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Friday, June 24, 2011

Nobody here but us chickens

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the most expensive projects are the ones where you get some part of it for free?  Free carpet turns into a whole garage enclosure project, free windows turns into a back porch conversion to a sunroom, free pontoons turns into a well portioned floating dock, free chicken wire turns into the Taj Mahal of chicken coops. 

Maybe this stuff just happens to my family and friends, wait those are the only folks reading this blog, so it’s bound to have happened to you too!

Anyway back in the spring, before it was 100 degrees everyday—you know 5-6 weeks ago-- L and S built a chicken coop and I scored some free ready to be recycled chicken wire.  Our coop was fashioned like the one Bobbie & Brent created out of leftover scrap lumber from building her house.  She told me that the most expensive item in her coop was the wire.  So when I had the opportunity to score free wire, well I jumped on it.  That was of course the only thing she bought for her coop, but don't let that fact get in your way, I certainly didn’t.

I have some pictures of the coop in progress, but have no idea what happened to them.  I'll work on that. 

When I went to Callahan’s to buy the feed, feeder and waterer (yes, that’s a word) the girl at the counter wanted to know how many chickens I had.  Well, none right now, but we are planning to buy six. 

She started cracking up; never a good sign because you know you are/ are going to be the butt of a joke.  Well that feeder that you are buying will feed about 30 chickens.  You could go on a five day trip and the chickens will have plenty of feed.  Yeah, that was my plan all along.  J

Back to the store the next day to actually buy the chickens and we got six.  J and I were so excited about getting them home.  We put a chair in the coop so he could sit and pet them and play with them.  He didn’t hug them and squeeze them or call them George, maybe because we only bought hens? 


I’m working on names for them, but it’s hard to tell them apart with any degree of consistency.  But here are the names I’ve been working with: Millie, Hilda, Helga, Bertha, Eunice, Pauline. 

They also answer to chick chick when you walk outside with something they think they can eat. 

It’s fun stuff so far, and we’ve been getting eggs! 
Yes, these are on floor.  J was in charge of putting up the eggs, but was so excited we had a full dozen he wanted to take a picture of them.
Breakfast is served!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done.

Anonymous said...

How expensive is that first dozen eggs?
When will you break even?
What value do you place on knowing your eggs are only a few days old, free range etc. versus eggs from who knows where and probably 40 days old when they reach the grocery store shelf?

Anonymous said...

the other reader here said my questions are "eggs-ellent" questions.