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.

The Goats are still here too

The chickens have been the most entertainment lately, but the goats are still here.

There are still 19 of them. There should be fewer, but we holding them longer this year.

That does mean they are bigger and harder on the fences.

Here Fred and Rhubarb use the wire to scratch an itch.

Rose and her girls are still hanging out together. 

Her girls are the ones we had to bottle feed this year.

This is Apple.

She will be leaving when the boys do. 

That is all about the goats. They just eat, sleep, and give me reason to have to clean their house.

The Hens at 4 Months

Mavis

Mabel

Edna

Thelma

Louise

Enjoying an afternoon snack with the girls.

All they leave behind is the green of the rind.

The Hens Are Now Ruling the Roost

After we moved the chickens from their big brooder pen they needed to learn that their new roosting spot needs to be in the hen house. Not in trees, not on fence posts, and sure not back in the chain link pen. 

The hen house isn't really big enough for 15 birds, but we also let them out in the yard that surrounds it every day. When they outgrew that and really needed more room to roam we let them out into the pasture.

They took off with great ideas of adventure.

They spent time checking out the woods, the goat yard, and they enjoyed every minute of it. When the roosters started getting too feisty one of the Buff Orpington hens (the gold ones) took to slipping through the fence and lounging in the garden during the day. She would come back to the hen house to roost at night and then hide again the next day.

It is now two weeks later and the roosters are gone.

The yard is quiet. Several of the roosters loved to crow at anything.

The hens are far less stressed and not bothering the garden.

Yet anyway. There isn't anything ripe to eat at the moment.

This was the rooster in charge.

From the beginning he is the one I would have kept if I wanted to keep a rooster.

He is also a photo bomber.

This was one of the other interesting roosters.

The flecks on the end of his wings were interesting.

This guy was finishing a crow.

I hope he enjoyed it.

He knows there was food in there at one time.

Almost 14 weeks ago, when they were small it seemed like so much!

Now we are down to 5 hens after the 10 rowdy roosters have left. 

They should start laying in about a month.

We  will need to build some nest boxes soon. 

Then the next project will be to teach them how to lay the eggs in the boxes.

That should be fun.

The Hen House

We have chickens so we needed a hen house.

Here we have a wall and a floor. Jake is checking out the faux wood vinyl flooring. I know sort of crazy, but I promise, it makes cleaning much easier. We put it down so that it would be under the side walls to keep things from getting under it.

Two walls with giant window holes.

One day FabHub came home and found this had happened to the temporary chicken house.

The wind picked up that whole thing and flipped it.

The chickens had spent part of the day enjoying their freedom and were under the red building when he got home. Luckily they had been out roaming enough that they knew where to go for safety. They were a bit skittish about going back in there that night. Their house blew away, I don't blame them.

Before the roof went on we added hardware cloth to close the roof vents on both the upper and lower sides of the roof. The part that is nailed to the plywood will be covered with siding when we do get that sawmill lumber. The wire is put there to keep any creatures from climbing into the building. It will also keep birds wild birds from having easy access to the chicken food.

Then the roof went on. Work in progress in this picture. It also still needs the rain gutter. I want to collect the fresh water for them to have when they are locked up. The hens will eventually be out in the woods quite a bit, but at night and while we are away they will be confined to the building and the fenced yard.

Then the windows went in.

Why are the boards on the door?

Because there are 19 curious creatures willing to take up residence.

The goats checked out the construction a few times before they were blocked out.

Then we put up the perimeter fence.

And added the black weed block as a sun shade.

And added some fence wire over the top to keep in flying escapees.

And added some more fence wire and sun shade over the top to keep in creative escapees.

And then some more fence wire over the top for those highly focused escapees.

Now it looks a mess, but it will get fixed up when we don't have so many potential escapees. One other thing we need to add is some hardware cloth over the screened part of the windows. Adding it now will also mean the edges are under that siding when it gets put on. The regular window screen won't keep a determined intruder out.

