Here is the garden - you can see from Monkey1 standing in front of it that it has gotten VERY tall [thanks to our recent monsoons I guess LOL!]. So, despite our dog's best efforts, we are still actually going to get something out of most of those squares we planted [he did manage to destroy 4 of them permanently, but we still have 8!]
Here is our chicken set up. We spent a bunch of time today working on it and getting a big huge waterproof tarp over the chicken run with the chicks in it.
We haven't had a problem with having them out of doors like they are until this past week when it rained every single day with these massive thunder storms and their whole run became one big quagmire of mud and muck!
So, we cleaned everything up and put down fresh pine bedding through the whole thing and put a heavy duty industrial tarp over about 80% of the run. We put down a platform [an overturned square foot garden planter] and then put their dog crate coops on top of that [this is where they sleep and we wanted to get it up out of the mud].
We have two little chicks [around 6 weeks] in one crate and they stay in there with that locked. They are the remaining blue andalusian and brown leghorn chick. [I sold the other 8 of them because they are psycho chicks!]. Then we have a bigger crate next to it that stays open where the older chicks [around 11 weeks] sleep at night.
This shows the whole set up:
The little blue play house is now our hen house and that is where our 6 adult laying hens live. The younger girl chicks will go to live with the older hens in the hen house when they are older [right now they are too little and the hens might hurt them or pick on them excessively]. At that point, we hope to actually make the chicken run part of the hen house by putting a little chicken door in the hen house that opens into the run so they can come and go as they please and just be shut up at night.
For now, we just let them out to free range for a while each day. And to watch them - they are fun to watch!
Here is "Nugget", our favorite chick, who is almost certainly a rooster :(. He is really pretty though and we are enjoying him for now. When he learns to crow, he's going to go to a new home... unless he's very, very quiet about it LOL!
Today was the 11 week old chicks first time out of the chicken run free ranging and they had so much fun. It was neat to watch them. They are a pretty little flock.
We did have one tragedy today that was really sad. "Grey Head", one of the other 11 week old Ameraucana chicks [also a rooster] was killed. It was very upsetting. He was a very sweet and tame chick and, unfortunately, it happened right in front of the kids. I had all the chicks out free ranging while we were setting up their new home and I had to run into the house to get their feeders and waterers I'd just bleached and sterilized. I heard my son screaming his head off... I ran out to find that the square foot garden planter, which we had set up on edge so we could put bedding down underneath it had fallen over. It is really heavy, but this would not be a big deal ... except that a certain Monkey disobeyed their mother and had put Grey Head back in the run... and of course he was hit by the falling planter and killed instantly.
It was most upsetting. I do have to say that I was grateful that death was instant and I didn't have to put the poor guy down, but I was crying. Isn't that silly? Most of our roosters are going to a friend who is going to eat them in a few weeks, and that doesn't bother me at all. But this was just so unexpected... and the kids were devastated.
Ah well, RIP Grey Head. It makes me feel better to know he was well cared for and adored for his whole short life.
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