Coop Door

So... when I built the coop in June, I still needed to put add some sort of way to raise and lower the coop door.  Having 98% of the coop done, and being summer and I was a little lazy and just screwed the door in the up position for the heat and didn't think much about it, until this week. The snow came and temps at night were getting as low as 27˚.  The last week of October, $1.79 of hardware and 5 minutes of time, I FINALLY got the coop door hook latch pulley thing done.  I go out around 7:00pm and shut the chickens up for the night, then in the morning, I go out and open it up.  I hope that keeps them warm enough through the winter nights.

Belle checking out my handiwork

3 Eggs

Egg shaped eggs

So, its been a while since I have updated the blog.  School has started back up and with the little bit of time I've had, I have been trying to ride my bike, get some cross racing done and spend time with the kids.

While I haven't written about the chicks, they are doing really well.  They consistently give us 2 eggs a day which is about perfect for our family.  When we get eggs out of the nest box, Lucy says "Thank you for the eggs chicks!" By Sunday, our egg basket in the kitchen is empty and we start another week collecting eggs. The other day I surprisingly found 3 eggs which will be great when my little boy starts eating real food.

When I get home from work each day, I let em run about the yard until dark.  By then, they have returned back in the coop and nested for the night.  One day, I came out back like normal after school to run the sprinklers, and I freaked out as I saw the chickens door was wide open! Someone forgot to close the evening before.  The chickens had put them selves to bed, woke up and spent the day in the yard all on their own! Thank goodness there were no animals to grab the chickens.

The girls carefully check out the lettuce tetherball before demolishing it! 

Water Heater

With the snow coming down, I was kindly reminded of the de-icer I have been meaning to buy for the chickens water for the last 2 months.  $30 through Amazon.  A friend steered me this way from a youtube video he found.  I'll write more later when I get a chance to see how it works in the sub freezing temps.  I just hope the girls will be ok through this late October storm.