Beginning again, albeit not quite from square one. Most of the old chicken coop is serviceable, but there are some things that need to be done to it, as listed below. One thing not on the list that I will add is to put chicken wire across the top of the coop area to keep the clucks out of the rafters. That caused some problems with storage and cleanliness before the flock was decimated, and I don't want those things to start up again.

So Saturday I worked mostly on cleaning up the old tack room, helping my daughter with her goats on occasion. The new lights are a boon - the electrician effectively doubled the number of lights in each area of the barn. There are four circuits - one for the outside lights, one for the coop, one for the milking room, and one for the rest of the lower barn area, including the tack room, stable, and feed area.

One of the things I did was pick up bits of wire, paper, plastic and metal left behind by the electrician. He dumped them over the goat fence, thinking the goats couldn't get to it, but they still stretched through to check out the taste of some of the non-edibles before giving up on them. This is the area where I put scratch out for the chickens so the goats don't poach their feed, and I wanted it cleaned up. I even went over it with the magnet to pick up loose screws and brackets, and a couple of rusty nails from other times.

My daughter and I also took the last of her three older does in to get bred. It's late in the year, but apparently there's some kind of extra premium that 4-H pays for having a doe with very young goats present - it's a right crowd pleaser, high in the "Ooh-Ah!" factor. If impregnation proceeds as planned, then the goatlets should be only a week or two old by fair time.

After dropping off the doe, we made some rounds in town: WalMart for deck screws with which to assemble the new goat-proof gate for the coop, and Tractor Supply for Sweet Feed and Chicken Scratch. I thought I would end up buying some chicks since it's their Chick Days, but they didn't have any in the store. Because of the threat of bird influenza, corporate decided not to have any around because of the numbers of kids coming in and picking them up. Instead, you order and they ship directly to your house. No problem - I'd wanted to buy a big order from McMurray this year, so this completes my excuse.

Gathered some scrap lumber for the new goat gate, cleaned out the tack room. So with my completion and addition, my list of things to do now looks like this:

1. Clean up the tack room and make space for the spring order of hay.
   
   
2. Rebuild part of my restraining fence over the manger that the goats knocked down over the winter. (My father-in-law did this for me - thanks, Henry!)
   
   
3. Refloor the back half of the chicken coop to make certain that it's secure from any rodential predators.
   
   
4. Design and build a new goat gate.
   
   
5. Possibly working on my dear spouse to see if she could be convinced to keep a dog.
   
   
6. I also need to build some new nest boxes.
   
   
7. Put up chicken wire across the roof of the coop to keep the birds out of the rafters.

Meantime, check out the links to the left. Many chicken bloggers have popped up, so I've linked to them, and I've added some fun chicken links. Lewis & Clark is a strip done by yours truly on an Internet comic strip generator.

This weekend: more of the same.