Vacation - Yay!! Now What?

Everyone looks forward to time away from it all. Vacation is, every now and then, a necessity for our sanity. So, when we finally booked a vacation back to North Carolina to visit family and friends, we were so excited! Almost two weeks away from it all. It's gonna be awesome!

Oh...

Wait...

What about the chickens?!?! We can take the dogs to the kennel, but chicken boarding....yeah, not so much. 

We've taken short trips for a few days and had someone just check on the birds every couple of days, but for an extended trip, it takes a little different planning. What can you do if you have chickens and you are going to be away overnight, for the weekend, or even longer? 

Here are our suggestions to make it easier to get away...even with chickens (and dogs)! 

Overnight Trip

For an overnight trip, we have done a few things that make it easy to know the chickens will be okay. 

• First, and foremost, we made sure that we have a secure coop. 
• Large feeder and waterer be sure that they won't run out. We make sure we fill both fresh before we leave. 
• An automatic chicken door from http://adorstore.com...seriously, this thing has been the best thing ever. Not only does it open and close for our birds when we are out of town, it also keeps us from having to drag ourselves out of bed to the coop every single morning or rush home from a nice dinner (or, let's be realistic - grocery shopping or work is more likely). Worth. Every. Penny.
• A covered run to keep the overhead predators at bay. We often see hawks and other large birds flying over our property, so a covered run was a must for us.

Long Weekend

Over Thanksgiving, we traveled for a long weekend. Although the chickens would have likely been just fine during a normal weekend, the weather was supposed to get below freezing at night. So, we felt we needed someone to check and make sure that they had unfrozen water. Here is what we did:

• All of the same items we had for an overnight trip. 
• Since we wouldn't be home to let the chickens free range everyday, we wanted to have a boredom buster for them, so we cut a pumpkin in half for them to peck at. Pumpkin is a natural de-wormer and it keeps them from getting too stir-crazy. 
• We enlisted the help of a good friend to come by at least every other day to make sure that they had enough food, remained safe, and had access to fresh water.  

Week (or longer) Vacation

In January, we made a cross country trip to visit friends and family. We were gone a total of 13 days, so our plan of action was a little different. At first, we thought we would just have someone check on the birds periodically and we would leave our dogs with Farmer John's parents or board them. Honestly, that probably would have been fine, but, as we thought about it more, we decided for that length of time, we would feel more comfortable with having a house sitter. Plus, our 6 year old received a fish (Optimus Prime - yep, that's a boy for you!) for his birthday and let's just say if we came home to a transformer who had met his demise, we might have a major tragedy on our hands. So, here are our recommendations for being gone more than a week: 

• All of the same things we did for a long weekend. 
• Enlist the help of a house sitter. Our house sitter came highly recommended from friends and is a member of our church. She was eager to help, trustworthy and worth her weight in gold! 
• Make sure you have plenty of feed available. Seriously. Have more than enough for what your chickens normally eat. Then double it. Learn from our mistake. Apparently, our chickens decided to turn into little pigs while we were gone and we ended up having to call and pay for a bag of feed at our local feed store for our sitter to pick up a few days before we returned. 
• Take the time to walk your house sitter through your normal routine and show them where to find everything and how you do things before you leave.
• Last, but definitely not least, take 10 minutes to type out (or write down) everything that you have discussed with your house sitter. I learned this from a family I used to house sit for in college. I loved taking care of things while they were gone because there was never any question as to what needed to be done. A complete list of daily and weekly tasks, as well as contact info, emergency numbers and veterinarian information goes a long way toward a smooth vacation for you AND your house sitter. (Because, inevitably, your normally easy to care for pets will have some sort of injury or illness while you are gone - just ask our Boston Terrier, Suzie, about her toenail issue and trip to the vet.) 

Then, step back, take a deep breath and enjoy your vacation! You've earned it!

Little Farmer G enjoying a big snow at Nana's house!

Might as well bury yourself in the snow...