Moving Day

We have been housing four chicks in a bathtub in our garage for the past month, and they have grown quite a bit in that time. Big enough to move out to the chicken coop that Mac has been working on.

I am proud of our green construction: much of the fencing came from an old dog kennel and the coop is mostly built from old kitchen cabinet wood. However, it looks a little funny because the pen follows the sloping contour of the ground, while the coop is level. The chickens don't seem to mind.

Our previous chickens were named Ruby, Ada, and Pearl - characters from Cold Mountain and The Scarlet Letter, so it only seemed appropriate that our new chickens had similar erudite names. From left to right in the photo above we have John Jacob, Cartoons, Rusty, and Bunny. You'll have to talk to Megan about those! But she was pretty consistent -we asked her three different days what we should name them and this is always what she said.

Our Portland chickens suffered a violent end when we first moved them out here (likely cayotes), so Mac took special care to make this coop a chicken fortress, an impenetrable bastion against all possible enemies. On the second day, the chickens got out. :) Ok, it turned our it was actually a manufacturing defect in the fencing and not Mac's construction, but it was funny nonetheless. So far no signs of invaders.

Chickens start laying around 6 months old - hopefully, by September we'll be getting fresh eggs.