Thursday, April 19, 2012

Chickens in the yard

lady birds now spending 30 minutes or so on clear days in their chicken tractor.

Rosie meets the lady birds.

He just can't help himself, he wants to be in the middle of it all.

Some beautiful blooming in the yard.

Chow time

I bet she is curious to see if I brought her a fresh worm from outside or even a rolly polly bug would be great. See the chicken nipple on the bottom of the bucket, working great! 
The chickens are doing great. Almost completely feathered and growing very fast. They love their time outside and have definitely figured out how to scratch and peck the ground. In fact now when they eat the chick feed, they peck and then stop to scratch the wood shavings, very funny and curious that it is so instinctual to do this even in the enclosed housing they have right now. This week we received a set of 5 chicken nipples...HA! sounds funny huh? :) who knew chickens had nipples. Just kidding, but the whole family has got such a long run of jokes and laughs over this simple and very useful nipple for watering the chickens. They had a tray for water, which they messed right away, so we had to clean and check it several times a day. Later I discovered the chicken nipple (amazon :) Which is just like it sounds. This way they peck at it and water comes out. We drilled a whole in the bottom of a gallon  bucket then stuck the nipples in and filled the bucket. This keeps the water clean, more water available and less time from us in providing clean water. The garden is still a mess, but the backyard animals don't mind a bit, Rosie hopped over to take a look at the ladybirds, they just starred back. Ruben wanted so badly to co-mingle the pets, yet I wasn't ready for that. This was only the second day the girls had been out on the ground. Our chicken tractor was made by Tres with materials from the around the yard, just scraps of left over things. I am so pleased with this, keeping it low budget and functional is certainly a goal. I also love re purposing our pile of junk. Good times in the backyard.

1 comment:

  1. Love the tractor, and that Tres was able to build it from stuff you had laying around. Steven has been turning our junk pile into something functional too this week. It's a total win-win.

    Glad the nipples are working out. An experience those chickens never would have thought they'd have, haha.

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