Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Chicken run and chicks!

Finally I built and finished the run for the chooks. Much needed since we went and got a rooster and two chicks. Yes we now have two chicks. On Friday last week we went, well Brian and Jazynthe went and bought another chick. this time a Blue Laced so we have a Silver and a blue to breed chicks with Sober Mick our rooster. Casey needed a friend with having to be kept seperate from the other for a period of time. I have named her Lara after Lara Croft.

The bigger one is Casey, small one is Lara.
I think she is very cute, she is still very downy.

The chicken run took a lot of work to build. The area that it's in is on top of a large sandstone slab. At least some of it was soft enough for me to be able to get the maddock through it.But further down it was very hard and nothing would get through any of it. That was not the only trouble I had digging the trenches. On one side I also had to contend with a major root system from both our own apple tree but also huge pine trees from a fence line five or so metres away. Brian did do some of the digging for me on Saturday. I pretty much errected the fence largely by myself.
Each day I crumbled in a heap in the late afternoon from both exhaustion and aching joints from my arthritus.

Today I finally finished up at lunch time.
With no car available to me due to ours being at the mechanics yet again with a blown head gasket this time. I had to fish around our yard and shed for anything that could be used to put it all together as Brian didn't buy another roll of chicken wire when he went and bought the star pickets. I had hoped to have a nice looking run, instead we have one that does the job and is not so snazzy looking like I hoped.

I put bird netting over the back area so as to not allow the possibility of them flying over to the neighbours yard. Already glad I did as Sober Mick gets on top of the hutch, so he would easily fly over the fence.
Next job is to get in a bunch of seeds and seedlings. All along the edges. So when they drow through the fence the chooks will have something to peck at.
Look at the big boy now and his not fully grown just yet.

3 comments:

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Nicole and Andrew said...

lov your bits & pieces Chook run
all that digging will be well worth it when you start getting all those fresh eggs.

mountainwildlife said...

Looks really good, especially since you had to use what you could find. Straighter than my fence and I didn't have sandstone under!

Crikey Sober Mick is looking like a real rooster now, strutting his stuff :-) And I did notice how you have snuck the 'Mick' part in now :)

Good to hear they are settling in with a bit more room, hard work for you but will be a lot less stress long-term. Looking forward to seeing your new girls grow up too.