Follow the shenanigans of a woman's attempt at going green while trying to raise a little one on a small ranch in Arizona with chickens and horses.
The Chickies in their new home
Okay, so it’s not painted yet, but I really needed to get these guys into their chicken coop because as you will see in the pictures below, they have gotten BIG and were about to run out of room in the chicky bunker. We got the roof done really late, so I don’t have pictures of the completed roof with ondura shingles. I’ll take those when I get done painting.
So, the next steps- Fencing, Painting, Cutting a chicken size exit door once the fence is up.
Painting it is probably going to be my favorite part. It’s where I can get creative and make it look really cute. Pics will be coming soon!
weather sealing before egg-hutch lid goes on
Bedding for comfort, back area will be divided for roosting but right now is just area for food/water, easy access
Chickies in their new home, headed straight for food of course, see how big they've gotten?!
Lots more room for the chickies!
More Water Please….
As my chickies are getting bigger, they go through more feed and more water daily. They’re now going through almost twice the original amount. They drain their water and food bins and then promptly tip them over. HA!
The sizes I have now are 1 quart… I should have gotten the 3 quart ones. I ran over to the store today to get bigger feeders. It was inevitable, as will be really big huge feeders when we move them outdoors.
The chicken coop is up on all 4′s, 3 walls are erected. We’re making a modification to the current plan to allow the side of it to completely hinge open. It will make cleaning it a lot easier. Apply face mask, Insert rake, PULL….. Voila!
We got the wood for the roof trusses last night, just gotta cut ‘em and mount ‘em. Then a little plywood, some ondura roofing left over from when Ray built his observatory, and then we’re on to the fencing.
Fencing: We’ve decided to go with wood posts and chicken wire. This will let us build a nice big enclosure that is sturdy and build a gate into it. It will also make enclosing the top of it a heck of a lot easier, which is a pinal county requirement anyway.
Busy couple of weeks here
Classes just started back up, work keeps me busy, and trying to help get a couple people’s blogs up and going over the next week so posts will be down a bit. Ray started working on the fencing for the chicken coop with getting the poles ready and stuff…
Chickies are doing fantastic, and they’re such little pigs! They’re going through food faster, they’ve almost tripled in size since I got them. I’m moving their light source up more and more to prep them for outside living.
So that’s it for now, just a small update.
Building the Chicky Bunker- Pics & Supplies
Okay, major props out to my husband (aka the Dear Astronomer guy)!
We went to Home Depot last night for the supplies and Ray ended up putting the chicky bunker together by himself because it was late and I needed to go to bed before my overnight shift. I went to bed at 8pm, woke up 2 hours later and he was finishing it. WOW! No ladies, you can’t have him, he’s mine!
Pics are below along with laundry list of supplies we used. Unfortunately, the cull wood bin was pretty much bone empty so we ended up having to get new lumber. If I had waited a couple days I could have gotten the pieces, but I kinda had to light a fire under our heiny’s because the chicks are already paid for and waiting.
So, here’s what we used:
- A 4x4x10 untreated wood board, cut down into five 2-ft sections. (for the posts that connect bottom to top)
- Two 2x6x10 untreated wood boards, cut down into a 2 ft sections (for sides) and a couple 3 ft sections. (for the long front/back pieces)
- 3 rolls of 24x5ft chicken wire- The kind that are SMALL squares so the chicks can’t get their heads stuck in it since they’re so small right now.
- Recycled rubber mat (for the bottom).
- Spare thick particle boards for the sides (for strength)
- Misc wood from our lumber stack (lid, etc.)
- Wood screws ( 2 inch)
This was all picked up at Home Depot. Rubber mat was Ray’s genius idea and he found it in the garden section. I was worried about using particle board as the base and it getting saturated and smelly and he came up with the rubber mat plan. Woot, go honey!
Sorry about the orange pics, I guess he doesn’t have a flash on his phone camera!
Setting up the sides
Ray added spare particle board we had laying around for strength on the sides.
This is the recycled mat base, making Chicky Poo an easy cleanup! woot!
Bunker ready to go. In about 5 hours, it will be full of wood shavings and baby chicks.
When choosing a twitter name….
So I went to set up twitter and chickypoo was taken, so was every other variant I could come up with… So I just figured I would do twitchickypoo… cuz it’s twitter…
After saving my settings, I re-read it…
twitch icky poo, or tw itch icky poo…
I don’t care… I’m keepin’ it.
