The Girls are waiting to give you a tour of their remodeled house.

One of FabHub's summer projects was to add all the lap siding once they got the wood off the saw mill. Since it is not good to paint fresh cut wood, my fall project will be to paint it and the goat house. We will see how that goes. 

Inside the door is a two tiered roost made from recycled tomato cage wood.

They sleep on the top perch, which is good because the angle is a bit short making the lower perch right in the line of fire for droppings from the top. They use it as a step though so all is good. Underneath the roost is this weeks grass clipping collection. I mow, sweep up the clippings, use some as mulch in the garden, and the rest under the roost. Each week I collect the old grass and put it on the compost pile. This winter I will use sawdust the same way.

Their food and water are positioned near the window at the moment.

The nest boxes aren't in yet, but will be on the wall to the right.

The chicken door into the run.

I really appreciate the rope system.

On my way to work in the morning I stop and pull the door up from the driveway. After the chickens have gone to bed at night, about 9 pm these days, I come out and lower the door. That is much better than having to open the gate and go in the yard. Besides the wet grass, there are too many things that a person could step into in that goat, cow, chicken lot.

This is the run. Plenty of room for five hens.

Another of FabHub's projects was to finish the wire cover for it so that they can't get out while we are on vacation. The black cloth is commercial grade weed block. I had initially put some up over on the right side to try and give the 15 original birds some shade. It worked, but ended up ripping when the wind caught it or the chickens got up there walking around. The new piece in front of the building is sandwiched between two sections of wire to protect it.

It does the job pretty well.

Late in the afternoon the chickens like to go under the building before they head to bed. The shade helps keep that space from heating up. I am going to add a roost under the shade cloth for them too. That way they will have a shady place to sit during the day while we are gone. My plans for a rain gutter seem to have gotten "lost" in the details. I guess they can't have everything.

So that is the end of the tour. 

I will share the roost and hen boxes when they get done. The hens will start laying eggs when they are about 18 weeks old and that is on the first of August so we will get it done when we get back from our road trip.