Mini Hen House

Lizzy, Rachel, and Louisa Catherine are too big for their brooder box now. They had been in the garage for the past couple weeks, using the heat lamp just at night (since it's been down into the 40s).

That was going okay until yesterday, when Tiegan went into the garage to put away a watering can and discovered that the birds had gotten out of the brooder and were roaming around the (messy, dangerous) garage. It was no fun trying to round them up in there, so today Kirk made them a mini hen house:


Remember, the little girls need to stay separate from the big girls until they get used to each other. We'd been carrying the young ones back and forth from garage to their spot in the run each warm day, and that is a huge pain. So to be able to keep them outside, they need a temporary hen house in their section of the run.

Kirk repurposed an old play oven that he built for Tiegan five or six years ago. He drilled some ventilation holes in the sides, added a roosting bar, and put some steps onto the inside of the oven door so it would work as a ramp. He also put an extra piece of plywood across the front and cut a door big enough for the little girls but too small for the big ones to try to follow them in (that will give them a hiding place if they get picked on when we integrate them). 


It's pretty funny to see the chickens trying to decide if they want to go into the oven or not. Hopefully as the dusk falls they will realize that it's nice and cozy in there for the night. If not, Kirk may have to cut the doorway a little wider tomorrow. 

I'm thinking another week of life in the run full time should have everyone ready to try taking down the chicken wire. All the big girls but Dolley are ignoring the new guys, so hopefully we can get them all into one flock soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What to Do With an Unripe Watermelon

Image
Back on the first weekend of August we were so excited to see how big our watermelons were getting. We checked all the signs of ripeness: good sound, firm skin, yellow bottom. So Kirk brought one in: And we sliced it open: Shit. This is not meant to be a yellow watermelon. It only even looks that way in the photo because of the lighting — it's really white throughout. It's Sweet Favorite, and it's supposed to be red.  After the huge wave of disappointment rolled through the room, we all took a bite anyway.  It's not sweet, but it's not sour or bitter, either. It tastes like watermelon, just without the sugar. Kind of like a watermelon-flavored cucumber. It's too big to let go to waste, and we felt obligated to wrap it up and keep it in the fridge until we figured out something to with it.   Dish #1: Watermelon Kachumber Kachumber is an Indian salad that is normally made with cucumber. Here we used some of our unripe w...
Read more

So Where's Everybody From?

Image
I don't have any new garden pictures or updates for you today. I have to say, it's getting kind of hard to get a good photo during the one hour of waning daylight left by the time I get home from work. These are the darkest days now, as we hurtle toward the solstice. Without any photos for me to share with you today, I thought it would be a good time to ask: Where're y'all from? If you have never kept a blog of your own, you might not know that the writer of one gets a bunch of stats about who has hit on the webpage. Most of it's not very interesting: I don't care how many of you use your iPhone vs. a PC or what browser you use to surf the web. The one interesting part, though, is the map . Blogger keeps track of what country readers are in when they check out my page. It's fascinating! Here's my readership map for November: I figured my readers were mostly my Facebook friends, and I know where they are. But now my list of countries is gettin...
Read more

Last Weekend of Winter

Image
It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel...
Read more