New chicken pen/ poultry prison!

New chicken pen/ poultry prison!

Chicken leaving the coop--wish I was faster with my phone!

Recently my husband and I changed our chicken pen outside our house. We had a pen that had worked for a few years, but with 12 chickens we needed something taller and wider. We had used chicken wire to close in our smaller pen, but we decided to use some hog wire that a neighbor had given us. 

Looking left from the coop

 Left side of pen looking toward coop from the corner

My amazing hubby drew up his own plans, measured, went to the home improvement store, and reviewed the plans again. He went back to the store with my Dad and got 8 posts and concrete, another neighbor gave him some nails (2 sizes!) and our brother-in-law gave us some old fence slats. So Joshua dug holes, put in the posts sunken in to concrete. Then we nailed two-by fours into the posts for a frame. 

 Same old coop open

After the 2 X 4s were in horizontally, we attached the hog wire to them. We put two lengths on each side, stapling as we went. We then pulled back our chicken coop, adjusted the round bricks underneath, resettling them. We pulled out the chicken wire and bricks that was in the pen and gave them free reign of the new place. So far they are really enjoying it!

Front right side where we want to put the door, with a roost in the corner.

We still would like to fully enclose it with wire over the top (it's about 6 feet tall) so nothing can get in from overhead. We also want to put in a door for easier access for us. We are waiting for another neighbor to get back from vacation to help us with the door. It's nice to have done so far.

Front right side showing the fence slats on that side, and the water feeder. 

Hope we get more eggs soon, and that the 2 year-old hens will be nice to the 4-month-old hens (aka teenagers) invading their space.


Genesis 1:22
God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.

Genesis 7:8
Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground.

Nehemiah 5:18
Each day one ox, six choice sheep and some poultry were prepared for me, and every ten days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people.

Wordless Wednesday: New chicks!

Last Monday, my hubby had an extra day off for President's Day. We took advantage of his extra day off to drive south to get some new chicks! We had recently had an incident with a big black dog getting into our chicken pen and coop and killing two of our chickens. (One died that day and one a few days later. :-(   Poor things!) So we were down to four chickens. We really wanted to have more, so we went to the same place that we went to two years ago, a guy we found on Craigslist.

We ended up with eight new chicks, and they are all so cute! The kids had quite a discussion on the way there and back in naming them. Bethany wanted all Avengers names, since that is her current phase! But Mallory wouldn't have it, since they are all girls. We conceded and let her have one, so we do have a "Captain America." :-D

 At the chicken house, the man had over 1500 chicks! This one was sleeping so sweetly...

 This tiny guy was the owner's granddaughter's chick, it is a bantam, won't get real big. So cute! We did choose one of them!

 Pretty feathers shining in the light...

 Black girls!

At home, in our box here is our bantam, named Lizzie (I think after the character in Cars.)

Other names we ended up with are: Cocoa (for one that will lay a brown egg), Providence (she is a Rhode Island Red), Penny (or Pennsylvania, since it was President's Day!, Remington, Splash (she will lay blue/ green eggs) and Clarice. We had a Clarice before, but Mallory really liked that name. We have one that will be black with silver wings, one that will have a brown stripe, and a few breeds we've had before. They are eating, sleeping and cheeping a lot! It will fun to watch them grow!



Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Luke 13:34

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

James 3:6-8

The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person,sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

New chickens!

A few weeks ago, we saw an ad in our local newspaper for laying hens. Some of you may know that we have had six hens for about a year, and they have been laying since late Spring. We were getting about 3-4 eggs each day, and wanted to have more, so we wouldn't need to purchase any eggs. My hubby set up a time with the man to go and check them out, and we made it a family outing!

It was a fun afternoon, we went out for lunch with Daddy, which we don't do very often. We also bought some chicken feed that day, and went to the man's home. He had a bigger pen of chickens, some turkens (turkey chickens) that were interesting looking! He had a noisy rooster with a large comb on top of its head. There were also two small goats there that were making quite a racket. I told my 4 1/2 year old (at the time), that they were saying her name! Mah-mah-mah... kinda sounded like Mal-Mal-Mal! :-D

The man that sold them was older, and kinda resembled the baseball-capped chicken farmer in Napoleon Dynamite. My hubby told me later that's what he thought, and it made me giggle! We had fun picking out 4 new hens, and two of them were cochins. Here is what wikipedia says about them..." the most distinctive feature of the Cochin is the excessive plumage that covers leg and foot." 
Yes, they have feathers on their legs! I think it is kinda creepy, but my older daughter really likes them!


The kids named them immediately, and they have middle names too! Lol! Rebekah said, "How else am I supposed to scold them when they knock over the water?" (shaking head) Here are some pictures that Rebekah took of them:

Mia...

Cori

Belle (Cochin)

ANOTHER PIC OF BELLE (SORRY ITS DARK!)

Nelly (Cochin)

ANOTHER PIC OF NELLY

 Can you see the feathers on their feet? Fascinating how God made them, isn't it? And one of the new chickens lays a light blue egg... so now we get peach/brown eggs, light green and light blue!

At first, they didn't get along and they had to figure out the "pecking order." Two of them were fighting, and so my hubby held each of them by their feet for 3-5 minutes, and they calmed down. They knew he was the boss after that! They are getting along better know and seemed to have accepted each other. It's so nice when everyone gets along!

More chicks!

Some of you may remember last fall that we got some chickens and Joshua made a chicken coop. Well, we are finally getting some eggs, usually one or two a day! This is what our eggs look like...

 And this is what our chickens look like now... two hens and one obnoxious rooster!

Penny, Josefina and Rosie...

Well, we'd like to have more than two eggs in a day, so we decided to get more chicks.  We went to Montrose this past weekend, and we stopped in Olathe on the way home. There was a man who listed on Craiglist that he had chicks for sale. He was quite the chicken farmer! He had over 1,000 chicks in this building, smaller than a garage. They were organized by breeds in small pens, maybe 10-12 in a pen. He also had supplies for sale, such as lights, chicken starter feed, scratch for the bottom of the coop, and lots of feeders. He had cute signs outside that said, "A great place to pick up chicks" and "Chicks for sale, cheep!" He had over 20 breeds of chickens, "all the top layers", he said. So we came home with 6 more chicks! They are all different breeds and very cute! The kids have been naming them... 

Caleb holding "Gonzo"...

The other five little chicks...I think their current names are Rhonda, Clarice,
Angel, Goldilocks, Jenny...

All six chicks together!

We're hoping that all six of these chicks survive, and the man assured us that they were hens! We are looking forward to watching them grow, and when they are bigger and it is warmer outside, we will put them with the other chickens in our coop. For now, they're in a bin in the garage. Maybe we'll have more eggs in the summer....

CHICKENS!

So, last week we bought 6 chicks! Joshua found a gal on Craigslist that had chicks for sale, on Orchard Mesa. So we went out there and bought them and a small bag of feed from her. The kids have really been enjoying them, trying to name them. Bethany has been loving watching them when they were in a cardboard box in the garage. (She calls them "doggies" and asks about them A LOT now!) Joshua finished (mostly) the chicken coop this past weekend and we moved them in on Saturday night. We let them out for about 1/2 hour before we put them into the new coop. Well, one little sneaky one went under the deck! We may never get him out... so now we have 5!

Joshua still wants to finish the chicken chalet, as he calls it, by adding a door and ramp, chicken wire and a little pen so they can go outside. We are looking forward to having our own fresh eggs!