The Chickens Have Arrived!

Now I'm only talking about a couple of them. Six to be exact. A friend in town got 2 chickens at Easter and now wanted to find them a 'forever' home. Well, welcome Fefe & Marley! So sweet to have domesticated chickens. I just wish they weren't so darn small!

The other 4 come from a friends farm and have not been domesticated at all. I adopted 2 Barred Rocks & 2 Australorps. They are twice as big as Fefe & totally scared of people. Not to mention they pick on the smaller girls. Granted I KNOW about the pecking order thing, but I think since Fefe is the only one laying eggs right now (a small blue one, so cute!) that SHE should be alpha female. Guess it's hard to explain to the big ones.

The hardest part is that the chickens have to be locked up in the coop for about 7 days. That way once they are let out, they will always know where their home is. We'll see how this works for the girls though. I'm thinking I will have to trim the wings of the smaller ones as they've already tried getting out of town (i.e. the coop) twice! Too smart that Marley is.

Enjoy the pictures of the coop. I will have pictures of the girls on another day!

I have been wanting chickens for a while. Yes, chickens. We had them growing up and I have fond memories of them, well except for one incident with a rooster, but that's for a whole other post! So after trying 2 times previously, my hubby has finally finished my chicken coop. Third time's the charm! He saw a coop made with a truck cap in one of the many chicken books I checked out at the library. So he went with that one and here's what it looks like:

See right next to/above the white block of pine shavings? There's a handle with a latch. You undo that one and the one on the opposite side of the coop and just take something & shove it through. That will push all the pine shavings w/chicken poop (under the roosts) out. Pretty easy peasy! He also made it mobile, but the wheels aren't doing too well with the weight of it. They've turned wonky lol.

This is the backside. Undo the latches, pull it open & collect the eggs out of the nesting boxes. Pretty darn easy! LOVE this feature. My next coop (or version 4 if you will) would have nesting boxes protruding out the backside with a little hinged eve (covered w/roofing stuff) that you would just lift open & collect the eggs. Hee hee


This is the front of the coop. The horizontal white thing is where the hatch is. Pull the bolt out & open the hatch. Out comes the girls! The cap is open we made a sturdier cover to go over the opening. It's made out of fencing.


Here's the hatch open. There are peach skins on the plate next to it. I put it in through the hatch so the girls can eat it. Yummm!


Here's one inside picture of the nesting boxes. They are under the roosting area. You can see my Barred Rocks. The Australorp's are too scared right now to come out of one of the nesting boxes. Poor girls.


Here are the roosts. Plenty of light so maybe I'll get eggs year around? I can wish can't I?