Pipd's Peeps!

[pattyhen]

Lots of progress it's coming right along. Glad your feeling better today. That looks like lots of hard work. I see Scooter checking out the flooring in the pic.

Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Yup, Scooter's in that picture, right next to the water bucket. And Mabel and Elly are there, too.

Not much progress yesterday because we found out that we don't quite have enopugh lumber to do the doors. Dad's truck is fixed, so we'll be getting lumber today or tomorrow to do the doors. I figure tomorrow, because today is mom's birthday.

I did get about 6 feet of the wall covered in wire, though! It's starting to look like an actual pen!! e

 

[pattyhen]

I'm glad they got the truck fixed and tell your mom I said Happy Birthday. Thats great you got 6 foot of the wire put up. I'm sure with the rest of the building materials bought it won't be no time before you have it up.

I was watering the flowers this morning and a hawk swooped down above the guineas. I'm afraid if I hadn't been out there he would have gotten one of them. They didn't sound the alarm at all. They didn't even pay attention to the hawk. Bubba the rooster sure saw it and sounded off his hawk alert call. I couldn't even get the dog to come outside he's taking a nap in the livingroom with the air conditioning on. Ozzie the dog goes on full alert when you mention hawk but he was snoozing away. The guineas are 4 months old and maybe their to young to realize the danger of hawks. I would have thought they have an instinct for that.

Take care and have a great day. Thanks for the update.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Scary! I don't know, I imagine it's their age. I don't remember when mine were that young if they were very alert. Now, you can't even drop a leaf in their yard without them sounding the alarm. Glad everyone is okay, though!




It's looking rainy today, so we're not doing much on the build. We just worked a bit on the fencing and got one of the doors up. Mom also built one of the remaining two doors, but it has no wire in it. We also sawed down the old gate post (because it was sunk in concrete and couldn't be pulled ) and attached the old fence to the other side of where the new door is to keep the hens in before their free-range time. The place looks so different now in person!! And the girls were terribly confused about what to do at free-range time with their old gate replaced!

Just a few pictures. You can barely tell the difference from this angle:

A little closer to the fence. I put up 1/2 inch, 19 gauge hardware cloth over the entire openings, then 2x4 inch welded wire over the bottom half and down to the ground to keep the hens from sneaking out by going underneath the deck. I was worried that it wouldn't be sturdy enough, but now that the fence is tacked down, it feels nice and strong!

And this is probably going to be a huge picture, but a bit of detail of the fence from the outside. The roll of fence behind the door is for when I get the hardware cloth up further along the wall, so I can roll it out and attach it over top. Obviously, I'll be cutting out a section for the door, but I want the lower part of it to remain under where the door is to block the girls.

We've got to wait (again, ugh) for the next paycheck (which is a week from today) before we can buy the lumber for the roof, but at least dad's truck is fixed so we can haul it home. So I'll be spending the next week gradually getting more and more of the fence attached to the wall, or at least getting it to the corner of the deck so that we can finally take down the old fence there! It keeps looking more and more like I imagined, and I'm just so excited about that!!

 

[pattyhen]

It's coming togeather and the fence looks nice and secure. I think your porch is bigger then my coop. The hens are going to enjoy all that space. Your coop does it extend to the right of the pictures or it it long ways there?

It rains here just about everyday. Not alot but enough to make mud puddles in the yard. Of course the ducks love it. It really cooled off after it rained which is unusual.

Thanks for update and the pics I can't wait to see it all completed. Have a great evening.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

It extends to the right. I have an old picture of right after we built the section to the right, let me see if I can find it. We started with an 8x10 shed kit, then built the 6x8 section to the right with a dirt floor and 5 windows. That's the 'sun room', but it turned into the dust bath room thanks to the dirt floor. And now the 'covered porch', which is 8x16 feet, by far the largest build we've ever taken on!

Here we go, the coop as it was before the porch build began:

This is the best I have of it from the back:

The gray building on the right in that first picture was the feed shed; it got moved for the covered porch build, not because it was in the way, but because it was about 2 feet next to it and we couldn't open the doors on it anymore anyway. I'll be keeping the feed bins in the covered porch section once it's built, so I don't need the feed shed there. Mom was talking about using it for storage, though, so it won't go to waste.

 

[shadow rabbit10]

Congrats on another pic of the week!

 

[pattyhen]

Thanks for showing the rest of the coop now I can see the whole thing.

Congrats on winning the other poultry pic of the week. Wow that's a great honor.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Aw, thanks, y'all! I definitely didn't expect to have another POW so soon after the other! They're back to misspelling my username, though. Oh, well, it is rather long and somewhat complicated...





I'm flat out exhausted, what a long day! It started out with the usual chores, and afterward I finally got around to trimming back the crests on the younger Silkie girls. When I went to catch Indigo to trim her, she squatted for the first time!! She seems so young for that, especially for a Silkie, but I guess they are 5 months old now... Anyway, then Kate must have hopped down off of the deck funny because her foot wound split open again and I had to rebandage it. We got some liver for her a few days ago as an iron supplement, but she flatly refused to eat it, so the rest of the flock enjoyed it.

After relaxing inside for a bit, I went out to work on the deck this afternoon. I finished fencing it to the corner! Had to dig a trench to get the heavier fence to fit, and dodge curious chickens the whole way, but one wall is finally done! Now I'm out of washers and may or may not have enough fence to do any more, so I can't work again until we get to the store. Boo!

Oh, and I also had Skua out to start reintroducing her to the flock, now that her fly strike wound is finally healed over! She did great, and most of the girls seemed to remember her. A few felt the need to remind her of their dominance, and a couple tried to fight her for dominance only to run off when she fought back. Then Mabel noticed her, and the two had some sort of death match that I had to split up a couple times before I finally moved them so that a fence was between them. Chickens flog hard!!

Anyway, unnecessarily long story later... I'm tired. Good night, everyone!

 

[pattyhen]

Well I think you deserve a break until you can get more supplies. I'm glad Skua did so well except for Mabel. Mabel must be the meanie of the flock. There usually is one in the bunch.

It sounds like Indigo is almost to that laying stage. Then comes the broody stage. How did she grow up so fast? They were little fluff balls not to long ago.

I hope that Kates foot gets better soon. Poor baby needs to quit inspecting that porch and stay off that foot.

Have a great day and thanks for the update