Sunday, June 5, 2011

Moving Day

Yesterday was moving day for our chickens, leaving the little cage in our garage with its heat lamp for the coop outside.

All done!

Ready for new tenants

Moving day

Violet likes the new coop too

Exploring the upstairs

Making themselves at home

I am so happy with how the coop turned out; Rob used these plans to put it together. The upper floor has the roosting area and the nest boxes and the bottom part is where they eat and drink and eat bugs and explore. The sides lift off to access the upstairs for cleaning and whatnot. That ladder/ramp pulls up using a pulley to secure the upstairs for nighttime. The chickens seem to be doing well so far, although they haven't yet learned to go upstairs in the evening. We've been manually putting them up there before pulling up the ramp.  Hopefully they will get the idea soon. (Supposedly this is something chickens naturally want to do?) They can get down the ramp and we are pretty sure they are capable of getting up the ramp but they don't seem particularly interested in doing that. Mysterious creatures, these chickens. And can you believe how much they've grown? They looked like this just SIX WEEKS AGO.

Oh, and I don't make the girls wear their helmets to play with the chickens or anything. It just seems like they always go straight for their bicycle/tricycle when they first go outside and then they end up running around with their helmets on all the time.

7 comments:

Eva said...

Ha ha, I was going to ask if they were head-pecking chicken.

Hats off to Rob, the coop looks great.

Colleen said...

WOW! That coop is amazing! I cannot believe how non-fluffy your chickens are already. Girls are super cute as always. :)

Unknown said...

i was wondering about the helmets :)

the chickens are huge!

you have incredibly gorgeous green grass in your yard! makes me want to walk around barefoot.

Christy@pipandsqueak said...

I was also wondering about the helmets. I figured the kids just liked to wear them because that is something my kids would do.

adrianne said...

when do they start laying eggs?

Julia said...

It will be a few more months before they start laying eggs, probably late fall sometime. Three of them will lay brown eggs and one will lay green or blue eggs!

Ellen said...

We're very impressed by Robert's carpentry skills!