Some Minor Improvements

We've had a non-house weekend, but Noel got a couple of things done today that are very nice.

First, he finished the multi-chambered bin for grit and shell (on the left in this photo) and also installed a little "roof" over the bins so that if we install more perches or the girls shift around from sleeping on the far side of the perch, the food and so forth will be kept clean. Very nice, and something I'd been procrastinating on.

(Chickens are so funny: when I went to take this photo Carole insisted on going into the chicken room before me as if she were giving the grand tour.)

And he also added the cross-brace wires to the fence doors, which we just never got around to installing before. And a little hook latch, which was what was keeping us from installing the braces, because without a latch, the only way to keep the doors shut was to let them sag against each other.

It's the little things that count.

We didn't get much else done this weekend, because we spent all day yesterday dealing with an acute case of peritonitis (an abdominal infection) in poor Liza (you can see in the above photo that she is doing much better after subcutaneous fluids, some antibiotics, and a night in a box beside our bed). She'd stopped laying abruptly, but seemed fine, so we didn't know what was going on. Then yesterday morning she didn't want to move at all, so we spent the day at the avian vet's office. We thought we were major yuppies when we started sending the dogs to daycare when our housekeeper came to clean, but you're not really a yuppie until you take your chicken to an avian vet. (By my accounting, each of Liza's eggs have cost a little under $100, not including their carbon footprint.)

Also, it's important to take a weekend off every now and then. Even if it does mean the pantry doesn't get finished in August.

Technorati Tags: chickens, construction, shed

posted by ayse on 08/17/08