Original Oil Painting by: Grandfather’s wife
Grandfather says when he got engaged to be married in 2008, his bride-to-be insisted on bringing her cat and chickens with her. Well, housing the cat required no special arrangement, but the chickens were another matter.
Grandfather says he chickened out and bought a ready-made henhouse from local Mennonites, but he had to build a chicken run attached to the henhouse. That wasn’t the end of it — no mice were to be allowed inside. So, an exoskeleton was built and a welded steel mesh “balloon” was attached with laths to longerons inside it. Stainless was used under the dirt floor but it was unnecessarily expensive for the above-ground mesh, so the new-bride-to-be whipstitched galvanized mesh to the floor mesh with stainless steel fish trolling line.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is an octogenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
That’s a beauty, Dave! I’ve thought about having chickens again when we move to the mountains, so I’ve looked at a lot of different arrangements. I never thought about keeping mice out, though. I was more concerned with keeping fox and other predators out.
Not sure anymore that I want chickens, though. The older I get, the less keen I am on getting up at 0-dark-hundred to go out in a snowstorm to feed them.
Nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.
Always nice to hear from you, Gee!
Nice! I’ve always thought about trying my hand at keeping some chickens around. Do you recommend any particular breed (or breeds)?
Shane, We’ve had several breeds over the years, but we now get our pullets from a local Mennonite. They are red-brown in color, lay large, light brown eggs, produce for a long time and are the best we’ve ever had.
I suspect their excellence has as much to do with their Mennonite cultivation as anything, but I don’t know what breed(s) they use.
Good to know. Thank you for the info. I may finally have to give this chicken raising idea a try.
Shane, I suggest you buy pullets (young females ready to start laying shortly).
What the Mennonites are selling you is called a “Red Star” cross, an egg laying machine producing beautiful large brown eggs. Equally productive are “Whiting True Blue” (blue eggs) and “Whiting true Green” (green eggs) , “Pearl White leghorns” (white eggs) and ” Amber Star.” If you want high egg production these are the birds. If you want a particular looking chicken be my guest but realize you will get lower egg production and not such good conversion of feed to eggs. These are medium sized chickens which are also useful for meat when their egg laying career slows down which it does not tend to do as quickly as with all other breeds. The breeds mentioned here do not tend to go broody. They are career egg layers and their interest in raising families is not so great as say bantys which tend to be great mothers but not such good egg producers.
Thank you for the info, Ms. Kinnane!
Now I don’t have to wonder why the chickens we have now are so much more productive than others we’ve had in the past.
I had wanted to keep a couple of chickens on my property. Unfortunately, there is a city ordinance that prohibits me from doing so because my property is less than 0.25 acres.
“Ordinances! Laws! Thou shalt not.
Escaped most of those forty-three years ago as you know, Len.
Much of what’s chronicled in “Grandfather Says” would have been impossible where the heavy hand of the Government reigned.
Mr. Dave,
Always nice to hear from you. I hope God blesses you with many more years, and you keep writing your column. It’s a highlight for me.
That’s a grand henhouse and chicken run. It’ll keep out mice, and hawks. Hopefully, no racoon or opossum can figure out how to get in there. Bride to be sounds really resourceful. Did she grow up on a farm?
Chicken snakes are a problem around here. People put plaster eggs in the nests. When the snake swallows it, it can’t digest it, and no more snake. It beats going out half asleep to feed the chickens, and stepping on a 6ft long snake. lol
Wife had a little farm, which she sold when she came here.
What are the dimensions? Is there a recommended min length and height?
Thanks in advance.
Don’t remember exactly, Colton.
I guess mine is about twenty feet long, ten feet wide and 7 feet tall on the interior.
As I think about it, I realize that the interior width and height had to be multiples of the steel mesh roll width used. The steel was rolled out longitudinally.
I used 3 foot wide rolls, so the interior circumference is probably 10 feet wide by eight feet high, obtained by four mesh runs on the top and bottom, one foot of the edges of the outside of two turned up or down, respectively, with two lengths forming each side joined at their edges to the up and down-turned top and bottom edges.
The reason for the turned edges was the requirement that the stainless steel bottom runs had to be buried with their edges protruding up above the ground where they were joined to the galvanized mesh used above grade. The tops had to be turned down for symmetry.
The length of the which runs, would determine the length of the cage would optional.