That wasn't very nice. Not THAT moving day. Today was a "move some baby birds outside day". Hooray!
I got a hold of some stuff recently, and had a chance to repurpose a few things to make a safer environment for some birdies.
First, we obtained a fenced in pen for some chickens. A dear departed friend of ours used this for her backyard birds, which was given to other friends, who stopped using it and asked me if I wanted it. I said yes. Larry hates me for this.
We brought it home and were pondering its use. We may repurpose it into a home for our meat birds. It's not as easy to move as one would think, but maybe with some properly placed wheels, and a tarp for shade and shelter, it might do for the smaller batches of chickens we are raising for meat these days.
But they aren't here yet, Shannon's show birds are! We fixed up our old duck coop, which our duck flock has outgrown, and we moved it to a safe place. With this pen around it - our baby birds have a proper grow out space where hawks and owls can't nab them, and even our bigger birds can't pick on them. TADA!
Oh, I guess I should introduce you to Mr. Cream. He came from our neighbors. Our neighbor got a batch of chicks this year. One of them came with a foofy head. Clearly a Polish. My neighbor made a deal with Shannon - if it was a hen, she would keep it, but if it was a roo, it was coming home with Shannon. It's a roo. And he was being picked on over there - and all his tail feathers are gone, and many of his foofy head feathers. We thought he might get a chance to grow them back over here. No chance, our girlies are picking his head feathers in their coop at night. So he got to move in to protect the babies (Mottled Houdans, with a foof of their own, and Speckled Sussex) while they grow up. Hopefully his feathers will grow back in during his stay with the littles.
I was going to try to use this old duck coop as our quail coop. This would involve building a run to go with it, as quails need short spaces, so they don't freak out, jump into the sky and get hurt on the way down. They also need overhead coverage from predators, and unlike our chickens, they will never get to roam freely. They are tiny little spazzes, and we would never see them again. So I peeked on Craigslist and found this little darling coop. With an extra layer of hardware cloth underneath, we can move this around and never loose any quails. And on top of that - they still get access to grass and bugs, but are safe inside their coop.
It's moving day! Lots of happy birdies getting out of the brooder and into the fresh air, sunshine and grasses! What a good day to be a bird!
It's a good thing we moved some birds out of the brooder and to the outside. we're going to need that brooder space. Someone got impatient with the growing mountain of duck and turkey eggs.... that 42-egg styrofoam incubator just wasn't cutting it (although, my first batch of turkeys just got moved to the hatcher, so turkey poults are here soon!)
We caved and we bought our cabinet incubator, to replace the one we lost in the fire. And I stepped it up a notch and got the hatching unit too. This allows me to constantly be turning over eggs in the incubator, without having to balance humidity of hatching eggs vs. humidity of incubating eggs. I already hear some peeping from the hatcher, and that incubator is full - all three racks, half turkey eggs, half duck eggs. The little styrofoam guy is going to get refilled with chicken eggs. What a treat! So many baby birds!