Work On Our Off Grid Hyperadobe Chicken Coop Stopped

In today’s episode we explain why work on our off grid hyperadobe chicken coop stopped very suddenly ☹️and will reveal what the shelter is for that Douglas recently built!

We are Douglas and Keri and we quit our jobs, sold everything, and in September of 2022, after a lot of prayer and research, we took a leap of faith and moved to our off grid homestead property in the high desert of Cochise County, Arizona. Follow along with us as we build our off grid homestead property from scratch with our two rebels, Willow & Zoey and our 16 y/o kitty, Boo, and our newest additions Luna and Ursa!

Our baby chicks and Guinea Fowl arrived last week! As of today, we’ve got 36 baby chicks and Guinea Fowl. Since we are behind on finishing our coop, the babies will be staying in the RV with us for a bit. We tried a different type of brooder heater this year and they are called a “Thermo-Brooder”. This is different than the heat lamp style brooder heater that we’ve used in the past. It’s much safer than a lamp and it only uses 25 watts compared to around 250 watts for a traditional heat lamp. It’s also a safer form of heat and doesn’t run the risk of a fire light you can have with a traditional brooder heat lamp.

Work stopped on our off grid hyperadobe chicken coop because the tractor got a flat tire and needs a new innertube. We spent a whole day trying to find one of these tubes locally and were unable to, so we’ve got one on order from Amazon which means we are down the tractor for about a week or so. It’s kind of a bummer, but we are getting some other stuff done in the meantime. Also, Douglas tweaked his back a bit (nothing serious), and this time will give his back a chance to heal too 🙂In the meantime, we lubed the tractor and did an oil/filter change. She is running much better now, just needs that tire repair!

We did get the cleats installed in the coop and also got the window frames placed. We love the way the hyperadobe is coming out and it’s asolid as a rock…almost like we built with concrete. We were also able to get our scaffolding installed since we are getting to a height that is getting difficult to dump the dirt, even for 6’5” Douglas! We made a little tool to help us with tamping the sides to help with keeping the sides of the walls nice and true. Also, we did update our dirt filtering screen. We got some advice from @TerraformTogether and rebuilt the sift screen with a steel "Handy Panel" with 5 inch x 5 inch openings and then overlaid it with 1 inch hardware cloth. It’s working MUCH faster and is using the dirt much more efficiently. It is fine to have small 1 inch sized rocks in your hyperadobe bags.

The dog enclosure was recently expanded to double the size and we filled the additional shelter with baby.....

GOATS!!!

Nigerian Dwarf goats produce the highest butterfat content for the small dairy goats at 6-10% and we would like to breed and milk them eventually. They eat half of what a full sized goat does. They are registered with the ADGA which is the American Dairy Goat Association. The goats we got from Lovitts Mini Farm in Pearce, AZ https://lovittsminifarm.com/ So far, they’ve been really easy and are getting along well with all of the dogs! The dogs love the milk almost as much as the goats HA HA!!! The boy is “Fonzie”, the black/white girl is “Shirley” and the multicolor girl is “Laverne” 🙂 These goats will also help us get some of our native plants (mostly creosote) under control and we will eventually do rotational grazing with them.

Clara, our new little barn cat, is integrating well into our farmstead. She’s got a safe kitty house to sleep in and we did keep her in her house for a full seven days and we’ve been slowly letting her out and learning where we are at. She’s definitely going to make an excellent mouser!! YAY! She did get stuck up in the car engine today, so we will have to make sure and check the engine each time before starting it up!

DISCLAIMER: Douglas and Keri are not professional contractors and the information contained in this video is for entertainment purposes only. Please make sure to do your own research!

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All the artwork for this channel are original creations by Douglas because he is an incredible artist!