The Hen House

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So you know that Jeff built a new hen house. It is 4×6 x 6 tall. It is for the girls to sleep in and lay their eggs in it.  They will have the run to…run around in.

Here is Jeff the other day starting to paint.

I painted too…crawled out of bed threw on some clothes and my rubber boots (obviously didn't fix hair) and started painting.

I chose Twilight Gray and Powdered Snow for the colors.  I have some things to hang on the coop but we didn't want to be banging on it tonight, we wanted to let the girls get settled.

Here you can see where the girls will roost, Jeff was just going to have them fly up there, but he is going to make them a ladder tomorrow…I think.

Here is where they will lay their eggs and this will go inside the hen house.

It took all these guys to carry it over onto the bricks that Jeff has it sitting on. 

I found some "cheep" linoleum tile at Home Depot and Jeff put that on the floor, it will make it easier to keep clean. Then I added pine shavings on top. I also got an oil pan to put under where they poop, will see how that goes, it' s covered with pine shavings so not sure what good it will do…just figured it would keep the poop off the floor.

I put shelf liners thingies on the bottom to cushion the eggs when the girls getting moving the pine shavings around.

Then Jeff attached the chicken wire to the hen house all around so nothing can get in. He made a little ramp for the girls to walk up to get in and out. The mountain dew bottle holds water and apple cider vinegar, when the girls want it they go over and nudge the little silver thing underneath and it comes out. Brilliant.

Fiji checks it out.

"Hey look at all the room" she says.

"I know what I will put in there."

And when I got back from getting my nails done…

…neat color eh?

I checked eggs and there was one! Yay! This transition to the hen house is gonna be a snap….or so I thought.

Jeff took the old coop apart till he could take it out the door.

This is the coop graveyard…ha! Although Jeff says other birds might use the red one for their nests. I think he might end up taking apart and burning the others, Fiji's old mini coop-er got trashed in the microburst we had last year as did the chukar pen (not pictured)…Jeff cut the other smaller run the girls used to use in half, you can see it laying there, and that is what the babies are in right now.

The girls check out where their coop used to be. "Hey didn't a big red thing used to be here?"

Stella preferred to hang out by the water cooler, unsure of what is going on. Shhhh…next thing on my honey do list is a new water cooler cover….this one was mangled in the microburst.

So now the run looks huge and bare. I need to plant some more plants aound the edges,  I need to go get some wood from our neighbor and make a bath station.

So after Fiji going in and laying an egg and Jeff said Mindy went in too, I thought hey this is great, they have a nice new place to sleep and lay eggs and they will be so happy….NOT!

Chickens don't like change I guess, but really they never knew anything but the red coop, especially Stella, she has always been in it and she is over 3.  So it started to get dusk and they are walking all over the place and bawling.  Mindy is looking up like "how can I get in the tree?" Mork actually flew up and tried to climb the fence till she got to the top and realized "I can't get to the tree". So then they went over and got on the saw horse thing (at the far end of the run), and I was like "Jeff they are gonna sleep on that" and he was like "they will figure it out", but it got darker, and once it gets dark they don't do much, so I picked Stella up off the saw horse and carried her around and put her on a roost and she stayed. I did the same with Fiji, but she came out the little door…Stella was all nestled in and I noticed had even pooped on the wall….oops maybe the bars needed to be farther away from the wall. Ha! So then I took Mindy in, same thing she came out…so we waited till it got really dark and I did all of them and they stayed. So it was harder than I thought. I do know when you add new chickens to a flock they say it is best to do it at night.

So we will see how they are in the morning. I hope they jump down ok, Stella is the biggest and oldest, so I am sure the ladder will help.

I have quite a few people emailing me about the babies. Well since they are in the bigger brooder they are a lot harder to get a hold of cause they run to the back and well I am not climbing in, so I hope these will do.

Maggie, Polly, Aunt Bea and Shirley

Here's Laverne.

Polly was all blond and now she is all red. You can see Aunt Bea looking more Barred Rock every day, same with Maggie in her Silver Laced Wyandotte.

I will try and get a hold of one and take a picture out of the brooder, cause they don't look as big as they are in these pictures, I did manage to hold Maggie the other day but didn't take a picture.

Well that is enough chicken stories for now. Hope you have enjoyed it. Cross your fingers all is well in the morning.

Have an awesome Thursday and thanks for stopping in.