Down and Dirty with the Chickens

Down and Dirty? You betcha! There is so much more work involved in putting together a simple yet effective chicken coop that I appreciate so many people put chickens in the too hard basket. But with some hard work, ad some creativity we now have a chicken coop! It is such a relief to have the girls out there tonight for their first outdoors night.

Building the fence was a took far more time than planned. I was working with conflicting information about the dangers of foxes burrowing under the fence and even the chickens themselves scratching a hole under the fence. So as you can see the trenches are more like footings and more than adequate for the intended use.

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I back filled the trenches with double bricks the full length of the trench, then shovelled concrete mix over the top. It has set well and has some weight and should do the job intended. This was for a 22 meter perimeter so it required a fair few bricks and bags of concrete.

Then, we bought the chickens - unsexed Black Australorps, which are great layers and suited to the Australian Climate. It was really cute watching the two year old exhaust herself chasing the little chicks around the enclosure. Hopefully the chickens will come to adjust to the constant handling and be tame enough.

Has been a great experience all round and I am proud of how much I managed to do by myself without assistance.

One key thing I would share is that cleanliness and rubbish disposal is very important especially when chickens are concerned. Simply because the chickens themselves scratch and rustle around enough without the owners leaving scraps and off cuts and wire snips all around. I'm sure we have all seen the messy junkyard style chicken coops in our travels.