Moving Day Went Very Good

By 10 AM everyone was in their new homes and things seem to be doing good.  The broiler chickens and turkeys stay all bunched up right now but when they get used to their new space they will explore more on their own.  The 3 baby chickens and 1 turkey are all over their huge space and seem be enjoying it just fine.

The broody chicken thing is not going so good, there were 2 other chickens trying to sit on the eggs, someone else laid another egg in that nest that no one has used for over 6 weeks and Miss Broody was sitting on another next that had 2 eggs.  I moved the other 2 chickens and did not enjoy all the biting they were doing and put Miss Broody back on the eggs.  The other 2 chickens who were on the eggs when I first went out starting to get her off the nest and then they was a little hen fight going on.  When I left them things had settled down but I'm not sure this is going to work.  It was much easier to listen to her cry when i took the eggs everyday than to go through this.

This is my brooder; picked the baby bed up at an auction for $1, Ron brought some heavy cardboard home and used zip ties to enclose the sides, used a piece of scrap plywood left over from the turkey coop for the bottom, used recycled pallet wood to build the lid and covered it with chicken wire.  Not a beautiful thing but for the price it works just fine.  Total cost about $2.

The 3 chickens and 1 turkey (one in front) in their new huge home for  about 4 weeks and then they will go outside.

This is the broiler home; cost for this was only the zip ties and the 2 pieces of lumber for the roosts.  The fence frame was from the neighbor who gave it to us for cleaning up the eye sore he had going on, I bartered with him for it and some that Ron got at work.  The chicken wire was some we got free last year, it is a heavy duty stuff not like what you buy at the store.  The tarps were some we got at Menards and when you mail in your receipt and the rebate form you got your money back.  Nothing fancy but will only be using it for the summer.  We will take off the tarps for the winter and the rest will sit until next year.  We don't have any wheels on it yet to move it around but Ron is working on getting some free and then we can move them to new ground so they have grass to eat all the time.  He also is adding another support post in the front tonight, we kept some of the left over posts in case we needed them.

  Just remembered that really we made money on building this.  All the chain link fence and metal pieces we couldn't use we took to the scrap yard and got a little over $50 for the stuff.

All huddled up in the shade eating grass.

Miss Broody