Carrying On

So I'm attempting to restart a flock of chickens. I ordered some Black Australorp hatching eggs on ebay. The person that I ordered them from had a great rating and great feedback but the transaction didn't go so well. After I paid the seller told me that he was going to give me a refund because an animal attacked his chickens and killed some so he didn't have any eggs. I offered my sympathies and contacted another seller to get eggs. Then I received a message from ebay that eggs from the first seller were on the way. When I wrote to him to ask what was going on he said that there had been some miscommunication with his wife and that he had sent the eggs.

Despite the scrawled warnings on the box there just wasn't enough space in the box to properly pack them. They didn't have enough cushioning on the top and bottom to keep them from breaking.

By the time I got home and saw the box it was were covered in yolk and ants.

Eight out of 30 were smashed and 3 more were cracked.

They were covered in gunk and shredded paper.

The eggs were also very inconsistent in appearance. They were different colors, shapes and sizes, not what I would expect from a mature flock of the same breed.

Candling the eggs revealed more cracks.

I'd never been in this situation before so I wasn't sure what to do. I ended up posting a question on BackyardChickens.com asking for advice. Given the weird story of the animal attack, the poor packing and inconsistent appearance, most of the commenters said I should ask for a refund. Some of them went as far as to echo my suspicion that the seller had just gathered whatever eggs he had on hand and packed them so poorly they were guaranteed to break during shipping. Then I wouldn't be able to hatch them an find out that they were cochins instead of Australorps.

I did ask for a refund and the seller turned rather unpleasant. He accused me of trying to get free eggs from him. He refunded the price of the eggs but not the shipping. When I wrote back to him saying that I wanted the cost of shipping refunded too because of the poor packing his response was basically that I was dreaming, that he had never given a refund before and there was no way he was refunding the shipping cost. He suggested that maybe I should file a claim with ebay but that they wouldn't require him to refund shipping either and that if I "stooped" to leaving him negative feedback he could delete it because he has a purple star.

I took his advice and filed a claim with ebay and he refunded the cost of shipping almost immediately. Some bullies cave when you push back.

The second batch of eggs was packed better. They came in a bigger box with packing above and below the cartons of eggs.





Even so, a couple of these were cracked as well.

There's no way to control the kind of treatment a package gets from the post office but good packing goes a long way to giving the eggs a better chance.

I have 20 Black Australorp eggs in the incubator right now. They have a couple more weeks to go and a couple more days before I'll be able to tell if they're developing by candling them.


In the meantime, I also received a delivery of three 16 week old Australorp pullets from Dare 2 Dream Farms up in Lompoc. They've sold chickens to a few people in my chicken group.

The pullets are still a little freaked out, but once I get the chicken coop repaired they'll have the whole thing to themselves.

Turkey Coop, 10

We had our first rain of the year this week. It was a nice day's worth of rain but I wasn't quite ready for it. The turkey coop just has a plywood roof at this point. I needed to add something to waterproof it. I chose green corrugated polycarbonate. The green color seems so classic to me, it reminds me of my childhood. My uncle had a boat house with a green corrugated roof and I just loved the green light it created inside.

The sheets I got were 26"x12' so I had to cut them in half. The jigsaw did a good job but it melted all the pieces together.


I also got the scalloped support rails and screws with washers and gaskets already on them (spendy).

I had to go back to Home Depot twice because first I got screws that were too long and then screws that were too short. Luckily the HD is close to my house. I can actually see it from the top of the turkey coop.


Once I got back from my third trip the installation when pretty quickly. I screwed down one side of the roof in about an hour.


All the materials for the first half cost $150, about 3 times what I was expecting. The second half will have to wait a few weeks. I don't think we're supposed to get more rain for the rest of the month.

I love the way it looks. The polycarbonate is so sparkly in the sun.

Turkey Coop 9

I spent some time extending the roost for the turkeys today. I went up one evening to check on them and the hen was sleeping on the ground. There just wasn't enough room for all four up there. I framed out what will be the front of the coop and added a 6' long roost. I'm hoping that will be enough.


This is what it should look like eventually. There will be a 2'x4' section on the left for storage and possibly nest boxes and the rest of the space will be for roosting.


I was planning on adding a door to close it all in with an opening for them to get out but I don't know if they care. Maybe it would just make me feel more at ease if they had an enclosed place to sleep.


Once I saw them moving around under it I started to wonder if they would have enough room to jump/fly up to the roost if I closed it all in. They have sort of a giant wing span at this point. I would also like to have the roost up as high as possible to keep them out of reach of critters that might get in. Maybe I should leave it all open so they can fly up. Ugh, decisions.


They do seem to like it though and would probably like it more if it was higher. I've heard of free-range turkeys sleeping high in trees or on top of houses. If I left it open I could provide them with some stair stepped roosts to make it easier to get up.


The two biggest toms were showing off for my friend Drew yesterday. I guess they never do this for me because they are used to me. It was kind of cute the way the puffed up. Their heads and necks changed color too and got more red and blue.

Agave Bloom

The plant that I'm calling Agave potatorum is blooming.

