We have gotten back to the business of the property. We had three weeks of guests visiting which was great. We took some time away from our projects to hang out with them, but now we are back into the swing of things again. It’s fun to spend time with friends and take a break from all the landscaping and design planning and it helped to reinvigorate our interest in our newest projects.

The most recent one we completed was to build a nesting box with three chambers. The chickens are now about 16-17 weeks old and while they usually don’t start laying until about 20-25 weeks, we did have a Leghorn in Greeley who started laying little pullet eggs around 16 weeks, so we wanted to be prepared. We are so excited to finally start eating our own fresh eggs again!

The roosters are crowing and the hens will soon be laying

The first thing we did was to scope out where we would like to have the boxes. When we originally built the coop we were thinking of having the boxes inside the coop itself. After talking with a few people about it, we decided that it would be better if we had them on the outside where we could reach in and take the eggs out without disturbing all the birds inside and it would keep things cleaner as well.

We thought about putting them on the northern side of the coop, but then switched to the southern side where I would more easily be able to reach the boxes and the eggs without a step stool.

Then we drew up some plans and scavenged through the remaining wood from the deck bathroom. We had to pick up a few small parts from the store but otherwise we were able to repurpose most everything.

Our friend Anthony stopped by and helped with some of the roofing design and helped out when we needed to cut the metal!

Our final steps were to paint it to match the coop and then to install it to the coop. I held it up as Britton screwed it solidly in place.

We still need to cut holes into the walls from the inside and add locks to the boxes, but I think it turned out really well!

New addition to the coop! The egg dispenser!

We also recently had a turkey baby with a mysterious problem. Something happened in the middle of the night as they were huddled in the plastic tub. The turkey apparently fell into the water dish and then couldn’t stand up. By the time morning came and we found it, the poor turkey was in a sad state.

Sad looking turkey baby

At first we just tried warming her up which helped stop the shivering, but still she couldn’t stand. Then I noticed that the knee joint was all swollen and researched that the Achilles can slip. All the sites said that I could gently push the tendon back over the hump of the bone. I was a little nervous of hurting her, but it worked!

Unfortunately, the moment she put any pressure on it again such as standing, it would pop right off and she would drop back to the ground.  So I tried bandaging it with tape, a piece of Q-tip and Bandaids, but it wouldn’t stay where I set it. Finally after a long search, we found that self-adhering athletic wrap would work to hold the joint in place. And while she still has a slight limp and some swelling, it seems to be working and she can walk again!

Need some veterinary medicine and coop mods? No problem. Just another couple skills in our new island life tool box.