Playing Chicken

Playtime for chickens? Sounds really odd. But, it is definitely something we will be trying over the next few weeks. I want to try the small plastic container with treats and will be hanging some cds up, I have a ton that I don't listen to anymore. I think we might see about a swing or some extra up and down area for them.

Chicken Toys


I love some of her ideas. As we work on our coop, I can imagine our flock will be getting some of these toys as well to have in their run. Probably try and keep them (the toys) in the run instead of all over the yard like my other kids do!

Speaking of my other kids... gotta be Mommy and show off a bit.  Here's my 2 favorite kids in the whole wide world!!!

 

Working On The New Coop

Work on the chicken coop starts tomorrow and hopefully, the plan is to finish it tomorrow.

This is the area they will be going

We are going to clapboard both ends and have openings in the front and back. That will be wire covered, also buried wire around the perimeter. The top is vented front and back for good air flow and we are not closing in the bottom to keep air flow there as well. Their yard space will be to the left on the picture, the house is to the right about 100 feet away or so. Of course, all the wood has to be moved (yay) and then away we go with tearing down the old coop and building them a new safe home. Thinking of painting the coop this time, but not certain yet. We have three plastic containers that we are going to mount in on the sides as nest boxes, hopefully they will use them. Right now, I have to do the yard walk daily because they don't like to nest in their current cramped quarters. I am going to use a few plastic balls or eggs in the boxes to help them get the hint, I hope it works!

Within the next week or so, we are going to get a rooster and possibly some more hens that are about 6 weeks old or so.  :-D

The coop is for protection and feeding and laying and hopefully, nesting. The chicks all get to free range during the day all over the yard. The only time we switch is bad weather and if the dog is out (she doesn't play well), so we keep them separated.

I'm loving our chicks and can't wait to get more!

Another helpful site

This one is more specified. How to keep predators away from your chickens. After losing our last set of chicks we had gotten, we knew that we needed to work more on predator proofing. My hubby, being the sort of guy he is, found this site that same morning so that we could get to work on our coop and keeping our hens safe!

Small Farm

Backyard Chickens.com

These are some of the places I head to when looking things up that are chicken or garden related.

Backyard Chickens

The Best, in my opinion, chicken site I have found. There is SO much information on that site, from getting started with chicks to swapping and selling them. Plus, there is an entire forum full of helpful folks that can and will give you their opinions on any subject matter you bring up. For the visual folks, many pictures of different breeds as well as random shots of folks, their flocks, coops and everything in between.

Welcome

Welcome to our new spot on blogger :-) 

We are hoping to share our adventures outdoors with 2 children, 3 cats, 1 dog, several chickens and the wide world outside our house. We are currently building a new home for our 3 hens that we have and will be adding some chicks and hopefully a rooster soon, stay tuned for pictures! 

The garden is planted, now it's the waiting game for sprouts. All from seeds this year and smaller so that we can handle it better. I'm fairly certain that I see sprouts for tomatoes, cantaloupes and pumpkins. Hopefully, here soon we will see more tomatoes, watermelons, green onions and all the herbs. I'll add pictures as it all grows. 

  The beginning of our garden.

2 of our hens, the third was being camera shy. We have one Dominique, and 2 reds.