Improvements All Around

My darling husband takes such good care of me!

And of my chickens!

The newest babies are growing FAST!

But with the time change, it was still dark

when I went out to look this morning.

(For those of you in Arizona, we are,

once again, 3 hours ahead of you!)

The Cornish Cross (Meaties) "can" be

pasture raised, but "they" say the meat

is more tender if they don't get to do a

ton of running around.

Makes sense.

I only have 20, so there is PLENTY of room

for they in the condo.

The problem is there isn't any room for ME!

I love the condo.

But it's short.

As in not tall.

As in, I have to nearly crawl to get in.

(Cuz I'm not good at duck walking...)

And, I am now, officially, the SHORTEST

human in our family.

Darn you Kyle!

(grin)

So.

Rod took it upon himself

(yup, all by himself)

to fix that situation.

Using his floor jack and his muscles

and his amazing puzzle sovling abilities,

he jacked up one end and stuffed some

cinder blocks underneath.

Then he jacked up the other end

and stuffed some cinder blocks under that.

It's even LEVEL!

Next he is going to frame in the bottom

probably using 2x2s and welded wire

but the trick here is there will be sections,

with HINGES! 

So we can open a section, stick in a rake

and clean out the poop!

(Cornish Cross birds EAT a lot

so they can GROW a lot

which means they POOP a lot.)

BUT

The bonus is,

you can WALK inside.

So no more hanging in the window

trying to change the water and feed!

(See the open window on the side?)

(to the left)

That's where we feed and water.

The two panels on the right

drop down.

The top is where the nest boxes are.

The bottom is because they keep

ignoring the nest boxes and laying on the ground.

Sigh.

In other news...

Last weekend.

He made some major improvements to the

girls BIG coop.

They have six nest boxes in there.

They slant.

So the eggs roll to the back.

And there is a panel so they can't sit on them,

or walk on them,

or peck at them...

But the panel wasn't quite right.

So Rod fixed THAT!

He added another row of wood

to make it harder for them to reach under.

The girls LOVE it!

(That's somebody's body part...)

(She's getting ready to lay her egg...)

And I love it!

It's so quick and easy and convenient.

And the eggs stay CLEAN!

(Except that one up front...)

Which is a nice bonus when you figure

we get between 69 and 72 eggs

EVERY DAY.

That's a LOT of eggs to wash.

(There are 21 dozen eggs on the counter

that need to be washed tonight.)

I love my darling husband.

He really does take amazingly good care of me.

He makes my life so easy!

And really.

What's NOT to love?????