We did way too much farm stuff this weekend.
We’ve known that the chicken coop needed work before it could house the new laying flock. We got carried away. Or rather the chicken coop got carried away. We moved it from behind the barn out to the house-side edge of the pasture. We’ll be able to build a bigger yard there without having to make it wonky shaped to leave room for the tractor to get in and out of the barn.
It’s amazing what you can do with 2x8s some chain and a reasonably capable tractor!
Here’s what it looked like:
And here’s how we made it work.
The 2x8s and cross pieces are screwed together to make a pair of skids and then chains are hung on the bucket of the tractor and it’s all lifted just a bit to get the front edges clear.
Then it’s a slow pull and a bit of tricky maneuvering at the end (we turned the coop 180 degrees) and the coop is now in it’s new place.
It also go a bit of new wall, a quarter section of new floor and a new pop-hole door. Oh, and some gutters! Now it needs paint — badly. The only draw back to the new spot is that it is visible from the house. So chicken coop aesthetics now matter!
That all happened Saturday. Sunday we sheared. It’s amazingly fast for such hard work.
That’s Jim holding Satchmo by the head and Jason Black trying not to get kicked. Satch hates having his feet touched!
