More Chicken Coop Details

I took some more pictures of the movable pen that Kevin made so you could see a few details that weren't finished when I posted about it. We put flight netting over the top and added a pole so that we could walk around in it. Zip ties made the whole thing very quick to assemble. There is not a nail or screw anywhere in the pen. We were going to make it 6' tall but changed it to 4' to accommodate the fencing we had left over from a previous project. Every time I go in there to put feed in the feeders I wished we had gone with the 6' because I usually have my hair up in a clip and it invariably gets snagged in the netting as I am walking bent over. Nice!



I slid a shovel through the fencing to make a fat perch so that Missy, our little handicapped poult, could roost. Her foot was injured, I think from big, fat Flipper stepping on her from when she was tiny and in the pen with him. We kept two poults in with Flipper for company when he hatched so he wouldn't get lonely. Now they are inseparable. Her foot has gotten better and she can perch normally although she has a funny rolling gate and cannot run very fast.



Buddy is attached to the little chicks that were in with him too. When the chicks roost at night Buddy sleeps right below them as close as he can get cause he cannot get up on the roost to be next to them.

Here is a closeup of the gate detail. Kevin used a chain link fence gate hinge for the door. He had to modify it a little cause the plastic pipe was too large.

The top hinge, pretty handy huh.

At work we got something delivered in this huge wooden box so I asked if I could have it and we brought it home. It made a find little chicken house. My attempt at making a ramp is a little rickety but it worked. Flipper looks like a goose now. He is only seven and a half weeks old. Amazingly the turkeys that are older than him are small in comparison. I feel guilty saying this but if you wanted a bird strictly for meat an Ebdon goose would be it. They grow so fast and eat tons of grass and weeds and would need minimal feed once they were a few months old. I guess they reach mature size at like three or four monthe old. (Sorry Flipper and Buddy for saying that)

Speaking of turkeys, here they are and boy do we have a problem. We do not want to put them in with the older birds yet so we have left them roaming the yard close to the house so we could keep an eye on them. (We have a Coopers Hawk that visits our pond looking for frogs. I got to see him swoop down and catch one a couple weeks ago, really cool!) But then the turkeys discovered that the deck rail is a really nice place to roost. Well you can imagine! Eight turkeys walking all over the table and lots and lots of mess under the rail so now they have a little fenced area off by themselves. I loved watching them run all over the yard though. They looked like the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park.

See ya next time,

Beth

New Chicken/Goose/Turkey Pen and New Door

It has been such a busy month that I will have to update with pictures, not much explanation. We have peaches! Really exciting but the only problem is that we did not spray them soon enough. We were not sure what we wanted to use so we got nothing. Consequently, we have infiltrators. We wanted to stick with an organic something but could find nothing, later tried a spray from the local store but we were told that we need to spray in April. Oh well, it's fun seeing the peaches grow even if they will be buggy.

We also have nectarines and pears too. I did not get a picture of the pears but you all know what pears look like.


Here is Buddy and Flipper. They are getting so huge! We take them to the pond every nite for a swim. Look at Flipper, he has the life all stretched out, hanging out by the pond, munching on grass.

The only problem is that, as you can see from the picture below, Flipper would rather lay on the raft with us than swim by himself! He is one lazy goose. He even flops down by his food so he can eat laying down.

Buddy (that is the name we decided on for the younger, grayer gosling) loves to swim. He is so fun to watch, I will try to get a video soon, he swims four or five feet under water at a time.

My new phone is pretty cool. It is a Razor V9, I think. Ever since my camera broke I have been using my phone for my blog pictures. As you can see from the above picture, it even has a frame feature. Kinda cheesy frame choice on my part but awesome anyway.

Our clematis is blooming, a close-up below.

This weekend we decided to finally install our new sliding glass door. BLAH! Way too much work. It is still not done. We worked all weekend, besides having to go to a last minute going away party and all day at our Father's houses for Fathers day, at 9:00pm Sunday with work looming in the morning I said "We will finish it tomorrow!" (It's tomorrow and here I am blogging and he is out there waiting for me.)

Here is the old rotten sill, now all new and not rotten!

Our new door.

Cleo helping us put it together.

The big, huge hole and rain outside!

Here is our new pen. It's made from PVC drain pipe. It is really easy to put together but we cannot put a tarp over it cause it would blow away so they have a house inside of it.

I wrapped the fencing at the bottom with wire to hold it tight.

Here is the door frame and below are the happy chicks to be out of the house and we are glad they are out too.
Here they are running around through the daylilys behaving like little chicks should!

Yay!! It's SUMMER!

Beth

Gosling Update

It seems as if I have a strange gosling. The gentleman that gave me the egg said that they were mostly Ebden, a little bit something else but they would look like an Ebden. Ebdens are all white. Well Flipper is all Ebden looking but the second one is definitly not. The first difference that I noticed was that he seeemed darker, Flipper's newly growing down is snow white but the younger one is darker. Then I noticed some definite dark tail feathers. Very grey, some white but mostly grey. And then it was strange because the baby feathers on top of his head in one spot were alwalys messed up. Well look at him now.

How funny is his head! I guess he must be a tufted variety. Below is a picture of some tufted geese that I found on the web...(sorry if they are copyrighted, believe me I'm not making any profit from these and I would be glad to give you credit if I knew where I found them)...His head looks just like theirs.

You can really see his little fluffy bump in this next picture.

Here he is next to Flipper and you can see how much darker he is. I am so glad they are going to be different. I can't wait til they get bigger and grow all their feathers.