BIG chickens!

Jonah and Silas love going with Daddy to feed the chickens. On the mornings he has time to drop them back by the house before he leaves, he takes one boy with him to help. They keep good track of whose turn it is!

Silas is great at hauling around gallon jugs of feed and water... not bad for a 3 year old!

These photos are of the second coup. It is made out of 2x2's instead of 2x4's which makes it a little easier to move. Jimmy has plans to try a 3rd coup out of pvc pipe. He wants to make more adjustments on the wood coups as well. Now that the chickens are bigger some can jump out the top when you open it to feed them. The food distracts them enough not to be a big problem, but he still wants to try a couple more designs. These are made out of exactly eight 12' pieces, so no wood is wasted.

This is about the size they started off at. Yesterday Silas came home and told me they weren't baby chickens anymore they were "BIG chickens!"

{Taken yesterday}

 They should be ready to sell just in time for Christmas! There are two types of chickens here according to the salesmen- fattening up chickens and patio chickens. We have 40 fattening up chickens (the white ones) and 40 patio chickens, of which there are around 5 different looking ones. We are hoping a chicken expert can help us out with breed identification. After 8 weeks we will know which are the better ones to have at the Institute and which ones aren't ideal for this project. 

{If you missed our earlier post these are trial chicken tractors that will be one of institute's projects used to help pastors provide for their families while ministering in rural villages.}