My backyard birds
Well we decided to do a little fresh egg farming / survival mode / self substance / Organic healthy eating or high omega E thing this spring.
We picked up 8 comets at the local tractor supply store. They told us these were red bantams. Looks like we really got red sex linked comets.
We have had a great time showing the birds to my wives kids at school, watching them grow up and putting a coop and run together.
I had several pieces of odd and end building materials sitting around so I put my McIver hat on and went to work spending as little money as possible while
still achieving a substantial predator proof and keeping it pleasant to the eyes. We tried to spend less than $100. We wanted it to fit into our natural area as much as possible.
We had a shed which had already been converted from our kids wooden playground. I'm building a greenhouse on the south side of the shed. We came off the east side for the chicks (for early sun and egg laying) keeping the run (I call it our aviary) under the shade of several trees. We live north of San Antonio TX and some years we get late afternoon heat into the 100's.
Because of the large number of predators we keep a pretty close eye on them. We have coons, skunks, hawks, Mexican Eagles, opossum, gray fox, coyotes, stray cats and have even seen ring tail cats. We let them out daily for a few hours but they don't venture out too far. Entire yard is double and some areas triple high fenced to keep the deer from eating all our landscape plants and veggies.
I'm figuring out how to get these pictures uploaded. As soon as I do I'll publish them here. We spend a fair amount of time most every day just watching our girls play.
This winter I'll turn them loose in the greenhouse to.
Got to work on an auto watering system.
Well we decided to do a little fresh egg farming / survival mode / self substance / Organic healthy eating or high omega E thing this spring.
We picked up 8 comets at the local tractor supply store. They told us these were red bantams. Looks like we really got red sex linked comets.
We have had a great time showing the birds to my wives kids at school, watching them grow up and putting a coop and run together.
I had several pieces of odd and end building materials sitting around so I put my McIver hat on and went to work spending as little money as possible while
still achieving a substantial predator proof and keeping it pleasant to the eyes. We tried to spend less than $100. We wanted it to fit into our natural area as much as possible.
We had a shed which had already been converted from our kids wooden playground. I'm building a greenhouse on the south side of the shed. We came off the east side for the chicks (for early sun and egg laying) keeping the run (I call it our aviary) under the shade of several trees. We live north of San Antonio TX and some years we get late afternoon heat into the 100's.
Because of the large number of predators we keep a pretty close eye on them. We have coons, skunks, hawks, Mexican Eagles, opossum, gray fox, coyotes, stray cats and have even seen ring tail cats. We let them out daily for a few hours but they don't venture out too far. Entire yard is double and some areas triple high fenced to keep the deer from eating all our landscape plants and veggies.
I'm figuring out how to get these pictures uploaded. As soon as I do I'll publish them here. We spend a fair amount of time most every day just watching our girls play.
This winter I'll turn them loose in the greenhouse to.
Got to work on an auto watering system.
