Danz, yes I still have the silly little hen. After all of this time she still won't go into the coop to roost at night, she is wild as a march hare. I have caught her in the coop eating at times because she misses out on getting fed now that the cats are fed on top of the rabbit hutch. She used to eat cat food with them, but I had to find a solution to feeding them so the dogs couldn't get in the food, I didn't want my critter sitter to have to deal with all of that. I don't know what will happen to her this winter, I have tried to get her to go into the coop in all different ways, but she is fast as lightning & very wary of anyone getting too near her. She is a pretty little thing, but yes very, very flighty. She kind of reminds me of the two Gold Lakenvelders I have, they're very flighty too, but at least they will go into the coop at night. I didn't know they were on the endangered list. Oh & you asked if the cattails would absorb moisture & yes they do to a degree, but seem to dry out pretty fast too, much faster than straw does. I have had the best luck with them in my main coop inside mixed with the pine shavings. They're hollow & get pretty light when they're dry. I just wish I had my chipper shredder dug out of the garage so I could chop it up better, but it's buried in the far corner in there & it will be long while before I can get to it. I don't know if that would chop it too fine or not, it may. Some of it is in pretty long shreds still so it's kind of hard to deal with at first. But it's a natural resource, so I think it's great we can find some use for it.
Welcome Kansas Prairie, I also love your avatar! What kind of chickens do you have & do you have other birds?
Hawkeye & Danz, thanks for the input on the roof, I can use all I can get because neither one of us knows what we're doing, we're just blindly treading along on this thing. Someone asked if the roofing is flat or ridged & the Ondura is corrugated so there are ridges, it's a composite roofing material, really durable. You have to buy special nails for it that they sell at Lowe's also. I hope we can start making some real progress after this marathon this weekend. My DH said he was going to put it as a priority to try to get it done. I sure hope so because we're working on borrowed time here. I'm worried now about getting it painted before it's too cold to paint & I sure don't want it to sit there all winter with no paint. I just figured this was going to happen since he has messed around all summer with working only an hour here & there on the thing. Of course it's not his project or his chickens, so it doesn't matter much to him. I wish I could have just hired someone to build it, but the money wasn't there for that.
maidenwolf, the vitamin E caps at Wal Mart are what I use for the chicks, they're pretty inexpensive. I just keep a bottle of those right by my incubator because I have had to use them quite a lot on chicks that were having some problems at first. I also use the chick electrolytes & keep that stocked up too.
I have to get out & shovel all of those cattails out of the truck this afternoon & try to get my plastic stapled onto the hoop coop. The guineas & peacocks seem to be doing fine so far, but I don't want them to have to deal with north wind coming in there. I don't have enough plastic for the back yet, so I'll have to get some more when I go back to the store, but at least I want to get the sides done, then I'll buy another roll for the back & use some of that roll that is left for some of the other places I need some. I have spent quite a bit on tarps lately & am trying to keep that under the radar as far as my DH goes or he will start grouching about that. The younger birds in the grow-out pen still like to all crowd into the igloo dog house in there, but the bigger ones sit up on the roost.
