Chicken Coop V

Wow, where does the time go? Let’s catch up on the last month with the real stars of the show - the chickens. Here they are at 4 days old in their starter home, which is a plastic tote (utility bin).

Taken with the heat lamp on so the World is all red to them! Here are all of them together

Too cute, man, too cute. However, all is not well in the Garden of Eden as one of the dogs has taken to sitting outside the plastic bin and just listening attentively to the noises going on. We’ll come back to her later.

A week passes and the fluffy balls are starting to get their wing feathers.

They’re still indoors and getting too big for the box. But wait, I’ve finally got something done and so it’s moving day. Time to meet the new home, complete with doors this time.

There is still an outside run and Winter Quarters to be added (only 5 months till winter, plenty of time :) )

The heat lamp was installed for night time use, a good layer of straw and wood shavings and in we go.

Alas, this is also the sad part of the story. Our dog transferred her interest from the indoors box to the outside one and spent some time just waiting outside listening to all the scuffling. On one particularly hot day we had a door open the coop with some wire netting covering it. Picture the scene, one dog having a staring contest at 6 chickens. Well pretty soon the contest was over and a chicken who had wondered too close to the wire paid dearly.

But the remaining chickens settled right in and here they at the 1 month mark.

Not so cute now, they look like little reptiles!

Ok, so that’s me up to date, I can go back to getting that outside run completed.