Week 2

We begin Week 2 with the chickens graduating to the WeedEater box. I had originally planned to move them into the Whizbang Garden Cart when it was finished, but my wife reminded me of this WeedEater box we had lying around, and it is just the right size. Besides, this will leave my cart available for when we get 5 cubic yards of bedding mix next week to do our landscaping out front (but that's another post.)


It's been fun to watch their wing feathers come in this week. Their bodies are still pretty much fluffy, although one can begin to see tail feathers and the feathers around their necks beginning to come in as well. I had planned to use sawdust from a local custom furniture place, but after being warned by my chicken email list about the dangers of black walnut and the preference for pine wood shavings, I found Agway had bales for sale for a little over six dollars. It only took maybe 1/3 of a bale to get the WeedEater box ready, so there should be plenty left for the next flock.

I'm hoping the chicks will be able to stay in this box until I put them outside. By then I hope to build two portable chicken pens (often called chicken tractors or chicken arks). If you are interested in seeing the variety of portable pens others have built, go on over to The City Chicken and check out their over 100 pictures.

Here's one of the nicest I've seen. The Isthmus Handyman has plans for sale over on his site. Since this is our first experiment with chickens, anthing I build will probably be much smaller and less involved. Although I do like that flower box!