Oooh it’s a cold morning, and will be a cold day, just getting out of freezing maybe, maybe up to 38 degrees F. but then again, who knows. This is the country! I do mean: we are out in the boonies, ok? Weather people don’t have the snuff for what it takes to measure weather here as accurately as they do in cities 😉
If the weather is sunny and not too brutal later, and warmer than the now below 20 F., then I’ll see about taking some pictures of the nearly finished but occupied A-Frame out back.
Since we put the Australorps in it on Saturday at dusk, and were at church yesterday and didn’t spen much time in the back yard, I haven’t had much of a chance to look at it all, admire it, take photos, try and fix up a few more things, etc.
I really wish we could have finished this thing on a moderately temped day, but so it goes as it did.
I need to come up with hardware to fix the doors and such closed.
The egg door and the big door next to it are key, and then the lift-off back needs some securing mechanism as well, but is heavy enough not to be a problem per se, for now at least.
A-Frame is really cool. I love the way it is in looking through the door or side with chickenwire, much nicer than crouching down to the two-feet above the ground level and peering over and down from there, especially when it’s COLD! 🙂
I don’t mind laying in the grass in the spring and summer and watching the birds at the low ground level, but crouching, nah, ugh!
Once Winter is finished, we’ll go ahead and get the pen outfitted with green bird net instead of chicken wire, and make a door for next to the one big one that’s there now, both will be “screen doors”. We may also make a screen change-out for the back side where the Cypress-Side now resides. That’ll be nice for super duper clear moderate times.
Internal things we need to do is get a hook and chain to hang the waterer, and maybe devise a feeder box to attach to the side of something … right now we throw the crumbles on the ground, which I dislike having to do. Once the waterer is hung though, it’ll mean no having to get it out before moving the pen. 🙂
We also have to get a roost in there. We are thinking of drilling round holes in the handle end of the pen, and inserting a new large dowel, aka broom/mop handle.
Then we will get an artificial light in there too, and modify the nesting area as it presents problems … which I’m hoping it won’t.
The best thing about this A-Frame though is ACCESS to my birdies! I can open doors and touch them, grab them if I want to, pet them. 🙂 Thus far the past has had my birds fairly free inside barriers that kept me on the other side. Not my plan from day one, but how it happened to play out.
So we are online with our third pen, and it’s a grand one compared to the other two.
We will be moving the three remaining Wyandotte-like birds into the A-Frame, if they can live with the Australorps, that is. The A’s are bigger than the W’s, so we shall see.
Then the scrappy whities will go into the superyard, and then Frank will tear apart that old first hen pen and re-invent it. Then back in the whities will go, maybe, if they aren’t stewed or dog food by then. 🙂 I really am hoping just to keep them a bit more for a few big eggs. I could really use them.