Today Jenn continued her painting of the coop; now all of the trim boards and soffits have been painted, just waiting for the siding.
Meanwhile, I finished installing ground barriers, installed the cute weathervane, and made a ramp for the pop door.
Painting done (other than siding), and weathervane installed.
Another view of the weathervane and painting.
Soffits.
Pop door ramp.
Today I took advantage of some fine weather to do a bit more on the coop, including mounting the poop door, and installing hardware cloth under the coop.
This is the poop door — a hatch below the roosts, that will enable me to more easily clean out the coop. The door is missing a handle on the left side currently. Though maybe I should move the handle to the middle? Not sure having handles on each side is all that useful after all.
Digging a trench below the edge of the wall.
Stapled on some hardware cloth (wire fencing), to keep the chickens (and other animals) out from under the coop. The top will be covered by the bottom of the siding.
Buried. Chickens are diggers, so burying it about a foot underground will prevent them from digging under it.
Who is sick of chick pictures? If so, you’ve come to the wrong blog!
It was a bit drizzly yesterday and this morning, but this afternoon we both did some work on the coop.
Jenn painted the window & door frames a bright pink, while I did some small stuff: I tweaked the front door frames, built a pop door, and pop controller internal door.
Just one picture today, showing some of Jenn’s work.
The chicks are getting bigger fast, and their new home isn’t quite ready yet, so I added a second large dog crate to their temporary home upstairs. They seem happier to have more space, even if the expansion process itself was “the worst thing they’d ever experienced”.
My original design for the coop didn’t include window boxes, but Jenn asked about it, and I figured I could add them below the two side windows. So this morning I did.
The boxes are cedar, with a plastic liner to help protect the coop and make it easier to plant. There is a plywood backer to give some vertical space from the bottom of the window, since that will hinge from the top.
They’ll not only make the coop look a little nicer, but have practical benefits, if we plant things like mint and such that help to repel flies.
The chicks are one month old today.
Hard to believe they were this tiny only a month ago:
And here are all 16 of them today; still got a lot of growing to do, but significantly bigger:
Here are an assortment of other pictures from today:
An assortment of chick pictures for your enjoyment.
I spent some time today finishing off the trim, including the corners and around the vents at the back.
Here you can see the trim on the corners and back vents.
A closer view.