 Project completion - Well the chook house and yard is finished and four new residents have moved inside. For those of you who know me a little better, you may be wondering how on earth did I manage to make such a magnificent creation.
Well all I can say is that my darling wife Sue helped me and I sought a little advice from her brother Matt. But mostly we just kind of worked it out.
The neat thing is that it was built almost entirely from recycled materials. The roof was salvaged from down the back paddock after the cyclone hit last year. The wooden uprights used in the fence and the coop were salvaged from an old cattle race that had been pulled down. The sheeting on the coop was left over from the re-roofing of the house, and the wire netting was given to us by our new church. They are renovating an old warehouse to form our new church facility and this netting was nailed to the walls inside. This was a real blessing to us as the wire, if boughts new, would have cost us over $100. 
The only items we had to purchase were the star pickets for the fence and triangular supports, screws to hold the roof and walls of the coop in place, some strainer wire and clips to hang the netting in place.
Whilst I am bragging that the year is complete a little bit of work remains. We need to make a gate into the yard to replace the temporary measures in place at the moment, and we need to form a mound of eart around the baseline of the fence - just to keep chooks in and intruders out. Future enhancements planned include guttering and the installation of a small tank so that fresh water is always available to the hens. We also plan to section off an area inside the house for broody hens to hatch and raise chicks.
With any luck we should see some eggs in the next day or so!
8:00:30 AM 
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It's a lamb's life - Our new lambs are enjoying the third day of "outside of the womb" life, relaxing, snoozing and generally doing very little. Both appear to be gaining weight. Mother and lambs are doing well!
8:15:44 AM 
