Us vs Chickens: Round 1

Happy day. There's a lot of chickens in, but there's also a lot of chickens out. Today on top of the priority list, get these suckers in there and get it to where they stay in there. I've had enough. 1, 2. He's about to escape. Every day he gets out. La la la la la. Let me be free. We're coming for you. We're coming for you. I have a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. Let's look. One wing on the right. She won't let me get to the left. Why won't she let me see her left side? Okay, I'll go this way then. There it is. Okay, yeah, she's got full feathers. This one too, probably. How are we gonna get them in and then get their wings clipped? Catch them and then clip their wings. Hey, I see you looking over at me. When you look over at me and see me filming, do you feel like I'm not doing anything? Thing? No. Let's get chores done and then get these rascals in. As you can see, most of our— hey, I'm not going to be able to talk in here. Everflow water is still working, and it is 20° out here, and we got water moving. You guys actually going to be quiet? No, they start squawking when I start talking. You gonna let me talk? Hey, you don't want me to talk?

Huh?

Okay, I'll get out of here. Here's the thing, you're gonna have chickens escape. I mean, if we spend all our time putting every single chicken in— if I did that, every single vlog I would make would be about putting chickens in. So when is the breaking point? Well, sanity. When you've gotten drove crazy with how many are out, everybody is on a different level of the spectrum there. For me, it's certainly 10%. If I have 60 birds and 6 of them get out, which is about where we are, that's my insanity point. That's when something has to be done. Otherwise, you can be spent. There's a point of diminishing returns where you could fortify it so much it's not worth it for what you're getting out of the chickens. So you do have to be careful or you're wasting time and resources. And she's got full feathers. Okay guys, sorry, sorry geese, sorry. You can't be close and talking with the geese. Okay, this is what we're gonna do— cut their wings. Some of these have escaped under the radar and for some reason their wings are not— well, wings grow back too. So show me what you've done here. Oh. Okay, and your plan is just to put sand in the middle?

Everywhere.

That's a lot of sand. We're thinking a sandbox for Henry's birthday. That's gonna be too much sand, huh? I guess we need to order a truckload of sand.

Yeah, that's what I asked you.

All right, we're gonna need to ask your mom if it's okay that we're gonna do a whole stall.

Yeah, I told— I talked to her about it.

And what'd she say?

She just said we have to buy a truckload of sand.

Okay, we'll double-check.

She said we can't call right there.

Well, I'll call today. Josiah's having some hesitations about this too, and I want him on board. I don't know if it's because he's the second child or it's just his personality, but he has to know why we're doing it, and there has to be no nonsense in it. He's not a big fan of going to the next step, which is my idea of putting a a net around above the, the tin because I think we'll still need that even after we clip their wings. But for his sake and for efficiency, let's just try clipping their wings and see if that keeps them in because we could overdo it unnecessarily. Just get skimming that first. Wait, why didn't you do this milk? Do this while I do this. We need another load of wood chips in the chickens, maybe two. What do you think? Oh, you know what, buddy? We're gonna— we're gonna take down that front fence so that we can get in there with a chickshaw. Should you want to bring in wood chips when that is done? Okay, here he is. Can you cream separate? Oh yeah, I did. No, you didn't. There's— I mean, I just pulled out a bunch of jars. That's not crazy. You didn't use yesterday's. Yeah, look, there's the cream line. Yeah, but it's weird. No, I had good intentions. I made a mistake. I said if he filled sandbags, he could get a bar. It's to teach him work and that you get what you want after you've worked. But now he's bothering us like crazy to do it. It was a bad job for me to pick because it's not something he can really do by himself. Hey, Gideon, will you help him do sandbags?

Are you not helping us?

