At three months of age, our chicks are fully feathered and have spent the past week or two in an unheated garage, preparing them for life outside. We gained permission to keep the chickens at my in-laws' house. They have a few acres of land that doesn't have much going on beyond the wild turkeys and Canada geese as well as the odd deer.

As this is a 4-H project as well, the girls were very much involved. Unfortunately, the work day coincided with Mother Nature turning on the "summer" switch for Wyoming.

One of the cool things about 4-H is that it gets the children involved in a hands-on way. Here, the girls (@emberskydragon and @wolfspirit) are learning about measuring and figuring out where the cuts are going to need to be made on the wood. (It's also a good lesson about why multiplication and division are important to learn!)

Using real tools is important too. This is Ember's first time using a bow saw (or any saw, I think). WolfSpirit did a good job as well.

Once we got into the construction part of the project, I forgot about taking pictures.

The girls learned important lessons about how to put a concept into practice - as well as how sometimes things aren't perfect - and how it usually doesn't matter. We also learned to work together better as the blended family we are.

It was our first 90F day for the year and we definitely felt it! Still, we got the job done.

Here is what it looked like after basic construction:

It's 8'x 4' x 2'. I designed it to require as few cuts as possible. (It also makes a good size of garden bed so they can do the weeding/tilling between seasons.)

The next day, we took the chickens to their new home. We also stapled a new tarp over one half to give them decent shade. It was really windy while I did this (fairly typical in Wyoming) which showed that the tarp won't be a great long-term solution, but it definitely works for now. (We did add some bricks to weight it down on top and give it some extra staying power.)

The chickens seem to be enjoying their first taste (literally) of grass and their new task of weeding and tilling the soil for future garden beds.

Photos taken in May 2020 with my Nikon D7200.

Past issues...

Poultry

Chickens - A Little About Our Breeds
Chick Update and the new Warming Plate

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, PicFair and DeviantArt.)
verified author on Goodreads
(Buy my books at Books2Read and at LBRY)
find me on Twitter

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