Chicken Pen

This is our chicken pen.  I got online and looked up a bunch of different designs and drew out a chicken house from all my favorite parts of the others.  We are working on painting it red with white  trim today.  It is looking so good!

This is the view from the yard.  You can see how big the chicken pen is. We wanted to give the chickens lots of room to run around and scratch.  The original plan was to get 3, maybe 4. But we have 9 at the moment.  I am thinking about getting another 8 chicks to raise to eventually put in the freezer…   

This view shows the house a little better.  There is a 2x8 board against the house but it is not part of it… Jon made the house 5 1/2 feet tall so I can stand up straight inside.  It makes it so much easier to clean it out.

This shows the nesting boxes.  I like this part because I can just lift the lid and grab the eggs and not have to actually go into the house.

This is the inside of the house. There are 6 nesting boxes, but the hens seem to like to share just 2 of them.  There is also laminate tiles on the floor to make it easier to clean out.

Roosting bars in the corner.  Jon made them out of Cedar branches. I put hay on the floor to help with cleaning out the chicken poop.

A view of the front of the chicken house.  We put “Cape Cod” style windows on the house, to let a breeze in, the hot air out but also keep the rain out as well.  Lily says the house has a face.  Can you see it, too?  :)

Lily loves to feed the chicks.  They are about 5 months old.  We currently have 2 RI Reds, 1 Barred Rock, 2 Silkies, 2 Americaunas and 2 Easter Eggers. 

The Silkies are super sweet.

I am TERRIFIED of snakes!!  Seriously!!!  So Jon and I decided to put hardware cloth around the bottom 3 feet of the pen, then the chicken wire higher up.  I have it zip tied together.  I also didn’t want raccoons, or opossums to get in the pen, so we made it about 7-8 feet tall. I hope it helps.  :)

 

While I was outside, I thought I would share our garden for this year.  We added 2 new beds and a couple potato cages to the garden… and a FENCE!! YAY!! :)  I cannot wait to paint it white!!  so pretty!!!

 

These are our tomato “trees”… the two short ones on the left are the cherry tomato plants.  They are Lilys.  She checks the garden and then eats all the cherry tomatoes.

This is our potato cage.  It is new for me, I have never grown potatoes like this.  But it looks like it is doing pretty good!!

Lettuce bed- We have spinach, Iceberg and Romaine lettuce

And this is my fence!  Part of my birthday present/mothers day present.  We got the pickets off freecycle and are using 2x4s left over from other projects…  Once completed it will keep the dogs out of the beds!!  YAY!

And you cant have spring without a litter of kittens…  AWE!!!

 

~ Kristina