Hello! My Dominique chicks are 9 days old and mama hen was trying to get them to come outside. (Temps in the high 80s daytime here.) They can't quite get up over our kickboard, so I got up off my duff today and built a little broody run for her and her chicks (14 of them). It's 7 ft x 4 ft. and just a bit over a foot tall. I covered it in stapled on plastic chicken net, zip tied all the seams together. Oh, it's built out of a shipping pallet my neighbors gave me. They just installed a GIANT stained glass window in their new bathroom. I painted the pallet with a mixture of linseed oil and beeswax I had left over after making my beehive last weekend. Anyway, I put mama and babies in this afternoon, and they LOVE it. They're in there dustbathing and scratching just having a good old time. It has an apron around the edge of the chicken net and I've put big huge cement things all around the edge. The opening is in the middle on that one side up top under the red tin roof thing. My problem is that they REALLY don't want to get caught now. Would they be safe in this overnight right outside the coop? We live on five acres at the edge of the city. We have predators across the creek, but we've only lost one thing out of our yard and that was a guinea free ranging. Most of my losses have happened from a chicken wandering off across the creek by itself for no good reason. What do y'all think? It's gonna be a giant pain if I have to flip up the coop and chase 'em all down when I want them to go inside.
Thanks,
Traci
Thanks,
Traci
