Well, the chicks are 8 weeks old now and ready for anyone who likes their pullets young! 

Hubby and I have been busy trying to finish off the extension to the big henhouse so we can get the remaining chicks out of the brooder sheds.  The concrete all set nicely, but its all taken us longer than anticipated, because we forget how crochety we are getting now!!!  Hubby has a bad back, and also twisted a muscle in the top of his leg a few weeks ago, and could hardly walk.  I've got a touch of arthritis in my joints, so also have trouble standing for a long time, and I'm not supposed to lift heavy things as I have a hernia, so you can imagine what a site we look hobbling around trying to lift 8ft by 6ft sections of sheds, and even 8×4 sheets of ply feel heavier than they did 10 years ago!!!!! lol

But we are nearly there, thanks to the conservatory place down the road where we get their old door and window frames for nothing which hubby cuts down to size and a freecycle friend, we have made the extension to the big house for about £60!  The walls are all in (we did have to buy some plywood) and the roof is on, now we need to get the felt on the roof and to help keep the red mite out, hubby is going to stick the felt on the roof instead of just nailing it on like he usually does, and then fix the door on and make new pop holes.

Then I'm going to creosote the outside, but have been advised not to do the inside, but I'm going to take a tip from a friend and mix some liquid paraffin with some vasolene and put it in all the creases and cracks inside the house to prevent the mites getting in, and we bought a 5 litre bottle of poultry shield, and the whole house will be sprayed with it before the chicks go in.  So hopefully we'll keep the little blighters out of the house this time!

I've taken a photo today to show what the house looks like at the moment, and I'll try and get it on here tomorrow.

The chicks that are already in the big house love it there, and hubby put in a semi automatic watering system, but the little so and so's keep tipping the drinkers and soaking their shavings and straw.  But there won't be any drinkers in the extension, so hopefully they will keep that reasonably dry!

I wanted to cook breakfast this morning, as Sunday is the only day we treat ourselves to a full English, so I asked hubby to open the shed doors up and see if the chicks needed feeding.  Anyway, later in the day, I was helping him with the extension and he asked me to go and get something out of his workshop (like they do!!)  and that's where the cold frame 'hospital' is.  We still have a few chicks in there who get pecked, one quite badly on her back last week, and I walked in the workshop, and there was a chick sitting on top of the cold frame!!!  I keep the lid up all day and just put a green net cover over the top weighed down with some long bits of wood, so they get plenty of air, but hubby had put the wrong bit of wood over part of it and there was a gap in the netting.  Goodness knows how long she'd been sitting there.  I was lucky she wasn't wandering around the garden!!!