Coop Crazy

The girls are now 4.5 weeks old (sorry we got busy with the garden and have neglected keeping everyone updated). Elinore has almost all her head feathers and a bushy skirt of fluff on her underside. She perches on our arms and even fell asleep on my hand the other night. The other two are in awkward adolescence and are scraggly with odd bits of baldness and adult feathers starting to poke out.

3 week old pictures of our Peeps

Frankly, chicken poo reeks and I can't wait to get them outside in the beautiful coop we have built. The run is completed. It has a nice big door for humans and a smaller chicken door near the fruit trees so we can use temporary fencing to let them free range and clean up the rotten fruit fallings without touching the garden beds. Mike affixed two long branches for perches int he corners. The finishing touch is an automatic water fountain that we hope to hook up to a rain barrel to keep the girls from thirst. We hope this is not only sustainable but will also make winter water changing less painful and long weekends worry free (well . . . more do-able anyways).

Elinore is 4 weeks old!!!

So now that the run is ready we have turned our attention to the hen house. So I designed and made a new brooder since the other brooder was also the hen house and I couldn't very well saw windows while the girls were scratching around in there. So with the new brooder built and girls inside I hope to start hen house completion soon! Stay tuned friends . . . .

Lessons: The run is the area chickens spend much of the day eating, scratching, rolling around in the dust (called a dust bath), and stuff. The hen house is the enclosed area where they escape really bad weather, sleep, and lay eggs.