Coop Progress

Has it really been a week since my last update? Wow! I guess it is no surprise, though, considering our packed schedule over the past week. As I last reported, we have been working on the kennel-to-coop conversion project. I really need to get some more updated photos of that, as we have plywood up on the North wall, and more of the baseboards installed, but here’s an “in progress” photo. We work well into the darkness some nights, so please excuse the poor lighting. 🙂

At four weeks old today, our ISA Brown chicks have entered their “gawky teenager” phase – they still have some of their fuzz, but many feathers are coming in here and there as well. We are taking them for brief adventures outdoors, and it’s interesting to watch them, as they know the coop is where their friends are, and they will peck at the outside wall, trying to get back in. Our twelve week old Welsummers and Buff Orpingtons have free access to the outdoors during daylight hours, and they are getting braver by the day. We’ve decided that we are going to make a real free-range area, rather than a fenced yard, off of the back of our new coop. It will be better for them, and they will, in turn, produce better eggs for us. We’re very excited about all of the eggs we will be getting, and we will be selling farm-fresh eggs as soon as our girls start laying enough to exceed our personal needs, which should be in just a few weeks! Some of our ladies won’t be producing for a few months, but they are darn cute in the meantime:

We were excited when our friends Karl and Scott, some fellow homesteaders who live a few minutes away, dropped by last night to share some of their flock’s eggs with us, along with something I have wanted to try for some time – an Amish Friendship Bread starter! They also brought a couple of slices of the bread they had made from it, and it is a delicious cinnamon bread, dense and richly flavored. I had a slice for breakfast this morning, and I’m trying to control the urge to devour the other right now.

Life out here is great. 🙂

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