A lot done over the last week. Collected 50 eggs, finished the famous goat gate (just need a little hardware now to work on another door), and I added five newcomers to the flock.

I found out that another member of the Backyard Chickens Board had some Cochin/Silkie cross chicks he wanted to get rid of. I knew Silkies made good broodies and mothers (people use them to hatch and raise other eggs, including other species of bird), and I found out that Cochins were the same way, only bigger. So my wife and I took a short drive up to Akron and ended up with the entire stock of regular sized hatchlings, five in all. Two are yellow with chipmunk-type stripes down their backs (checking Feathersite, these will probably be partridge colored) one is yellow with a gold-brown tint; another yellow with a greenish tint (these two are likely buff - maybe one is a roo); the fifth is black (could be a blue or a bearded black - we'll see).

This meant having to clean out the nursery section of the coop, reinstalling the fence to separate it, and adding a new feature - a draft shield that I made out of scrap lumber that can be removed (along with the fence) when it's time to integrate the flock.

And speaking of integrating, I'll be experimenting more with that on Wednesday, when a few more chickens arrive. I'm getting a couple of started Easter Egger pullets from another BYC member, and as a bonus of sorts, there's a bantam birchen cochin rooster making the trip up. After seeing the heavy breeds and banties getting along in Akron, I'm sure he'll fit in, but I'm concerned that he'll fly over the fencing into the nursery and cause problems for the chicks. So that's another creative solution I need to come up with.

More on how I solve that potential problem - and how I integrate the new arrivals - when it happens.

Once I get the tweaks to the other doors around the gate, I'll take some pictures and post them here. I'm sure someone could have done better, with a superior design, but I'm pretty proud of the way the gate turned out. I've never thought of myself as mechanically adept, but it was a challenge to come up with something that would serve double duty by locking up one set of goats or another, while letting the other roam free. I'm pretty pleased with the solution. Whether it actually keeps stubborn goats in their place remains to be seen.