Chicks And Eggs

I have an egg! Two, actually. There was one yesterday and the day before. Is it too much to hope for a third today?   The old girls are still laying- or at least one of them is!But not until afternoon...

The third pen is finished in the new coop, and already inhabited.  When I fed the little chicks in the brooder yesterday morning, they weren't in the brooder.  They were all over the workshop and causing trouble!  No time to waste, off to work.

Aren't they cute little trouble makers?

The Littles picked a couple of buckets of grass for bedding for them.  I'm out of shavings and the store is closed until Tuesday.  I banded their little feet with white zip ties.  One of the old girls has a black zip tie- she came that way.  I want to put black zip ties on the rest of the old girls.  I banded the three smaller chicks from the previous batch and moved them in with these six.  The rest of my homegrown chicks have also been banded.  I want to get another colour of zip ties for the meat hens.  Then when I let them out next summer, I'll still know which are which.


The fourth pen is well on the way, and should be finished tomorrow.  The third and fourth pens were supposed to be the turkey pen, but alas, that is not to be.  We're down to two turkeys, and they aren't doing well.  I'm not sure what's wrong with them.

#2 built another closet in the basement, and dragged this old shelf out from where it's been since before we moved in.  I had him bring it out to the new coop.  A couple of dividers and it'll make another set of nesting boxes.

The nesting boxes from the old coop are moved in.  The first two pens have their roosts.  It's all coming together quite nicely, if I do say so myself.

The modified floor plan:

Pen 1 will actually be the fourth pen completed.  3 and 4 were the first two.  5 might not happen.  It was supposed to be a little pen for chicks in front of the window.  Mouser uses the window as a door.  Pen 6 will be big enough for at least 5 turkeys, so maybe next year. 

The chickens seem mostly happy in their new digs, though I feel a bit guilty for locking them up so soon.  Better locked up than hawk food though.