Welcome Dominiques!

Chickens! This summer has been all about chickens. What started out as a fun classroom project hatching six Dominique eggs at school has turned into building a coop and run for six hens and one rooster. The rooster above, Solo, was the one successful hatch out of our six eggs at school. How could we give him away!? This is the reason for not writing here until today, August 1st. A friend of mine raises and is actually a hatchery for Dominiques and BuckEyes, beautiful heritage chickens. She said I should try Dominiques because they are a gentle bird, more so then the BuckEyes. Yet she loves the BuckEyes more. Wiki says that the Domniques came over around the time of the MayFlower or something along those lines. I think they are from Haiti. They are very hardy in cold climates and are good egg layers. After she gave me six eggs and another friend lent me her incubator I set them up in school. 21 days later Solo hatched. We didn't know if she was a girl (hen) or a boy (rooster) but his light color and proud cockadoodledoo yesterday morning as he entered the run confirmed our suspicions. We have spent the summer building brooders, transforming a horse stall in our barn into a coop, and building a run. Who would have thought that it would take so much thought, research, time, and money! But it's six weeks later and all is almost complete. A final window went into the coop last night. Once that's secure and the nest boxes are put in the coop all will be set....for now! Even though I have been gardening all summer, I have always been behind. Behind on planting. Behind on weeding. Behind on mulching. But constantly watering, watering, watering. Never have I ever had to water so much. This is the driest summer I can remember. Now that the coop is done I've finally weeded the entire garden (thank goodness!) and mulched the lower garden. It is raining as I type, thank goodness again, so I'll mulch the remainder this week. Here are some pictures of our summer's project:

Young Chicks in the Brooder

Our Barn

Welcome to the Coop, Barn Entrance

Taking Down Shelves in the Stall

Putting Up a Wall in the coop

View of the Coop and Pop Door to Run

View of the Coop, Human Entrance

The Run in a Covered 3 Sided Extension of the Barn

Back Shot of Run

Solo and The Girls; First Day in the Run There we have it. Our new coop, run, and more chickens. Welcome! More posts to come sharing our building journey, our final touches: roost, nesting boxes, and new window. Only 12 more weeks to eggs! Mary