I haven't posted to here in a while. Things got very busy with getting my funding for school set up and all that jazz. It's official, I am now a co-borrower on a loan for $24,000 for school (with my dad). Its unfortunate I had to get a loan but jobs in this area, especially part time, are few and far between and while there is a job in Belleville if I want it at Subway, I cannot afford to run the truck 30KM one way every day.
Aside from my loan woes, we have been finally getting some things done around here. In the last week we've lost 2 birds to a raccoon. Caught and killed the culprit (but still setting the trap to catch a second skunk, we already caught his litter mate). The losses (one was a duck the other a chicken who escaped the coop and decided to get eaten) showed us we needed to get some things done, like for one the chicken shed. This is the shed before hand. Its the shed we built for the goats in a pinch before the winter and since the goats moved into the big shed by the house, the chickens have been living in here quite comfortably. As you can see, the roof is on the sketchy side of things. Very sketchy LOL. Clearly my roof building skills are not up to par. That and it was a rush job to get the goats in and the goats don't care about the roof. The vents on the side are covered in hardware cloth just so you know. We are saving the roofing tin and scrapping the whole roof structure in favour of a new one that has been built on the ground and is ready to be lifted into place and secured tomorrow.
This is the shed right now before its makeover
YES those are rocks in the gaps
And this is the new roof, the plywood is on there just because we had to cut it to size. The hole is for a clear square roof vent purchased from Lowes. I know Pat advised against it, but I couldn't help myself lol. I'm going to hardware cloth on the inside over the opening as well just incase anything does get through the vent. After the originaly roof is removed tomorrow, we'll take the plywood off this and lift the structure onto the roof. I figure since its a fairly small roof, we can get away with using the securing brackets from Lowes. The little chicken shed is also moving to a more protected area by the house so it is out of the sun most of the time.
Things to do on the chicken shed
01. Extend it to make it 6x12ft or something like that (we will have 9 birds soon in there, the 3 remaining EE hens and 5 Dominique hens 1 Dom Roo)
02. Paint the entire shed
03. Extend upwards so we can put a nice steel door (with window) in.
I've also been busy putting the new goat pen in. The goats live in the 13ftx17ft shed by the house and still don't have a field fenced in. Unfortunately the main pasture will not be fenced in this year. Due to the terrain, the cost of fencing it has literally tripled and with the cost of the bathroom Reno just skyrocketing, there is no way it will get done this year at all. So instead i'm currently working on getting a pen set up for them so we no longer have to move them from their shed to behind the garage daily. I coudn't give you the dimensions of this pen, it was a "put a post where there isn't a rock the size of a Chevy Aveo" kinda deal.
The posts are recycled from the fence that Mylie wrecked and the whole fence will be 4 board with 2 lines of electric (one at 6" and one at 4ft). This area is the only area with significant gaps under the last board because of the hill, that area is being filled with large boulders from the holes we dug. Yes, we have some that are the size of a medium dog LOL. The boards are just the really thin ones that are used on privacy fence. I really wanted the 1" heavy sawn boards from my mill but they only go as small as an 8" and that looked kinda tacky to me and the 5\4 was ridiculously spendy so we went with this. I figured with electric it'll be fine. If it doesn't work out, we'll just replace. No biggie, its just right now we're on a tight budget.
And just for fun... the house with the newly painted front fence, and the new trim (still need to replace a post and put a 4th post in and trim them out).
We're picking up April on Monday, our new Boer/Nubian doeling and I'll definitely get photos of her!
ETA For some reason I forgot to add a photo of the new roof before it goes on. Now it has been added. 
Smart, alert, cute, spunky.... definitely trouble 
Still haven't found the darn thing. 