I mean, I need to do these chicken— I need to get these chickens in. Clipping of the wings. We could run and catch them. That would be very difficult. You want to go catch them? Get in. Let her out. No, see, that's herding them in. What about catching them so we could clip their wings? See, we can herd them in a lot easier than we can get their wings. So the best way I found to clip wings is to let them go up in a coop at night, and then you can catch them as they go out. Problem is we, we don't have a coop in there. Who's calling me? Hello? Good luck. Screwed into the wood there. Can you get us the bit for that? It'd be the small one. And the drill driver, and the T-post pounder, and the T-post puller. Let's get everything ready. And then we'll do this. You don't have the hitch on that. Go get Sally and you can pull this one. Okay, we made our Chickshaw so you can attach a side-by-side or remove that hitch and pull it by hand. You know, I kind of wonder if that's enough. Chickshaw 5.0, in a pinch in the winter, 60 birds is not a stretch. I think it's rated at 36. I rated it at 36. I'm the one who did the rating though. All right, maybe we'll get this other one just in case. And it's stuck in there, but I think we can figure something out. Hey, extremely proud of these mobile chicken coops. Adding Chris Slattery to come help me perfect these things, they don't get any better. There's nothing I can do to improve them. The Chickshaw 5.0 is our flagship, our most popular build. I think the Chickshaw Mini Me is somebody— is something for somebody with a little less chickens. Hold on, we're talking about 24 chickens.

Wait, whoa!

So did a Chickshaw Mini Me, 24 or less chickens. Chicken tractor, you want to keep 4 or 5 in it all the time, full-time, not no fence. 12, 12 to 15, you're gonna have a fence or use it to raise chicks, use it to have a broody chicken to raise her little chicks. All right, it's gonna be man versus machine. I'm gonna be walking this thing and he's gonna be driving. If you got Pretty Shaw for if you want chickens in the front yard. All these plans can be had in my book Homestead Builds. That's homesteadbuilds.com. The chicken tractor plans can be had there for free, so check it out, homesteadbuilds.com. Coming to say bye, huh? Oh, he's hugging longer. You want to be the one hugging longer, right? Right, dads? I've taught them good. They come say goodbye before they leave. One less goodbye and one last session working with you.

All right, let's make it count.

Got to keep them off this wall while we deconstruct it. Then how are we going to wheel these in there? I guess we got to put this, uh, You got any better ideas? I do. We'll just cut— somebody will just hold that. Might as well get the wood chips in here while we got this open. Maybe we shouldn't have ran over our main line. Whoops, that was a mistake. Let's spread this mulch so we can get the shawls in there. Where'd all the wood chips go, guys? I guess they spread them out really well. It's a little too— not enough bedding in here for them. There you go, ladies. How about that? So we scared even more out. There was a bunch out already. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. I'll make like 15 or 16 just right here. We're gonna have to start herding those back in when we're done. Okay, let's get the turkey shaw out, which is just a roost for chickens. Okay, go get them.

No, you don't stand in the way.

I'll stand out of the way. This is good, wide open. Come on, the jumpers are just gonna jump out and get out again until we can clip their wings in the morning. I guess it's good to get There were so many out. It's good to get them in. And some of them just got out because we spooked them. There we go, there we go. All right, that's a good start. You guys got to go to your appointment. Things just got way more interesting with those boys gone. It's just me. Well, you gonna help me at all? Yeah? Okay, let's clean up the mini-me. You raise your kids until they're old enough to be really helpful. And then they leave and they start getting busy. Every once in a while you do have to clean this chick shop. 1-inch wire mesh, so most of the time it falls through. Sometimes, especially with geese, female geese, they'll pull that hay out of the nest box and then it's on the floor. Then dirt and manure can't fall through.

Stop honking.

Hey, can you come help me? This is a two-person job. I gotta get this open, not let them out, and get the mini me in. I'm really not excited about guard geese right now. Well, that was easier than I thought. Curious they are. Henry, we did it! I did it. He played nicely. You want to fix this real quick before we get your sandbags, or you want to go to get your sandbags? Okay, then let's go do that. Us versus chickens. They're driving me crazy. They're everywhere. They're all gonna go back in tonight. They're all gonna get in the chick shaws in the morning. We're gonna clip their wings in this video. We'll include that. Are we winning the battle against the chickens right now? I don't know, hard to tell. We'll see. We will eventually also win the battle against the wind. and the silage tarps. Hopefully 6 sandbags at a time. He may not be able to do this by himself. It's a fun project I think we can do together. That might be ice, so be careful. That's one way to do it safe. Good job. Okay, let's do it right up here where it's sandy. You know, Rogue makes a sandbag. For training. It looks a lot like this. There we go. We'll do the sandbag workout at Earth Gym today.

Wow, you're strong! Thank you, thank you.

You're strong. Did you hear him? Do you hear him when I picked him up? You're strong.

Thank you.

