Making Repairs and Making Friends

The wire floor of the chicken coop finally imploded this past week, due to Ethel's species confusion - she has a tendency to eat chicken food and perch herself in the hen house. It's incredibly annoying, but goats will be goats... or chickens, as is the case with Ethel. I replaced the old floor made of .5" x .5" wire mesh with a .5" x 1" thicker gauge mesh, hoping that this will make a sturdier landing for the pain-in-the-butt goats and provide a larger opening for the droppings to fall through. Fruit Loop, my Welsummer, was all in a flap about the construction, squawking up a storm and hopping all over the mesh as I tried to pull it out. Apparently, she doesn't like her house being messed with. A few of the other birds also stood in the way of building, curious to see what was going on. All calmed down when they saw that I wasn't going to destroy their home, just fix it up a bit.

The laying boxes were also in sad shape as they were actually cardboard boxes beginning to decompose. Rather than continuing to replace the cardboard boxes with new ones, a perfectly acceptable option, I chose to build proper laying hutches. I soon discovered that my carpentry skills still leave much to be desired. My cuts were all slightly askew, screws poked through creating hazardous conditions, and since I used all scrap materials, refusing to purchase anything new, I sometimes had to use two boards where I really should have only used one. Well, whatever! They're chickens, right? I'm sure they don't care. Here you can see Sweet Pea checking out the new ghetto fabulous digs:



Speaking of chickens, this weekend I went to a get together for chicken owners in the San Francisco area. I found it through Meetup.com. It was great to share information with locals and meet fellow chicken lovers. If you are in the area and are interested in chickens, join the SF Pet Chicken Meetup Group.

By the way, you can now become a fan of Itty Bitty on Facebook.