Nothing Like a Fresh Coat of Paint

I previously mentioned our barn renovations, and last week my parents came down to celebrate Sam's birthday as well as help us paint the barn. Sam and my Dad's birthday are a day apart so we ended up putting my Father to work on his birthday. Didn't really seem fair but he has always helped us paint our houses or do other major renovations. Here he is up on the ladder painting the trim. We finished painting the entire barn and attached chicken coop red, but still have some of the trim to finish up. The paint has added new life to the barn, hopefully it will be good for another 10 years or so.

Thanks Dad!

Moving Animals onto Pasture

We are busy moving all the livestock away from the barn and out onto pasture. The idea is to let the animals feed on the grass, fertilize the fields and allow the barn yard to rest. The mobile chicken coop was a large part of this but we also moved Mia, our tamworth gilt and our water fowl out this weekend.

I made Mia a simple A-frame structure on skids, siding it with some vinyl siding that was up in our hay loft when we bought the place. We hoped to use just a couple strands of electric tape, but Mia is too much of a "people pig" and would charge through to get back to her people. For now we added a second perimeter of electric netting to keep her in. Hopefully, once she gets used to her new setup, and she gets some company, we have two male weanlings coming in the next week, we will be able to go back to the tape. We have her setup in a small area in hopes that she will root up all the grass. Then we will move her to a new area and repeat.

The ducks and geese are sharing a run. I made them a "tractor" from an old moving crate, chicken wire and an old tarp. Unfortunately they had no desire to go into it at night. They just grouped up and went to sleep out in the grass. I checked on them this morning before going to work and they were happily eating and going about their business. We will use the tractor for the broilers and pullets once they are ready to be put out on pasture, hopefully sometime this week. We also took the cap off my truck and put it out as a run in shelter so the birds can get out of the sun when needed.

So now all we need to do is get the goats, turkey poults, broilers and pullets out on pasture and I will be able to reseed the barn yard.

Mobile Chicken Coop

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was converting an old trailer into a mobile chicken coop. We got the trailer from my neighbor and after stripping off some things we didn't need it formed a strong platform to build the coop. I did a simple lean to design with a large nesting box on one end and roosts in the middle. The bottom is diamond metal mesh so hopefully most of the chicken droppings will fall through. The bottom is secured with hardware cloth to keep out any predators and to allow a lot of ventilation. I used metal roofing and a single plastic panel to afford the chickens some natural light. There are large doors at both ends and a small chicken door which is left open during the day.

I set the mobile coop in the barn yard Saturday afternoon and locked all the chickens out of their old coop. Danielle and I came back out Saturday night and transfered all the chickens into their new home.

Sunday morning we moved the coop out onto our pasture and setup a perimeter of electric netting. The chickens happily came out to explore their new digs and seemed pleased to have some fresh grass to feast on. I am happy to say that when we went out Sunday evening to close them up all but one of the chickens had found their way into the coop. They also had no problem finding the nesting box and provided us with 19 fresh eggs.