No. Unfortunately for this hungry chica, this is not a new Chinese restaurant miraculously open close to my remote patch of woods.
BUT. It is my chickens' new palatial home.
They will be free range chickens, but half of them are about 2 weeks shy of being big (and feathered) enough to fend for themselves out in the world, and the other half are about a month away. And they do need a secure place to be at night (we have raccoons and wild turkeys out here). And I have delusions of being able to provide nesting boxes comfy enough that they will lay eggs in. As opposed to the forest floor.
As I mentioned before, my great-aunt rescued a couple of half destroyed gazebo kits from the local Aldi's. Between the two 'sets', we got one whole one up.
And decided that this will be the chicken palace.
Once we decided that, we used chicken wire, 2x4's, some paint, the screen that came with the gazebo, some hinges and latches, and a gazillion cable ties.Oh. And a sheet of plywood, despite the fact that it contains substances known to the state of California to cause cancer.
All in all, I think we did good...
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| Oh yeah. Esmeralda made it *almost* all the way down to the palace site. (I love my mud tires!) |
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| Sorting out the good pieces from the bad... |
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| The skeleton. |
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| The gazebo structure getting chicken wire added to the 2x4's we used to help shape out the bottom. We put a skirt of chicken wire staked in around the bottom - digging and installing a 12-inch apron underground is just not possible without heavy power tools on our property. Seriously. Very manly men have been thwarted. |
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| I bought it. Four 70-yr old men loaded it into my car. My mom primed and painted it. And out of this shall come the door. |
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| The chicken wire wrangler. Cable tires are awesome! |
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| Behold. The back of the door... |
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| Screens down, and stapled all around the bottom to the 2x4's. Except for where the door opens (proud of myself for remembering that bit while hurriedly stapling as a thunderstorm rolled in and rain started to come down) |
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| Hampies, still in their hutch, and Rhodies with their new (homemade) waterer/feeder. And mom releasing the last Rhodie into the wild ... er... palace. |
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| The Hampies kinda want to know what's going on... |
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| How long did it take them to figure out the new feeder/waterer? about 30 seconds. Although one of them IS having a tough time with the see-through-ness. (Sorry dude! I could only find clear!) |
And now... on to the weekend!
7 comments:
Looks awesome! Good job!
That looks GREAT! Enjoy your fresh eggs!
Thank you thank you! I can't wait!
I can't wait to see the first fried egg!
After being away from California for over 20 years I went to Port San Luise Obismo to install the Frankenmaker MKI I figured there was a pretty good chance I'd just drop dead as soon as the wheels hit the ground! heh heh
**trying to respond, but laughing too hard**
WOWEE!! =) That looks like chicken heaven! =)
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