The inside is very roomy for the five or six chickens that we will be keeping. There is lots of light, fresh air and space. This winter when they don't want to go out so much there will be plenty of space for them to stay in, watch it snow, drink some tea, and maybe do some knitting. I am currently using grass clippings as bedding. Between it and the vinyl flooring clean up is very easy. Yes, I need to do that.

The roosts are angled into the bottom of the windows at the moment. They need to be fixed so that one side has two tiers of roost poles and the other side has a couple of nest boxes. Right now there are too many chickens in there to limit the space and the hens aren't laying yet so the boxes would just become roosts and we don't want them to learn that habit. So that is another upgrade to be added.

That is the hen house. If you look closely at the bottom of the picture below you can see where the chickens new hiding spot is. We had originally closed them off from being under the building, but the shade and grass under there was something they deserved to have access to and now they do. Normally, they would be out under the sunshade, but when I got home today they were all under the building. 

When it comes to the wood that went into this particular building, it ended up being one of the most expensive that we have out here on the farm. It was supposed to get the normal saw mill lumber like everything else has around here, but the timing for that didn't work out. So we ended up buying the 2x4s. There aren't really that many, but when you figure we haven't purchased hardly any for any of the other buildings, it adds up quickly. Personally, I think the chickens will appreciate it. 

12 Week Wonders

The chickens have grown a lot! We moved them to a permanent building for more space.

More about that in another post.

Here are the roosters wondering when I will let them out into the great woods.

I have been keeping them in the hen house yard so that it becomes home.

I am pretty sure they will come running for chicken scratch snacks so will probably let them out to play this weekend. It should be a great adventure.

Here are three of the five hens wondering when the boys are going to leave.

The roosters have started to get a bit rowdy.

Erin, this one is for you. I have been wondering why this rooster has brown spots. 

I thought he got pooped on, but the spots seem to be part of the feathers.

This rooster is wondering if he will stay with the hens or not. 

Some people think it is good to keep a rooster for safety.

I haven't decided yet. He will be the last to leave when the day comes.

Another one for Erin, I am wondering where this rooster gets his highlights done. 

I never looked up Lakenvelders, but the gold color seems to be odd.

HAHA on the last one, like I would care about coloring!

Who's Who? Are You a Roo?

Another post about birds that "might" be one thing or another.

I think I will try specific breeds if I get more.

I want some red birds too, so that might happen.

The chicks are now 10 weeks old and getting some personality.

I let them out of their pen most afternoons and on the weekends.

From what I have read this is very likely a Dominique rooster. I say it like that because they look a lot like Barred Rock birds, or do BRs look like Ds? Whatever - this guy shows his rose comb while the others all have the typical upright comb of a Barred Rock. And if you notice his light stripes are a bit "fuzzier" than the bars of the bird next to him. Oh and the way he carries himself, wide and low, sort of says Dominique too. 

I found a better comparison picture for the Barred Rock.

Clear as mud right? I thought so too.

I am still guessing that this is a Black Australorp hen, there are two like this without combs, 

but they could be Jersey Giant hens too.

You can see most of the other black birds in this picture.

All the birds enjoy their free range time.

This one is almost easy, a Delaware hen, there is just one of these, 

though there is one other bird that must be a Delaware rooster.

He is very brave too. Comes right out to see what I am doing.

Here you can see the Barred Rock rooster's comb.

I think that guy in the back is the one that stated crowing this week, but there are three like him so hard to tell. I spend time out there watching them and causing chaos with oyster crackers, but I still can't tell those three apart.

Due to the lack of comb at all, I think this Buff Orpington is a hen, there are two of these running around. The bigger one is more front and center than the smaller one, but usually they are both in the background with all these other aggressive birds running around.

Speaking of aggressive. 

The idea that this is a Lakenvelder rooster is not really in question.

He always has that look about him.

Wind blown and running for snacks. 

Or are they thinking of turning me into dinner?

Too many roosters, but not enough to take over the farm.

At least Jake hopes they don't anyway.

He looks a bit concerned. First the goats, now chickens.

Or is he just making sure I don't forget to share some bread with him.

More likely the latter.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Remember those who gave it all for the rest of us.