The Girls Are Back in Town

I know. I know.  It’s been, like, forever since I last updated this blog.  I could use this time making apologies and excuses, but instead I’m just going to jump back into things by showing you our new chicken coop.

That’s right! After a year without chickens we just couldn’t take it any longer and ordered a new flock this spring.  But before the chicks could join our family, they had to have a home.  Yes, we still had our old coop, but the Tool Man and I really wanted something a little nicer and bigger this go around.

We spent some time browsing Pinterest for coop ideas and finally settled on a simple little walk-in coop with nesting boxes on one end and roosting poles on the other. We already had a nice stash of old cypress boards and some leftover metal roofing from some of the Tool Man’s previous projects.  All we had to purchase were a few 2x4’s and sheet of plywood.  The Tool Man was able to complete the project in just a couple of days.

He’s good like that.

Of course, he did have a good little helper!

This little monkey was more interested in fishing than building chicken coops.

These nesting boxes were inspired by something that we saw on Pinterest – just some plastic buckets from Home Depot.  They can easily be lifted out, dumped, and cleaned as needed.  We really tried to make this coop as easy to keep clean as possible.  We ended up lining the floor of the coop with construction sand which we sift every other day or so with our handy dandy homemade chicken pooper scooper.  It’s really just a giant dustpan that the Tool Man drilled a bunch of holes in.  It literally only takes a couple of minutes to clean the entire coop.

Here are the monkeys introducing the girls to their new home.

It was still pretty cool out when the chicks arrived, so they spent the first few weeks in a trough in the coop with a heat lamp to keep them warm and toasty.

The monkeys were more than excited to welcome their new pets.

We now have a total of 15 hens and one rooster…we think.  Lol.  It’s hard to tell at first.  Since these photos were taken, we have added a small window to the front of the coop and a run off the back of the coop.  Our girls love to be outside.  Once we felt that they wouldn’t run away, we started letting the chickens out into the yard every morning.  They spend the entire day foraging around in the garden and trees, and in the evening they return to the coop on their own.  I can’t wait ‘til October when we start getting some of those fresh eggs.  Yum!

Lindsey