9 Weeks Old

A lot going on this week.  We added another 160 feet of electronet to the chicken yard for a total of 320 feet of fence.  This way they have more shaded area and lots of new ground, weeds, extra bug territory etc.  When I looked out at them the area just didn't seem big enough for them now that they have grown so much and it was getting pretty worn down.  Now it goes way way back and it is wider at the front.

Recently in my last post I mentioned opening up the back of the coop to let more air flow through.  This is what it looks like now.  We used hardware cloth.  The tarp keeps the rain out.  We have had a lot of rain.  It hasn't smelled badly in there since we did that even on a really hot day, try 95 degrees F in May.

It's really hard for me to get good pictures of my birds.  I think it's great and so I click.  In the time it takes to click, a split second, they move.  So next time I try to be really quick and I forgot to focus.  I think they are beautiful birds though.  Obviously, otherwise why all the pictures.

                                                                                     

This one is my favorite. He comes running up to me and follows me everywhere, checking out what I'm doing. He has even let me pet him.

This one is a big one.  A big cockerelle.

So yesterday we made more changes to the coop.  We shouldn't have.  They were in a panic at bedtime.  Totally stressed.  Mark was picking them each up and stroking them, cooing to them.  Actually, I couldn't believe it, he was so concerned.  They were fine this morning though.  Mark had made a new perch and it was pretty big.  Awesome perch.  But we had to move stuff around to make it fit.  We should have done one thing and waited a couple of days to do one thing more etc.  Monday we enlarged their outside area and moved things around so Tuesday moving stuff around in the coop was a bad idea.  Mark felt like he had bonded with them and after said to me, "So you're going to make me put them in the slaughter cones, aren't you?"  Whew!  I felt bad after he said that.  But I will never make him do that.  I just read where a couple got a bunch of chickens for meat purposes but they ended up keeping them or giving them away because they simply couldn't do what is needed to get them into the freezer.  Now I'm wondering if that will happen to us.!!!!!!!

This morning: June 3, 2010, I'm out there early and I needed to tighten the red string strung over there yard because the heavy rain soaked it and stretched it down to the ground in some places.  Some of the chickens followed me to the back.  They like to walk around with me.  Some of them stayed at the front end of the yard where the water and feed are.  I heard a funny noise coming from the coop area so I stopped what I was doing and looked around.  In a minute I heard it again only it was louder.  And again.  Then I laughed, how cute, one of the roos was trying to crow and each time he tried it sounded more like a big boy.  So cute.