Leaderboard

Here's one I built this summer. Coop floor is a 4 X 8 sheet of exterior grade subfloor. Back wall is 5 ft high, and front is 3 - used 2 sheets of T-11 for those walls. End walls were T&G boards that I had laying around. I built it with a run under to coop so they could have protection from the weather but still be outside if we don't let them out into the caged area. Once springtime is here, we'll put up nylon Electra-fence to let them "free-range" in fresh grass, and they'll still have the protection of the cage. There's a sliding door in the floor and the ladies learned pretty quickly how to get in and out that way. In the spring need to make some adjustments to the sliding door - I planned on being able to open the end door and use a push rod to open and close it, but it loads up with poop and gets hard to open, so for now we're going into the cage to open and close it. 9 chickens and 3 nesting boxes. Generally, there're be 1 or 2 in a box at a time, so they load up 1 box with eggs, if someone can't wait, they'll use the other boxes.

Have a flock of 75-100 birds use my farm every year. Looks like these boys came up for a few stones in their diet.

Well the wind was so bad last night (You can hear it in the video) that we didn't go coyote hunting, so I decide to finally do some mus hunting around the abode with the Rix Storm S2 scope I purchased last year for the PCP rifle. The S2 is the cheapest bare minimum 256 res scope with a 3.5x base mag to get a shot at a tiny mus at 20 yards, especially with the PIP feature. While 256 resolution isn't the greatest, it's more than enough for my short range needs and now I have a dedicated thermal rig for mus hunting. SJC

I remember when I was a kid many many years ago we were told not to name your animals . It become difficult at butcher time When you have to Kill Betsy , Drake , Porky , etc ..

We had ducks years ago. The darn things became pets. They used to follow me around. Butchering time was not pleasant. We also had rabbits, chickens and goats. Yeah, we got caught up in that farming thing that everyone gets into out here in the country. It worked good for my two boys. They had chores to do, and they learned about responsibility and actually doing something for their allowance.

I built the Hen Den about three years ago out of all scrap lumber I would pick up along the road. It served its purpose, but my wife grew our flock when she hatched eggs from our first hens. While still called the hen den, it is now the rooster coop! To make my wife happy, and better meet the housing needs of our 18 hens and the one rooster who lives with them, I built the bigger coop. In the summer she really has it dressed up nice and pretty.

Those big knots are called burls and can be highly valued by woodworkers as they sometimes have spectacular grain running through them making especially nice knife scales. Al

This arrow is in the tree about 30ft up the tree. Of course it’s on the hills of Letchworth Park. Someone shooting across ridges.