Long Day, Big Mess

You know those wonderful summer days when you took all your toys outside and played and played and played for hours because there was no school, and at the end of the day the sun was setting and you mother leaned out the door and told you to clean up that mess?

That was kind of like our day today. It took us half an hour to clean up this mess we made all over the yard. But then again, we did get a lot done today.

We started by putting the siding on the gable ends of the chicken house. We're in the home stretch for the exterior, and rather than let it sit around while we mess with the pantry, we just want to get this done.

So here we are. At the same time, I marked and re-cut the siding around the chicken room windows so they have the full size of the opening. They look much better, and when I get around to making the windows for the shed half, it will be pretty easy. I just need to order the plastic, actually.

When we'd done that, we took some time in the heat of the day to look at the pantry and moan and groan about all the rusty little nails all over the walls, then we decided to make the chicken accessories (the feeder and nest box).

Here's the wall they'll be using.

We marked and cut out the holes for the feeders. The body will be in the shed, the little mouth in the chicken room. We messed up and cut one too high, but that should not be a problem.

Using my drawings as a basic plan, we cut a bunch of pieces, then assembled the feeders outside.

Then we fitted them through the slot and screwed them in place.

On the chicken side, we screwed on a lip that will make a little feeding trough. We reinforced the sides with a couple more blocks of plywood screwed in place. It could have been more fancy, but the effort wasn't really worth it.

The construction was a little loose, and I'm not keen on lots of chicken food dust all over the shed, so I caulked the seams to keep that under control.

We got two feeders built today: the big one on the left is for feed, and the multi-compartment one on the right is for grit, shell, and something else (or nothing else; we didn't really need three compartments but we made then anyway). (Chickens use grit for chewing their food because they have no teeth; they use shell to get extra calcium to make egg shells.)

And here they are on the chicken room side. I put a little food in the feeder to give them a morning snack, but we didn't get the other feeder finished. I'm also going to add little roofs for the bins so they don't poop in them, because chickens poop everywhere.

Nest box and trim tomorrow, I suppose.

Technorati Tags: carpentry, caulk, chickens, construction, shed, urban farming

posted by ayse on 07/26/08