My sister is selling her house in Moneta and there are some things still there that are not practical to move all the way to WY, so Mom and I have been given the opportunity to stock her farm with some "new to us" things, tomato cages, rocks for building up garden beds and all sorts of useful things. The other day Mom and I went down to my sisters old farm and got some nesting boxes for the hen house that were direly needed.
Now, as many of you know when things are left behind it can also mean that cleaning them to move them would have been a chore as well....so when we got them home I set to work scrubbing and scraping and got them pretty clean so that they could be installed. I did this between rain storms and had to put them in the garage to dry out too... Though they are heavy I found a couple furniture dollies and was able to wheel them in instead of trying to drag them.
Since we had to go through the yard to get them to the coop and Mom would have hurt herself trying to carry them that far, we loaded one end into the garden wagon that she pulled and I carried the other end. Before we could get them all the way in the coop the barred rock hens had to "help us out"...I think all 8 of them were on them before they made it to the wall. :0)
We installed a brace on the wall even with a roost we had put in last fall and put screws through the back wall into all of the supporting beams for the shed that we could and Wa-La we had new nesting boxes. The chickens were very appreciative of the new boxes and a couple of them told us all about it the whole time we were working...lol...I love those crazy birds. :0)
We also took some crates the chickens were using as roosts and pooping in (We had hoped they would make good nesting boxes, but the chickens had other ideas) and we flipped them up on their sides on the original nesting shelf. We may still need to put dividers in, but we found out pretty quickly that a solid top was a necessity as one of the hens fell through the top and got stuck for a minute before falling all the way through. Though it was amusing to watch, they could hurt themselves so we moved a spare piece of panel board to the top of the crates and problem solved....for now...
Mom happily collected a few eggs by the time we were done and the chickens were super happy at bedtime as they checked out their new options. The ducks didn't seem interested though so we may need to put in some lower options for them next. :0)
Spring is almost here and there is still so much to do. I am off to tackle my list for the day!
No comments:
Post a Comment