A Hard Day's Work! Sunday 26th August

Good Morning Blog Friends,

No cards today, as you can imagine after a long day of building the new hen house, we just needed a hearty meal of pasta and a nice glass of red! 

Tom's Dad and brother came over bright and early and we started to take the old enclosure down before 9 am! We would happily have started earlier, but some neighbours may not have appreciated it!

It was sad to see the old enclosure go, we built that ourselves 5 years ago, if it had just needed a paint we would have kept it, but it had a leaky roof and nothing we did fixed it. I'd wanted a walk in run again and we had trouble finding one, then we saw this one at a local garden centre and thought it would be ideal.

Four giant boxes of parts arrived on Friday, so there we were on Saturday opening them in the garden and laying on the grass. The weather was fairly kind to us all day, in between heavy showers and thunderstorms, it was hot, really hot. The worst time was when the neighbourhood had a power cut and I couldn't put the kettle on for an hour!

Anyway, on opening it was soon evident there were three items missing....the ramp for our little lovelies to walk up to get in the coop, the cover for the nest box and...the instructions...yes, the key to putting all these pieces together!

We had bought it direct from the company, so of course they aren't open again until Tuesday, when they will get a piece of my mind and a demand for immediate delivery of missing parts. but having demolished the run and opened the boxes were were committed.

Actually, to be honest we figured it all out pretty well and with just a few mishaps along the way, namely with the roof structure, we did it. We had to make a temporary lid for the nest box and use the ramp from our old coop, which wasn't so high off the ground so is a bit steep.

A last look at our old coop :(

Tom in background 'project managing' his Dad and bro..who says don't bring work home!

The new 'home' is taking shape

The finished house this morning, still needs the path, fox proofing and a proper ramp but  otherwise pleased!

Our Bluebelle, Bella seems to really like it, as do the newbies, but Cara our Black Rock hates change or anything new. I swear she thinks she's a cat, when she isn't best pleased she has that low pitched 'growl' and struts around. It took her three attempts and lots of growling before she actually went to bed and even more when she got up this morning.

Last night was the first time we put the new girls, Penny and Lacey into the coop with the others. We snuck them in late last night when they were all asleep. It's always a sentimental moment for me, but fortunately all seemed to go well and hopefully tonight they will all trot off to bed together.

We are keeping the old coop, it is a really nice one and will be handy for quarantine times and if we have to introduce more hens (which I hope will be way in the future), so we need to paint it and look after it, next job!

The new coop is bigger and easier to clean, the actual size of the run is slightly narrower but  a bit longer and better shelter under neath, plenty of room for four large hens.

But we still have work to do...Tom's Dad and bro went about 6pm, we made a dash to B&Q for some items needed to start the fox proofing and then started on that and finally came in when it got dark...goodness we are aching today, but finishing the fox proofing is a priority and then we are taking Tom's Mum, Dad and bro out for a thank you lunch.

Sorry I haven't had time to look at all your lovely blogs yesterday, I will have me a catch up tomorrow and hopefully get a card made tonight, if I'm not too tired!

Thanks for stopping by,

Carole X

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