Saturday's Remodel

Saturday morning I headed up to the coop with a bucket of tools and some scrap wood with the intent to install some perches. The ladies seem to enjoy hanging out up on the ones in their yard (that is what the gray pipe is in this picture)  and Dwight seemed to think they didn't feel safe enough inside to lay eggs.

The first thing I did to improve the living conditions for my chickens was install some rails on the ramp. Painted plywood is kind of slippery when you have talons for feet.

 
 After several failed attempts and at hammering nails through a piece of scrap wood to hold up a longer piece of scrap wood (as a perch) to the wobbly, unstable plywood walls and at least five trips back and forth from Shed #1 or the house, I came up with this...

Those are two night stands we had in our first apartment. I was still using one as a night stand (even though it was hidden in a corner to the side of my dresser - Hooray for an excuse to shop for furniture!), and the other was in the office being used for extra stuff storage. I stacked them on top of one another so that I could mount a perch higher than the existing one, which you can see here.

Oh, and I finally nailed that down. Since I never saw that perch lying in the hay, I assume they narrowly avoided Traumatic Experience #6.

When I checked on the ladies after taking Charlie for a walk, one of them (I don't know who since all tail feathers are present and accounted for) was checking out the alcove to the left of the cinder block. That was the most interest I've seen from my birds regarding their housing. Unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures to show you what they were dwelling in. Even though its still kind of a shanty, I'd say we're moving in the direction of the Ritz rather than the Motel 6.