THE RANDOMNESS OF HOMESTEADING – EMERGENCY CHICKEN NURSERY

If you guys knew all that happened the day before we left Arkansas, you would be either be amazed, or terrified.

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Initially, I had tried to structure my week leading up to our departure in a way that there would be nothing left to do on Wednesday, the day before we left. However, life did not even come close to cooperating, and it became one of my busiest days ever. Thankfully I decided not to try to get our shipping container in and dealt with a whole bunch of other issues instead.

A CHICKEN NURSERY?

Eventually, I plan on building some solid structures down on our land for some of our growing animal population. For now, though, I am mostly creating portable structures that serve their purpose and can be moved as needed.

When Steemie hatched, I considered building a chicken nursery. Since we have a pen that currently contains Guinea Fowl, Muscovy Ducks, Chickens, a Rooster, and sometimes Rabbits for a while, there are quite a few animals that can mix it up.

Sometimes a chicken may peck at a rabbit, or the rooster may attack the male Muscovy duck. To bring tiny little baby chicks into the mix with their first-time-mother hens may not exactly work out the best. I figured that perhaps I should build a nursery for the new mothers.

With some cedar logs, pallet boards, scrap metal, discarded screws and some chicken wire, I got started. The goal was to make a small chicken tractor where two hens could sit on their eggs, hatch their chicks, and be provided with their own food and water. We need to keep some special chick feed close for the chicks, but if the other animals have access to it, then the other hens will eat it all.

I got to work on it and even took a “proof selfie.” However, when Steemie died, I stopped the project and moved on with life. This was a few days before we left.

TIME TO START AGAIN!

At the time, I put away the project and moved on to other things. Then, two more chicks hatched!

Now I had to get back to work. This video was shot on Wednesday, after I somehow managed to find a traffic jam in the Ozarks on my drive to purchase new tires.

Monster Truck and I got right back to work on the chicken nursery when we returned from town. Little did we know that we would soon be driving back to town again, but that it another story. (Driving to town takes quite a while.)

Having my son there to help me with projects is a BIG help, even if he is still just a little pepper. There are so many useful and helpful tasks that he can join in on, which not only helps my projects go faster, it helps him think and learn too.

There in the hot Arkansas sun we worked and talked, and built more and more. This little guy even has some good ideas and isn’t afraid to ask questions or think about why we are doing what we are doing.

Before too long, very near sunset, we finished our project. We went and picked our trailer up to load it and take it to the animal pen. Eventually, sometime between 9 and 10 pm, we finally got the hens, chicks, and eggs into the nursery.

It did not take us the whole time just to build this nursery, as we were working on multiple projects at once, but perhaps I will share about them later.

SUPER-COOL “HOMESTEADERS UNITE ON STEEMIT” LOGO CRAFTED BY @ALLFORTHEGOOD

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-chicken-nursery-finally-finished-late-late-at-night

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Until next time…

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