One of the reasons  we bought this place was because it already had so many out buildings. There was a nice big barn that now houses our goats. There was a chicken coop that our first batch of baby chicks moved into in August of 2014.

Then there are other out buildings that we name based on what we put in them. The tractor shed, the mower shed, and the garden shed. We like to keep the naming easy. Between you and me, I still get them confused.

Way back in February of 2015 Michael thought the outside fenced in area of the chicken coop needed a top so the chickens would have a dry place to search for bugs and other things to eat without getting all wet.

Here he is putting metal roofing on the top of the existing structure to provide some protection from the rain.

There we go! Our pampered chickens have a place to get out of the rain but still peck around for food.

Fast forward three more years and the outside pen needed some upgrading. Originally the previous owners had only chicken wire around the open area. It was all rusted and there were many holes in it. Many times I had to try to show a robin how to get out of the space.

We have goats and they like to scratch on anything they can. We would often see them scratching on the chicken wire. Do you see that post on the right side of the space? It was rotten and needed to be replaced. It was obvious….we had another family project.

Joshua was in charge of measuring and cutting the chicken wire. Because there is a slope in the pen, he had to measure every time he cut as the height was different for each new piece.

Halle Berry  is making sure he isn’t lonely. What a good helper she is!

The wire went up and was wrapped around beams. They took it as far up as they could to the top. We also overlapped about four inches. It was my job to splice the two sections together where they overlapped with small pieces of twist wire. I didn’t last long at that job. Once we ran out of really thin wire the only wire we had left was thick and I just didn’t have the hand strength to cut the pieces. Michael finished it up for me.

Our goats like to be around us. They were eating, checking out what we were doing and finding shady spots to lie down.

Ahhh! a nice shady spot.

There is Sandy trying to scratch herself with the handle of the shovel. As mentioned before, they also liked to rub against the chicken wire to scratch themselves. So, we put a exterior layer of cattle panels on the coop to protect the chicken wire from the goats rubbing and scratching. Scratch all you want you silly goats, you cant destroy our chicken wire now!

We love our animals. The goats give us milk that we drink and sell to customer as well as a key ingredient for my goat milk soap. Our chickens give us wonderful fresh eggs with yolks so dark orange we will probably never buy eggs from the store again.

The goats are one reason why we did this project. If they can get in the coop they will eat the chicken feed which is not good for them.  Of course the chickens were a big reason for the upgrade. One of our Australorps hatched a baby and we bought twelve more chickens. This is actually a sad story. The first part I posted here: http://www.onthebanksofsaltcreek.com/our-family-is-growing/

Those first 12 chicks didn’t all make it. One day I noticed a chick was dead. We thought that something got inside the pen and killed it. The next day, five more were dead. I called around to find more chicks. Stores only put chicks out in spring and fall. All of the stores were out. I searched for chicken hatcheries and got a call back from one. I told him what happened. He said it was rats! He then told me about the true meaning of the name “pack rat”. Rats will kill their prey then pack it into an open cavity in a wall or under the floor for later use.  Yuck! Some how they were not able to pull the dead chicks out of the empty watering trough we kept the chicks in. So we lost six Buff Orpingtons. We made a cover out of a cattle panel and some chicken wire. I’m pretty sure nothing can get to our chicks again.

The man from the hatchery said he would have six chicks the end of June. I bought ones called Novogen. The are a breed from France. All chicks are growing nicely and now we know what to look out for.

Since our goal is to someday be self sustaining, taking care of our animals is a priority. Maybe some day we will add beef and pigs.

Hugs, Karen