A guess a little update is due on the fowl front.
Our chickens number seven and our geese number two. This doesn't seem like a huge amount, right? I thought the portable yard I made them in mid-June would be great until I could get their more permanent yard and Hen Spa built. I was wrong. These guys are growing little weeds. They love to forage and would rather scratch and dig around in the dirt and grass than much else.
Another interesting thing is that the hens must be near the poor geese. I'm not 100% convinced that the feeling is mutual for the geese, but suffice it to say that the geese and chickens are forever friends and likely roommates. Time will tell how long this lasts. I'm not sure how it will go when the hen house is built and winter sets in.
The first hen yard was built out of reclaimed/repurposed products (minus the nails and wire) and it went together pretty well. I picked up a chop/miter saw used and it made the work much more simple than using a hand saw or even my skil saw. I was really hopeful time would pan out and they would be able to be in that little pen until late summer or even fall. It was easy enough to move with two people or even one adult and a child. But the birds have grown bigger than I expected at a faster rate.
One day the hubs was reading in a library book about livestock pens and houses and happened upon a portable solution that we could still transport fairly easily from spot to spot and not be hard to make or expensive. It was a PVC yard. At first I was entirely incredulous, and laughed when my poor husband showed me the plans.
BUT, as sometimes is the case, minds work and think and then you begin to say, "Why not?" I know one thing was for certain, the birds could not be in the same yard for even one more week. This was a solution that we could do, for not too much, that would satisfy the need and even some wants.
So I set about gathering supplies. I was not sure how to attach wire, and the wire was still too big that we had; we had spent weeks of the chickens periodically escaping through the chicken wire, and I knew that what I wanted was a smaller wire. So off to the hardware box store. There I discovered a solution that was both lightweight, economical, and small enough for me and one other person to lift and move without too much difficulty and a lot less often. The old one needed moved daily.
I set to work on deciding how tall I could make it, how long and wide I could go, and how to attach the wire I found that would suit my needs. I had forgotten to tell my husband that I was now going ahead full steam on his plan and that may have been a mistake. I am 100% certain he would have been able to stem the flow of mishaps, but he works and is gone so much that I didn't want to add more to his plate.
But that didn't go as I planned.....
Just after we dropped Bear off at Vacation Bible school this happened as my husband was helping me cut the zip ties.... we were in a hurry because we had a long list of things to get done, and BAM..... God has a way of making you slow down... (I will post the directions to our PVC chicken yard later this week so look for that post!)
We did get the yard done, but not on the day we hopped. The injury to my dear hubs hand was not planned on at all, but it caused us to spend a little more time at home visiting with a long time family friend instead. So I say we got a WIN from it, despite the injury. God knew we would need to be more quiet and he made us do it with no regrets! The chicken yard got done and the girls and geese are OVER JOYED! It got done in GOD's TIME.
