Coop renovation

The weekend before last we built a new coop for the chickens.

The old one was only meant to be temporary anyway and it was difficult to deal with. I didn't expect the chickens to start laying yet and there wasn't really a spot for nesting boxes.

This one is a easier for them to access and they have a nest box area contained inside the coop. It's the part on the left. Those boards swing up on a hinge to the right. They have been laying there already. They can go underneath the nesting area too, so if I don't let them out at daylight they've got somewhere they can go to get down off the roost.

They seem to like it so far.

It's all repurposed scrap material. Building out of scrap makes the job go really slow. Hunting pieces that will work and then having to go to plan B when you don't have the right material will double the amount of hours in a build. That and having four chickens and a dog right in the middle of the construction zone. It also rained about four inches the first night after I started the build so it was a mud bog the entire time. Never fails...

Chickens

Jet lagged from Cleveland 

Chicks arrived on the thirteenth of August from Meyer Hatchery. The post office called at about 6:30 a.m. and left a cryptic message that I was somehow able to decipher. The post office is very nearby and I drove around there at around 8:30 to pick them up.

The people at the post office were pretty tickled with the little peeps chirping through the box and actually checked my i.d. before they handed them off to me.

Pit Bull & chicks

Their home for now is in the garage in a kiddy pool. There is a coop already made that they will move into once they are big enough.

I wasn't very keen on ordering chickens through the mail but it turns out that it is so commonplace that it works well enough.

We ordered six pullets or hens. They are mixed brown egg layers so we don't know exactly which kind they are yet. I believe that one is a Buff Orpington.