Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

[ozexpat]

Check out our website in my signature. It was a massive undertaking

 

[Bens-Hens]

SOme great updates.

Felix, storage shed looks great. Does an awesome job of tying in both the coop and the house. Nice work. WOn't be long until it's full thats for sure.

Fancy, you already know how I feel about your coop. Maybe next year we will paint the outside of ours, but for this year the inside was a big enough task.

Lindz, some great broody progress, I sure wish we had that view here too.

Oz, that is a pretty mammoth site. I only had a brief poke around but man there is some content in there.

We had some sunshine today, I even got to do some of my training in it which is nice to not be rained on AND have the sun be up! I got home from a bit of a whopper road run (43.5km or coming close to 27 miles in the old stuff). I cleaned to coop and looked after the flock and moved the chicks out to the mobile run for a few house grass time. The weather started to turn so they only got a few hours, but better than nothing. Not looking like they will be out tomorrow as it's pouring now and will be wet all day tomorrow.

Some brief paparazi shots of them today. A real shame the NH is a male, I am loving the colours coming through on him.

 

[vehve]

Those are some fine looking birdies, Ben. Your chick's feet are a lot sturdier than ours were at that age.

Fancy's coop is a pleasure to look at. I like the striped lower part, gives it sort of a lighthouse look. Fancy, you should consider adding a slowly spinning light at the top

The shed really ties together the coop and the house, although I went with horizontal paneling, partly because it's horizontal on the house, partly because the doors where a lot easier to build that way, but since it's the same stuff I paneled the coop with and the color is the same, it looks nice. Also makes the shed look a bit smaller than it is. We finished the insides, I still have to clear away the saw and the rest of the wood, but then I'll take some pictures of the already filled shed. Did make some more room in our real shed though, and the chicken coop cabinet. I just wanted this shed in our yard, since the bigger one is on the other side of the property, next to the neighbors shed. Not very convenient to carry bedding 50 meters every time you need it. I've got Karin trained pretty well on the saw, although yesterday she kept cutting the diagonal braces for the doors the wrong way all the time. Ended up with a couple of useless boards that had opposite angles at the ends.

Once I get my order of a cubic meter of hemp bedding, I would probably need another shed though

 

[ozexpat]

Thanks Ben

If you see errors please pm me

 

[vehve]

I shall continue my monologue by posting pictures of the finished product, as promised.

 

[lindz8504]

Looks awesome!

 

[vehve]

Thanks Lindz!

A bit more picture spamming still:

When clearing away the shed building stuff I decided to solve the issue with overcrowding on my tomato bench.

 

[Bens-Hens]

Some great work mate. I would be super proud of those jobs.

All but one of my tommie plants have keeled over during winter. I recently pulled a heap of sad looking veggie patch plants and gave them to the girls in the run. Will put some new seedlings down in Spring.

We got some sunshine today again after last nights storm, so the chicks have been out all day. Alicia did all the chicken jobs this morning while I was training.

Kids are back to school in a couple of days and life should settle back into a normal routine.

 

[vehve]

Some great work mate. I would be super proud of those jobs.

All but one of my tommie plants have keeled over during winter. I recently pulled a heap of sad looking veggie patch plants and gave them to the girls in the run. Will put some new seedlings down in Spring.

We got some sunshine today again after last nights storm, so the chicks have been out all day. Alicia did all the chicken jobs this morning while I was training.

Kids are back to school in a couple of days and life should settle back into a normal routine.

Thank you, I'm pretty happy with the end result.

Tomatoes don't last outside over the winter here, next January I'll be starting over again in our toilet with my little indoor greenhouse which looks like paraphernalia for growing Mary Jane. My tommies are 7 months old now. I've learned a lot about growing veggies this year, but the tomatoes have actually done surprisingly well. I've got close to a hundred cherry tomatoes growing, and flowers to grow twice as much still on my little plants, pretty good for 2 big and 4 totem cherry tomato plants.

We've had a heatwave, all sunshine for the past 4-5 days up until 5 mintues ago when the skies opened up, some thunder, lightning and a heck of a lot of rain. Should be over in a few minutes though, these summer rains are really refreshing. Saves me from watering the garden too. I had to clean the coop this morning, as Karin is on call again and was gone from three to five in the night patching up some puppy. Apparently she was too tired to clean the coop.

Here kids get 10 weeks of summer holiday from school. Probably a bit easier on the parents with shorter holidays.

I started painting the fence with the same stain we used on the deck, we'll see how it fares being rained upon immediately, this rain really surprised me.

 

[cwrite]

We had some sunshine today, I even got to do some of my training in it which is nice to not be rained on AND have the sun be up! I got home from a bit of a whopper road run (43.5km or coming close to 27 miles in the old stuff). I cleaned to coop and looked after the flock and moved the chicks out to the mobile run for a few house grass time. The weather started to turn so they only got a few hours, but better than nothing. Not looking like they will be out tomorrow as it's pouring now and will be wet all day tomorrow.

Some brief paparazi shots of them today. A real shame the NH is a male, I am loving the colours coming through on him.

Your distances are crazy impressive. I did my annual charity 5km this morning & it felt utterly brutal. The happiness endorphins that it is OVER!

That is pretty feathering on the roo, but I can't help but notice the green grass. We need some of your rain for sure.