Last month, my friends Young and Tony came to visit from Baltimore. Tony is known in these parts as the Construction Bandit, and he certainly lived up to his name! While Young was attending a conference in Denver, Tony was here working away on projects around the house.
During his visit, Tony got in touch with his inner farmer by working on The Chicken House.
Our original plan was to build the girls a new house from scratch, but after reality set in, I realized we could use an old shed that was already on the property. I'm not sure what the previous owner used it for, but it is incredibly well insulated with 6-inch thick walls. About a year ago, the husband covered it with some leftover metal siding from our workshop. We still need to finish the trim around the front door and paint it a pretty color. It's not painted yet because I can't make up my mind on the color...
I had a nice glass window that I had been using for a cold frame for the garden, and Tony was able to use that to give the girls a view out toward the peach orchard across the road. He even added a beautiful screen so that the window can stay open to give them more fresh air.
I put a roost under the window, so the girls line up on it and watch the world go by. Note that Tony even put nice trim around the window!
The husband used some small buckets and plant saucers to make an automatic feeder that is suspended from the ceiling so they can't get in their food and scratch around, and I have a similar bucket for their water. It's quite a handy system. I fill the feeder about once a month, and the water bucket about once a week.
The shed already had some shelves on the side where the window is, so we left these in place. The bottom shelf was intended to be their nesting area, and I realized the other night that instead of sleeping on their roost, the girls like to sleep on the upper shelves.
The part that the girls love the most about their new house is this screen door that Tony built for them.
It allows them to have more light and fresh air, but it also gives them this great view of the garden!
For now the girls are living indoors. We have plans to build a wire pen next to the shed so they can come and go as they please during the day, but a large branch of the apricot tree is in the way. As soon as I harvest the apricots, we'll cut off the branch and they can have a new backyard.
The girls hope you enjoyed this tour of their new house, and they express their sincere gratitude to Tony for giving them such a deluxe living space!!
In fact, they're so happy in their space, that they left me a present this morning. The first two blue eggs!!!
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