April, 2008

On the Wednesday after Easter the local farm store had a new batch of day-old chicks.  We got two Buff Orpingtons, four Ameraucanas, three Silverlaced Wyandottes, and three Brown Leghorns.  Right away we noticed one of the Leghorns not doing well and it died within a few days.  We had anticipated possibly losing a few and that's why I got twelve total... it ain't like we need that many eggs. Of course, the next day after work I came home to find that Janet and the girls had been by the farm store and picked up a Rhode Island Red to make it an even twelve again. Here they are at a few days old. Below, two weeks old.  I must've forgotten to take a picture at one week.  You can see the wing feathers coming in.

We had nonstop rain for what seemed like forever.  After renting a backhoe to remove a couple of large mounds of dirt around the house, we could finally start on the coop between rainstorms and floods.  I didn't want to just build a shack with a dirt floor and I didn't want the expense of a large walk-in coop with a wood floor so, after looking online at what seemed like dozens of picture of peoples' coops, I finally decided on an elevated coop with a hardware cloth floor and nesting boxes on the ends.  It originally was going to be an A-frame but we decided on a stepped roof.  A little more framing but it seemed to be a little roomier inside.  I went back and forth on dimensions several times and the design changed almost daily... by the time I brought the materials home and started, I was still making it up as I went along.

Attaching the hardware cloth floor.  About where the post-hole digger in the background is standing is where the huge, five-foot high dirt mound with trees actually growing out of it used to be.  It's all flat now.  Hopefully the grass seeds will grow... in spite of the chickens.

Framing.

Here, Alison is helping to hold a siding piece while I mark it for fitting.

Just a plain shingled roof.  I just couldn't get myself to like the corrugated stuff and a tin (or other metal) roof was a bit too expensive.