More building for chickens

Here are a few recent building projects.  Hubby (aka "Household Seven" because he makes things happen around here) has been a busy working man, and of course he has been eating like a working man to boot.  Small price to "pay" for this much labor, so I am happy to cook for him.

putting the rubber fingers into the bucket plucker

This morning's project was the bucket plucker, which I'll probably do an individual post on after we try it out tomorrow morning.  It is like the WhizBang automatic (motorized) chicken plucker, just without the large steel tub and motor.  Since we usually do only one to three chickens at a time, this sounded like a much more feasible idea, both economically and in terms of effort.

Feyd, Goldie, Mula, and Ninny inside their new tractor

We emptied the original half of the rampart, and Feyd and the hens seem to like having grass under their feet even if it makes dust bathing a bit more of a challenge.  We're happy because we have not needed to mow yet.

new door on the rampart

The biggest reason we needed to empty the original half of the rampart was the chicken wire on the door had rusted through and broken and was scratching our arms when we went in and out.  Hubby took the door down and replaced the poultry wire with hardware cloth, and then he dug out the dirt floor about a foot deep and brought in a huge pile of leaves.  We'll be using this half as a brooding area, since it is too hot in the daytime to use the shed this time of year.  The brooder tubs will go in by the center wall, and have heat lamps on the end, and I won't need to worry if the adventurous little monster escape the tubs because they will still be enclosed!  Chicks are due to arrive Wednesday morning from Missouri, and I am getting excited about that.