Chicken Helpers

About a month ago I wrote about the expansion of our chicken pen.  When we moved the chickens from their little brooder pen to their coop, we just used the brooder pen as a temporary outdoor pen for them until we could get something better built.

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2012/08/chicken-pen-extended.html

Shortly after that, someone gave us a couple of old dog pens they no longer wanted.  Tom decided these should be used to expand the chicken pen yet again.  He decided that he could set them up in such a way that it would create a pen connecting the current chicken pen to our hoophouse.  

At first glance you might think this is a "greenhouse", but it is not heated or cooled.  We use it mainly in fall and winter for cool season greens.  Last winter, we grew lettuce in it all winter long.  We also use it in spring to protect tender plants from spring frosts.  

During the summer, it is much too hot to grow anything in it, except weeds, and the weeds certainly did well this summer and got the upper hand.  So, now Tom is hoping the chickens can help clear out the weeds.  It is amazing how much of the grass they eat.  There are patches of bare dirt in their current pen where they have eaten all the grass and scratched up the roots.

But, the problem became how to get them from their current pen over to the hoophouse, other than catching them and carrying them over there everyday!  As it turned out the dog pen panels were just the right length to span that distance.  You can see Tom over there working on a gate between the 2 pens.

There were times when he had a lot of helpers.  Chickens are incredibly curious.   

It did not take long for them to start exploring their new habitat.  They inspected every blade of grass.

Next step is to put chicken wire along the sides of the hoophouse so that, once we let them in it, they will not be able to get out.