Renovations?

Firstly, a picture of the sweet bird. :)



Yes, she's as lovely and cheeky as she looks!

So.. renovations. Well.. we DID do renovations.. just not to the house. I present, the roost extension! haha.



We always intended to have two roosts up on that table, but Marty made it happen this weekend. The nesting boxes have changed, too.. I tacked those together a couple of weeks ago now, I think. There is 3 nests, partitioned off, and made more private with the hessian (burlap). Marty put down some squares of linoleum for the bottoms, so if when an egg breaks, it's now much easier to clean it up.



We're also working on a new feeder idea. Something that will help reduce the waste that happens when certain chooks scrape away the boring stuff looking for the sunflower seeds! It'll also help keep mice away from the pen. We're still in prototype stage at the moment. The drinker on the left is a cup that holds a little water, and the chooks press on a tongue inside when they drink. More water comes out and everyone has a good supply of clean water. I'm very happy with those. We put one on this bucket, but they can be used in nearly any container. (There's a much bigger one with two cups attached just outside their house.)



So, in a nutshell, we spent another weekend doing chooky things. Sadly we didn't get a happy ending, as one of the Dorking chicks (they're 12 weeks old now) took ill and died on Sunday. It was surprising and very fast - she only showed symptoms of something wrong about 2pm. We took her from the pen and did everything we could. Being novices, we asked a chooky-minded neighbour for his help, and even so, we lost her around 10:30 last night.

We're hoping it was a one-off incident, but keeping a close eye on the other chooks, just to be sure.

Until next time.