The bloom spike has grown about 7 feet in the last few weeks.


It's kind of hard to see so I moved it to the porch so I could watch the show. I'm not sure what the plant is so I'm hoping the color of the blooms will help me narrow it down. I have a bunch of pups from this plant so it would be nice to know what it is.

Turkey Update

Luckily the turkeys were unscathed in the dog attack. They must have been pretty freaked out when it was happening but they seemed fine by the time I got up there. I think I even saw one drink out of the new waterer, but maybe she was just pecking at it.


There are few things I still need to finish on the coop. One is enclosing the coop so it has four walls and a longer roost. The turkeys are so big now that the existing roost looks a little small for them.

I'm not sure if they even sleep up there or just use it as a jungle gym.

The Animal Control Officer that came to take the dog identified the turkey breeds immediately. It turns out that he lives in Antelope Valley where I got the turkeys and raises a bunch of animals himself. He also mentioned that it's nice that I've adhered to the set back requirements and have the coops far enough away from the neighbors' houses. I wonder what he would have done if the the coops were too close.

Mistakes Were Made

I've posted before about my pruning project. This has been my attempt to make the bushes in the front of the yard at the top of the cliff grow in short and bushy. Although I've managed to bring the height down a little and the top story is nicely filled in there is a lower level about 2 feet high that was bare so you could see down to the street.

I had a brilliant idea to plant something under there that would fill in and screen out the street. My choice, since I don't like to pay for things I don't have to, was cuttings from a couple of giant Euphorbia tirucalli trees that grow in my neighborhood. By giant, I mean about 30 feet high and 40 feet wide. They've grown so big that they are encroaching on the road and sometimes larger vehicles knock branches down. I figured I would be doing the neighborhood a service by thinning them out a little bit.

I blithely drove my truck underneath them and cut a few 2' pieces to plant under shrubs. They bled a bunch of sap that was a little sticky and annoying but I figured it was a small price to pay for some free plants.

Some of you may know where this story is going. It turns out Euphorbia tirucalli sap is poisonous. If you get it on your skin it itches and burns and causes a rash like poison ivy. I can now verify this from experience. If you get it it your eyes it can cause blindness. Blindness! I got some sap in my eyes when I was taking a shower later that night, maybe some got in my hair or something, and although I didn't go blind, it did burn like fire. Now I know.

So a year has passed and aside from its toxic vengeance E. tirucalli has been wildly successful. It had totally filled in the space below the bushes and is now spilling out over the other plants.




It's also now growing taller than the bushes. You can see one poking it's head up above the leaves of the shrub.


This is the same shot about a month later. I swear it has grown about 4 inches.

I admire its tenacity and think it's beautiful it just seems too problematic to have in the front yard where I'm going to have to be working around it. I need to step into that bed to prune the bushes and now I'm afraid that I'll break a stem and get showered with sap.

In my defense, I did have some experience with E. tirucalli in the past. I've had this plant for about 8 years:

I think Samantha brought it home from a job site and left it when she moved. It has stayed the same size and the same basic shape for 8 years. Maybe it's because it's in a pot or maybe I've neglected it, but it never gave me any indication that if I put it in the ground it would devote itself to my destruction through fiery itchiness.

I decided that I needed to take all of the plants out before they got too big. I put on gloves, pants, long sleeves and safety glasses.


They put up a fight but I managed to pry them out with a shovel.
It looks like their roots grew straight out of the cut end. I would have expected roots to grow from a node.


Ahhhh! Sap!

The branches are soft and easy to break so I tried to handle them as gently as possible. The first one was about 4' tall and very bushy.


It makes nice potted plant...if you don't come too close.


So now I have a forest of these in pots. The tallest one is over 6 feet but it's very wobbly because the bush was holding it up. I have it loosely staked but hopefully it will stiffen up now that it's on its own.

I'm not sure what to do with them. I thought about planting them in the empty lot next door but what if the guys that clear the hill get too close with their weed wackers? They could create a poison sap cloud. Yikes.

I could plant them somewhere in my yard but, as I mentioned, these get big and I'm not sure I want 5 giant poisonous trees taking over the hill.

For now they can sit outside my window and think about what they've done.


The front yard is looking a little sparse again. The euphorbias really did do a good job of filling in that empty space.

I have some plans for what I can do to fix it but I'm going to try to be a little more thoughtful this time and plan for the long run.

The Face of Terrier

Look at this little guy. Isn't he cute?

He managed to break into the chicken coop and kill all the chickens. I'm still a little stunned that the flock I've been working with for almost 4 years is just gone.

I feel bad for the dog too. He actually seems pretty upset about the whole thing. He did his best to bury all the bodies but there were just too many to hide. I didn't know until today, but I had 27 chickens.

Animal Control came and took the dog away. After all the chickens died I hate to think about him being put down too but I wasn't sure what else to do. The officer said that unless he attacked a person or another dog he wouldn't have a black mark on his record and if his owners don't pick him up he will likely be adopted quickly because he's so cute and not a pit bull.

I'm hoping that his owners claim him so I have a chance of getting reimbursed for the damage he did.