum: Chickens in photos not scaled to size - except for the one Sicilian Buttercup, these are all seven-week old pullets, just introduced to the coop last night. Still too scaredy to go foraging with the big girls yet.]

Ripening!

I've been trying to get some photos (in good light) of the Hen Haus, but time or rain have prevented. In the meantime, I've discovered that our apricot trees mean business when the fruit is ripe: you either pick the fruit and eat/process that very day, or else the fruit will start decomposing by the next day. Found that out the hard way: picked a bunch of ripe fruit, and left them on the counter while I went out grocery shopping. Picked up a bottle of brandy in which to preserve the apricots, and got lazy, thinking "eh, I'll do this tomorrow". All tomorrow brought were mushy fruit and fruit flies. Yiiick.

I understand better why I rarely see apricots on the market farm tables around here. Too challenging to get out the door in a timely fashion!

Can This Twain Meet?

Geese are geese, right? Yep, and they're also territorial and averse to strangers, even those of their own kind it seems. Unless our geese are just special...

The goslings are about 2/3'rds grown already. I remember when one of them would fit in the palm of my hand. Barely five weeks later, they're almost the size of our two-year olds! As you might guess, Tufted Roman Geese have been breed to mature quickly. Small as this breed may be (10 to 12 pounds max), they're considered meat birds. Although we bought them as "guard geese" and think of them as pets, there's been times when thoroughly annoyed by their antics I've thought of them as "meat birds" as well... but I digress. Ahem!

Anyhow, I've been trying to integrate the goslings with the mature geese for three days now. A few hours at a time these past few early evenings. Nothing doing. The mature geese see the new girls as interlopers, and run the goslings all over the pen. Once in awhile the group of young'uns will charge back, frightening a solitary goose, but then the older geese will group up and charge back. There's only the occasional chomp on a wing, otherwise it's mostly posturing and bluff.

Maybe once the goslings get a little older, Billy-Bob will realize these are new females for his harem and broker some sort of peace agreement. As I look out the window right now, there seems to be a cease-fire of sorts: the mature geese are on one side of the pen, resting, and the goslings on the other side, doing the same. Perhaps from this will come a détente, then a relative peace - as far as "peace" and "geese" go. I certainly hope so!

[pics: Top left, the goslings. Bottom right, three of the mature geese, with Billy-Bob on the far right.]

"Honey?"

I called from the porch into the house, "Why is there dog food in the birdhouse?" When geeks live together, it's best to ask questions first before messing with something that appears to be an experiment or otherwise out of the ordinary. I was hosing bird droppings off the front porch, a.k.a. "the poop deck*", when I lifted the birdhouse and food started coming out.

"Why is there what?" Spouse looked outside the door. "Dog food? Oh, I thought you said dog poo!"

I poured the rest of the kibble out of the back of the birdhouse. Scratch grains came tumbling after the kibble, and then a small, abandoned mud-dauber's nest. "I bet there's a bird hiding away this food," says Spouse. "Can you imagine how long it took to load all this?" There were at least three cups of kibble stored inside.

"We should set up a web cam, see who's doing this work", he says. Shouldn't be too hard to do, as there's already two web cams up: one monitoring the night pen, and one looking out over the front yard. Between the cams, the dogs, the geese, and the electrified poultry netting, we have the best protected pasture-raised, free-ranging chickens in the county. Now it looks like the local wildlife is taking advantage of that protection (and the feed) as well...

*phrase courtesy of Natalie, who has a chicken and a wonderful geekly family, and writes about them over at Chicken Blog.

[pic: stored food & birdhouse. Birdhouse was made by Spouse's dad - gorgeous!]