Moving Day

It is time to get the chickens out of the house. They are loud, they smell, and their habitat is a blight on my living room. Also, they are slightly more than three weeks old! How time flies.


Chicken Portrait, The Teenage Years: Prop Joe, Stringer, Avon and Marlo.

The coop still isn't entirely ready, but it's good enough so out they go today.


I think the coop is pretty cool; we'll see if mice gnaw through the floor and then weasels get in, or if owls saunter in through an open door, eat our chickens and then roost there (seriously; this is a major concern of chicken raising. Who knew?). The bump-out is the nest box. It has a hinged lid so theoretically you can just lift up the lid and collect eggs. I'll believe it when I see it. There are also three chicken-sized doors around the other sides, and a larger window on the back. On the inside there are two roosts made of closet rods, and a feeder and waterer that we will hang from the roof with chain. We're also going to give them their heat lamp for another few days. More coop pictures here.

We still haven't fenced in their yard; hopefully we'll get that done next weekend. Since predatory birds of about a dozen different types and neighbor dogs are the main chicken predators around here, the fence is a major issue. In the meantime, they can live inside the coop and get used to that.