On the whole I had always regarded ourselves as fairly punctual and reliable people, unfortunately this appeared not to be the case with the chickens.

Anyone remember me sharing my excitement when we agreed to care for these unwanted pets, and even recruiting Dad to put together a coop from all our scraps of wood and timber. those nine months have passed with the Ladies living a luxurious life with our good friends, and only this last weekend have we finally got ourselves organised enough to finish off the coop and run.

So I cordially welcome, Daphne, Lulu and Henrietta! Surprising, comical and destructive in equal measure I am glad that we made a good job of the run as the garden wouldn’t have lasted a week!

Our biggest expense within this project was the large roll of coated chicken wire, and mainly that is because I have 15 more metres of the stuff sitting in the tool shed. the theory is I will be making wire covers for my veggie beds, with the long term goal of letting the ladies scratch them over for the day whilst I am down there (good for everybody I hope), although I am wondering how many people have experience of towing chickens in a tricycle box? has it been done? And will they tolerate a short but bumpy ride? answers are most welcome.

The timber didn’t cost us anything as it was given to us by one of Hubby’s colleagues who couldn’t use them for his projects as they all had slight bends in them. the poles we already had. the water pipe was a rescue job from a skip, and the debris netting has a limited life on a building site, so Hubby can take any that is no longer fit for purpose (but is more than fit for us to use for our little projects!). Even the roofing felt was just a couple of bits that a friend had left over.

All in all I think we’ve spent a total of £45, and £40 of that was on netting that we haven’t even begun to use up. the £5 was on fixings and fastenings. On the whole not bad at all. Although if my father had charged us labour costs, I’d be remortgaging the house right now!

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post, but at this time of year the jobs really start running away from you.

(and in case you are interested, we’ve had them since Saturday evening and they’ve laid 10 eggs so far! two even on the first day so they haven’t been too rattled by their move to a new home…such fun!)