Cluck cluck!

Gordon is still working on the chicken coop. He's feeling a bit frustrated because he was been working on it for a while and wants it finished, but I reminded him that he has been a bit busy putting together beehives for his wife and doing myriad other farm chores, not to mention holding down a job and commuting over two hours a day. Anyway, the chicken palace will soon be finished. It's being constructed in the bottom of our barn, using mostly recycled wood and old windows from around the farm.

The former owners left us this huge picture window, which now forms most of the front wall of the chicken palace:

The window is in good shape, but it needs a little cleaning...

When that's done, the chickens are going to have the nicest view on the farm. I'm jealous! We don't have this view from our house, because the barn is in the way...

The sliding window at the bottom is going to be the chickens' door, but we've come across a slight problem...

Hello Tristan!

Hello Sophie!

We're thinking that the chickens won't appreciate dog visitors in their coop, so we have to work out a way to bar the dogs from entering, since right now we are not planning to fence the chickens in during the day. If they start annihilating my gardens, we'll have to talk.

Our dogs lived on another farm before we adopted them, and allegedly herd chickens! We shall see if this tidbit is true or not. I have seen both of them herding the cats, so it's entirely possible.

And here is my dear hubby, working away inside the coop:

I do have one issue with the huge window. I need to figure out a way to prevent wild birds from slamming into it! That's partly why I have put off cleaning it. I've heard that putting hawk silhouettes on a window isn't necessarily effective at preventing bird strikes, but even if it were, I'm thinking that the chickens might get a little freaked if I started pasting birds of prey all over their line of sight. So let me know if you have any other ideas.