That's so good. That's a really nice compliment coming from the kid. The dad wants to be strong for the boys, and the boy wants to be strong for the dad. This is sweet. Hey, you're strong, man. Let's be strong together.

Whoa!

Yes! See, we're not out here stuffing sandbags. We're out here raising chiddlers.

Whoa!

Eddie's learning you work, you get something good. Are you excited about that bar or what? Yeah, it's coming close. We gotta put this on the plaque. We gotta straighten out the plastic. Drive me crazy. Hey, all right, this is a battle against the chickens. For if you do get out, you're gonna have to get through these sandbags. We don't want to overdo it, so what we'll do is every time this gets blown up, we'll add more sandbags. 6 more sandbags than we had this morning. 2 more loads of wood chips than we had this morning. 2 more coops. Inside the greenhouse than we had this morning. All right, enjoy your freedom. Your wings are getting clipped. Let's get this poor boy his bar. How excited are you for this bar?

To eat it.

What is it you want?

It's the—

What do you want to eat?

It's the black one.

What is it called? Can you say bar?

Bar. It's bow.

E-I-F? E-I-F smoothie. E-I-F bow. All right, that's how— if you say so. This boy is going to be ecstatic. Go macro bar, because I put this before him yesterday, proposed this. He's been driving us crazy ever since. I don't think I'll offer up an award for a task unless we can do it right away. All right, here you go, my boy. Are we excited or what? This is for working, okay? When you work, you earn stuff that you want.

There you go.

Was it worth it? It's getting dark. Let's see if they got up into the coop. Shoot. Some of them are perched outside. They're not all in the coop. I think there's some perched on the sweet potatoes. Oh, and there's one perched on the high tunnel thing. The ones that are still out, we've got to catch them now because they'll just be wandering free in the morning and it'll be hard to catch them. There's a chance while they're perched that I can grab them. This is a loud way. Whoops. There are one— there's so many chickens right there.

There's two over in the corner.

There's two in the corner. See that? See them, Hendrick? Gideon? Good news and bad news. Bad news is those chickens that were out just then, their wings were clipped, so they're either able to jump up on this metal and get out, or they're going around the high tunnel here, around the wall. The good news is we got them in. So let's see what's going to happen in the morning. I think I have an idea that can be quick enough to wrap around the top of this to keep them in. Top of the morning to you. We got wings to clip. That one was in the fence stall. Okay, obviously this is not gonna be a landslide victory, but we're gonna win something. The battle is going to continue. That one, probably that one right there, was perched in the pole barn, so it doesn't even come home. At night. Let's herd this. You want to herd her in while she's there?

Whoa!

Oh shoot! Oh shoot! Oh, I know what happened. Dang it. All right, some of these birds with wings are hopping up on the fence and jumping over. Others getting around the greenhouse and out. I'm pretty sure what happened here And I forgot it's missing a nest box, so they just jumped out. Do you want to start driving T-posts? Put one in there and one there. Did you get it to where it can't swing out?

Yes. How?

How'd you do that? How'd you do that? More? How'd you do that? Walked on that. Oh, that's a good idea. That's a good idea, Gideon. Let's do this just in case. Makes me feel like I'm doing something. Kids are sometimes very, very smart. They figured out to roll the high tunnel down a little more so they'll hit on this O-ring and then it won't slip out.

Look.

All right, get in. Go get some zip ties so we can strap that there, honey, quickly. Now that we got the side secure, I think if we raise the fence in the back— I think I have a quick idea for doing that— they won't— then not nearly as many will get out. You see, we weren't able to clip all their wings. We got several that had full-on wings, but many of them got out of the coops at night. Hey, this will stop them from jumping on this Those zip ties or hay string needed. This is probably high enough that they're not going to jump on that. They were jumping on this tin and getting out, but I wedged it behind this T-post and it seems to just be staying. Yeah, that looks hopeful. That's way too short. It might be possible even clipped chicken wings are jumping over this. There's still room. I think a skinny chicken will go right through that. Okay, get something. A couple of sandbags. Miles up there. You have to do a couple. Why are you leaning on that? Get off that, please. Okay, you think that sandbag will work? Should. Okay, we've got them blocked on the side. We've got net tied up above the tin. It's not on, albeit, but I think it might be enough deterrent. And we got the sides of the greenhouse pinned. I think we won some battles. We may not have won the war. That will continue in the next episode. Thanks for joining us this week. Happy day. See you next one.