Seriously? More chickens?

XYes we are still building S-
wood for those of you who are asking, but also, we have another home, with a daily life and I thought maybe we. might expand this blog to. chronicle our constant goal to become more self sufficient xand learning some of the basic skills in life that are being forgotten.

The original plan was to get 4 chickens. It quickly became obvious that 4 chickens was not going to be any easier than 10 chickens and staying true to form, before we knew it there were 19 baby chicks in our laundry room. Course, 7 of those were unsolicited "packing peanuts" and 4 of them were to go to our friend, we then decided it actually made sense to keep one of the peanuts. I mean every good flock deserves a rooster right? We really arent sure what is going to happen with the Rooster to be honest and Uncle Ted he is probably not aware of this but he is on what I refer to as "soup probation". I am withholding his destiny until further notice. A "trial" period if you will. Anyway, the point of the post is not Ted although he feels he is the center of the universe. Shortly after I promised 4 of the chickens away, and found homes for the peanuts, I realized that I was going to have only 9 chickens and well that just didnt seem like enough. Coincidentally, at this time, I also realized that all (and I mean all) of our hens are the same color with the exception of 2 which are tan and Cotton the white one that is supposed to be red... So I went on Murry McMurray and for some bizarre reason ORDERED 2 STARTED Black sex link pullets. Ahh yup... I ordered more.

So we are slowly discovering that yes, Dave has the propensity to over engineer, but I also fit right in with my "are you sure that's going to be enough" personality. Best part? We aren't nearly done with the coop and pen combination, dropped off 4 to my friends last weekend and the 2 new hens are due THIS WEEK!!! Now we are trying to finish up the roosts, nestboxes and chicken pen so they can be outside and inside comfortably. We hope to have the outside part done next weekend. Today Dave worked on the roosts.
Here is a picture of one that he finished today. Its 2-tiered and its on hinges... (over-engineer alert) so that you can put it up and latch it to the ceiling. This makes it easier to clean out the hen-house.

I love that about him.
Anyway here they are:



So in this picture we have our 9 week old chickens. In the way back you can see our Rooster "ted" and you can also see all our red chickens who are gold sex links and 2 New Hampshire Reds.. (clicking t makes it big)
There is the 2-teired left side roost. Each perch is long enough for 3 full sized chickens (the lens distorts).

And then, just because it cracked me up... I had to include this picture of my girl "cotton" the white chicken. White chicken (gold sex link) is considerably smaller than "big bird" who is on the left. That might be Honker... not sure... but she is one of 2 of Buff Rock hens. Now that you know more than you ever really wanted to know about my chickens, I will go. We will be headed to S-wood soon. I look forward to updating you on progress there and I hope that the slight format change will make you more interested in our blog rather than make you go away.