Building a New Custom Chicken Coop

We got to work on the new chicken coop this morning. My trusty handyman extraordinaire, Mark, came to do the building. Sean did the digging and general assistance. I provided the plan, did the supervising, and made lunch. LOL. I have to say, as the one who does much of the outdoor labor, it is super nice to have someone else build this for me! It's being built of rough cut cedar and should be finished tomorrow. I'll post more photos and a full description of the layout when it's finished.

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Building the frames
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Digging a foundation trench to bury cinder blocks
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Finishing the frames and roosting box
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Attaching the frame to the foundation blocks
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The hardware cloth will be buried around the foundation to keep out critters!
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Wrapping with hardware cloth
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It's blazing hot here... not just blazing hot, but extremely humid. It's when this muggy heat hits that it becomes really easy to abandon the garden! Nevertheless, with proper planning, you can still have lovely blooms in the garden through the dog days of summer. Only the tough ones make it into my summer garden because they are not going to get any pampering...

An almost white fragrant daylily... the variety name is escaping me.

white daylily
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Thunbergia grandiflora (sky vine) blooming earlier this year than I've ever seen it... and some stunning bronze fennel in bloom.

Sky vine Thunbergia
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Bronze fennel in bloom
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And a second flush of blooms from rose 'Perle d'Or'.

Well, a very sad thing happened this morning...all the girls were fine this morning after their feeding. I hung out with them as they drank at their waterer. I just went outside to check on them and roust them out of my hostas. Scooter wasn't with the rest of the gals, which was unusual. So I went looking for her. Found her lying dead by the door to the coop. I don't know what happened...she's always been the smallest of the group and always seemed to have trouble eating, so I babied her. Perhaps she had something wrong with her from the start and her poor little heart just couldn't take the heat. I'm so sad. She was my little sweetheart...

My chicken Scooter
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I don't have much to say about the abundance of strawberries we've had this year except YUMMMMMM!

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Here are a few updated shots of the girls from this morning. They had another spaghetti eating frenzy so they're in a pretty good mood! No eggs yet, but surly Eunis should start laying any day now. With her nasty attitude she'd better start making herself useful quick! The big bully has started pecking all the other's tails to a nub. Not good. Also, I think I'll be building a bigger coop, possibly next weekend. I've decided I'd like a walk-in, which will also make daily care easier for those who have to babysit if we're away.

Einstein the Houdan
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Einstein the Houdan in all her crazy glory...she does like to pose for the camera.

Einstein the Houdan
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Mean, mean Eunis...she even looks mean in her pictures. And Phab Phyllis doin' her thang.

Eunis the Mean
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And my sweet little Scooter. This morning there were some drops of water on my arm from refilling their waterer...she actually drank them off my arm, all gentle like. It was adorable. Yeah, Sean doesn't get to eat her! Didn't manage to get a good shot of Pecker this morning..she's always freaked out.

Phyllis the Crazy
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Scooter the Sweet
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And my sweet little Scooter. This morning there were some drops of water on my arm from refilling their waterer...she actually drank them off my arm, all gentle like. It was adorable. Yeah, Sean doesn't get to eat her! Didn't manage to get a good shot of Pecker this morning, she's always freaked out.

Here is what happens when you forget to stay on top of your zucchini/squash harvesting...you begin to find zucchini the size of boats in the garden! Ah, but the good thing about zucchini is that the rind doesn't get tough on you past the size of a cucumber like most summer yellow squash do. You can let these babies get huge and they still taste great...and you can float them to the Bahamas, which is where I wish I was floating away to right now! Or Paris...Paris would be good...but I don't know if my zucchini could get me that far...hmmmm..

Huge zucchini!
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

Anyhoo, this is a really outstanding bush type zucchini I'm testing. For those of you who have limited space, or haven't had much success with the vining types of squash/zucchini, try sticking with "bush" types. They make plants about 2 1/2 feet tall and wide, so they are great for containers or small space veggie gardens. I fried up some of this zucchini two nights ago and it was superb. Nothing like summer vegetables giving me the excuse to eat something fried. Now I have to go run it off!!

Ok, so I had a bowl of spaghetti noodles in the fridge from yesterday...and I keep hearing that the chickens love cooked rice, noodles, that sort of thing. I decided to see if THIS would be enough to bribe them to love me...lol. So far, many items I've tried given them have been met with total disregard, so I wasn't convinced they'd actually eat the spaghetti. They run to me for salad greens from the garden, but nothing else has interested them.

Chicken noodles!
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

After they looked at me like I was crazy for a while, I finally just threw a pile of noodles into the run for them, let them out into the yard to run around and walked away to water in the garden. A few minutes later I looked over and Einstein had gone back in the run by herself. Wow..it was like giving a 1-year old their fist piece of birthday cake! She kept grabbing one noodle, then running with it back into the coop with it as if to hide it from the rest of the gang. It was funny watching her try to negotiate eating the whole noodle at once. She ended up scarfing down about half the pile by herself before Phyllis started to show some interest. That's not a bad thing...Einstein needs to put on a bit more weight. (Eunis..the big one, has started really pushing everyone else around. They're a bit afraid of her right now and I'm worried they might be getting bullied out of some food).

Investigating...
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Once Eunis noticed Einstein and Phyllis digging into something that was obviously good, she came over to see what the fuss is about. Pecker and Scooter follow her wherever she goes, so they came along too. That is Pecker in the above photo as I baited her out from under the door. After just a little while, they were all eating it out of my hands and couldn't get enough. Even Eunis, who has really just been a mean bossy you know what for the last month, was coming to me to eat it out of my hands. Scooter, the little blue Ameraucana is always sweet though and actually seems to prefer me feeding her directly.

I guess I'll be cooking spaghetti more often!

I've been so busy that there has hardly been time to keep photos posted quickly enough! So here are just a few random shots from this past spring. The first few are from May and others from random times through the spring. Enjoy.