Sunday, August 4, 2013

The Journey Begins

This week my husband and our two daughters will join the ranks of raisers of Backyard Chickens.  I find it slightly bizarre how excited I am about this prospect.  It may be that I was needing a new adventure to get excited about.  But I am enjoying every minute of the preparations.   And who can deny the attraction of a few day old chick?

We've inherited an old coop from some friends.  It's basically a large dog house that they modified  And we've furthered the modifications by adding a nesting box wing.  It's primed and ready to be painted.  A piece of what I am enjoying about this is the challenge of doing this with spending as little money as possible.  With the inheriting of the old coop and using scraps of things we have around the house and one trip to The Habitat for Humanity Re-Store for a few other pieces we will have our coop ready for "The Ladies" and have spent only $20!   I love the feel of that!  And it sure doesn't hurt to see the girls (that would be my daughters) excited and ready to help and learn.  It's been a great family project and The Ladies aren't even here yet.

Of course The Ladies (really The Babies at this point) won't be quite ready for the coop.  They ship tomorrow from the hatchery.  We should have them sometimes between Tuesday and Thursday!   And until they are coop ready they will be in a pen that we put together for brooding.  Again we were able to recycle and reuse!  The Babies will be in the same pen that my daughters played in.  Although they will have the benefit of a heat lamp and other accessories.

Now if I can only figure out how high to keep the lamp to get the brooding pen to hold at the right temperature.

No comments:

Post a Comment