I feel like the question should really be, “What aren’t we building?!”
So we moved to this farm. Awesome.
We thought we’d have it made in the shade. Maybe we’d add a fence here or there. Fix this or that. But it’d be pretty easy and take no time at all.
So here’s what really happened…
#1 – The chicken coops are scary and our 3 guinea hens died the second night.
Okay, so we think it was probably a snake and we think we know how it got in. However, we know nothing for sure and we really really like our chickies.
So what do you do? Do you sacrifice some to see if you’re right and you’ve fixed the problem?
Ehhhhhhhh…
Did we mention the chicken coop is kinda scary?
Leah’s convinced there’s a dead body buried in there and a voodoo curse on it. So we decide to build a coop closer to home – in our front yard.
But before we do that we have to tackle these problems…
#2 – The duckies really need to be outside!
I love the ducks. They’re my favorite animals on the farm besides my corgi Abby Smalls. Since they’re growing fast and they’re super smelly, we needed a solution STAT!
We were going to put them in the blackberry patch but it’s so overgrown we’re convinced it’s infested with venemous snakes (no really).
So I built this cool thing instead 🙂
I love “the googles” and I found a picture of a similar movable ducky house. I built it pretty quick and finished it late the night before I left town for a conference. I was working double time so that Leah would have something secure and more easily movable while I was away. Leah didn’t think it was as easily movable so she didn’t even use it once the whole time!
So here are the pros and cons of this design:
Pros – sturdy, movable(ish), large door for people to go in, wire keeps duckies pretty safe, lots of shade and fresh air, duckies can peck around on the ground
Cons – pretty heavy, hard to find totally level ground so this sits flush, plywood starting to peel, not 100% secure so they still need to come inside at night
Right now, this option gets the duckies outside during the day happily quacking away. Annnnd they’re in the front yard where I can visit with them often which makes me a happy quacker too.
#3 – Oh shit, goats.
This thought must run through my head 20 times a day.
Right after moving in we began building the first extra secure goat fence.
That took FOREVER!
Seriously, it did.
So that was what I like to call, “Phase 1.” The first big goat pen and the secure enclosure built inside the barn.
“Phase 2” would be the boys pen and enclosure. Small problem, we were going to put the boys in a pen next to the old chicken coop. See #1 above.
We’ve pretty much decided the old chicken coop area is dead to us. Plus, it has deep weeds which probably = venemous snakes. Did we mention that two of our friends goats died already this year from rattlesnake bites?
In a total time crunch we transformed a shed in our backyard to a goat habitat. Which is working great becaue it turns out that these little Nigerian Dwarfs are sooooo much smaller than we thought they would be!
Since they were soooo much smaller than we thought they would be, we worried about putting the new girls directly in with our Mini-Manchas. One of the babies, Mustachia, is only 10 pounds!
So instead of putting them in right away like we had planned. We decided to keep them in the shed for the short term which meant…you guessed it – more building!
Instead of one big space I tossed up a short wall to keep the quickly maturing boys away from the girls. We don’t want any surprise babies, especially when pregnancy in young goats is often fatal 🙁
And finally…
#4 – Starting on the new chicken coop!
With the ducks secure and the goats settled in, I can start work on the new chicken coop and get those chickies outta my office!
It’s looking good so far…
I’ll keep you posted as I finish it. Hopefully before I melt in this Texas summer heat!