drstratton
True BYH Addict
Good morning! My name's Rene' - my husband Dale and I have been married for 35 years, we have 3 adult children! Our family consists of our oldest son, our daughter & her husband, our youngest son, his wife and their brand new baby boy, our first grandchild, born on 3.26.2020!
I'm here to learn and share as I begin a new backyard animal journey! My husband is going to be retiring in 2-3 months, dependent upon when the current job he's doing finishes! We thought it would be June 1st, but then Coronavirus. Covid has changed the direction we thought we were heading and we have made the decision that we need to become more self sustaining for ourselves, our children & their families!
We have 5 acres in WA State and have always grown a large garden. We've had dogs, cats, Banty chickens, pet rabbits and 2 of our children raised pigs for 4H! Currently we have 16 chicks in the brooder. These are not Banty's, hopefully they will all be good egg layers! We have been working on upgrading the chicken coop and expanding the pen. We want our chickens to free range, but they need to be protected, as there are dogs in our neighborhood that love to come in and slaughter chickens! We also have coyotes! The rabbit hutches will be in the chicken pen. We are using the old hutch that we built for our children's pets and are in the process of constructing a new one! The pig pen is in another area of our property! The pig area includes the original pen and it is tied to our old chicken pen, we have decided to expand it to give the pigs more you, so they will have access to the old chicken area. Doing this not only gives more room, but provides shade & shelter for them throughout the day, they should be able to get out of the sun and any nasty weather that might bother them.
Pig Pen!
Chicken Coop & Pen Area
Chicks!
Full view of garden, chicken and rabbit section!
Starting modifications to coop! We removed the nesting boxes from inside to give more room for our larger chickens. My husband is adding new nesting boxes to the outside!
View of Chicken coop & soon to be new pen area, rabbit hutch before moving into pen. The new pen will extend to the existing fence straight ahead and to the right! It's quite messy right now, but that will be cleaned up soon!
Rabbit hutch moved into place! My husband raised the hutch up so that we would not have to stoop down to handle the rabbits, this hutch was built for our children when they were little's!
We need to finish adding the support for the lift, our battery died on the cordless drill, but we were okay with that as it had been a very long day to get to this point! When finished with the modifications, I will give it a fresh coat of paint to match the new hutch we are in the process of building! The new hutch will be to the right! We will be adding an auto watering system for the rabbits and the chickens!
That's all for the moment. I will share the build of the new hutch along with the plans and materials list that my husband drew up! I hope to get the rabbits, by the weekend, we'll see how it goes!
~ Thank you for stopping by!~
I'm here to learn and share as I begin a new backyard animal journey! My husband is going to be retiring in 2-3 months, dependent upon when the current job he's doing finishes! We thought it would be June 1st, but then Coronavirus. Covid has changed the direction we thought we were heading and we have made the decision that we need to become more self sustaining for ourselves, our children & their families!
We have 5 acres in WA State and have always grown a large garden. We've had dogs, cats, Banty chickens, pet rabbits and 2 of our children raised pigs for 4H! Currently we have 16 chicks in the brooder. These are not Banty's, hopefully they will all be good egg layers! We have been working on upgrading the chicken coop and expanding the pen. We want our chickens to free range, but they need to be protected, as there are dogs in our neighborhood that love to come in and slaughter chickens! We also have coyotes! The rabbit hutches will be in the chicken pen. We are using the old hutch that we built for our children's pets and are in the process of constructing a new one! The pig pen is in another area of our property! The pig area includes the original pen and it is tied to our old chicken pen, we have decided to expand it to give the pigs more you, so they will have access to the old chicken area. Doing this not only gives more room, but provides shade & shelter for them throughout the day, they should be able to get out of the sun and any nasty weather that might bother them.
Pig Pen!
Chicken Coop & Pen Area
Chicks!
Full view of garden, chicken and rabbit section!
Starting modifications to coop! We removed the nesting boxes from inside to give more room for our larger chickens. My husband is adding new nesting boxes to the outside!
View of Chicken coop & soon to be new pen area, rabbit hutch before moving into pen. The new pen will extend to the existing fence straight ahead and to the right! It's quite messy right now, but that will be cleaned up soon!
Rabbit hutch moved into place! My husband raised the hutch up so that we would not have to stoop down to handle the rabbits, this hutch was built for our children when they were little's!
We need to finish adding the support for the lift, our battery died on the cordless drill, but we were okay with that as it had been a very long day to get to this point! When finished with the modifications, I will give it a fresh coat of paint to match the new hutch we are in the process of building! The new hutch will be to the right! We will be adding an auto watering system for the rabbits and the chickens!
That's all for the moment. I will share the build of the new hutch along with the plans and materials list that my husband drew up! I hope to get the rabbits, by the weekend, we'll see how it goes!
~ Thank you for stopping by!~
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