Reclaiming the Garage

For the past month or so, our garage has been invaded by almost 100 birds.  Two brooders have occupied a spot that normally houses our vehicles.  One brooder was full of Cornish Cross meat birds.  Those were moved out to the new chicken tractor over a week ago as they had outgrown their brooder.  The 17 Rhode Island Red pullets don't eat nearly as much food and don't grow as fast, but by this weekend, they needed some more room.  Not to mention the fact that we wanted to  reclaim our garage.

Saturday was moving day.  I caught each pullet by hand.  Unlike the meat birds, these really run around and were hard to catch.

Eventually I captured all 17 of them and packed them like sardines into a homemade carrying case for critters.  I used this to carry all of them out to the pasture and to their new home - the chicken tractor.

The chicken tractor that I'm moving the Rhode Island Red pullets to is nothing fancy.  In fact, it is old and in need of replacing, but it will serve its purpose as temporary home for the pullets for the next 20 weeks.  When they lay their first eggs, we'll open up the gates and set them free.  Until then, they'll run around in here on grass.  I'll push them to fresh grass each day.

I placed them inside the chicken tractor and they didn't know what to do at first with all the "elbow room"  they now enjoyed.  They were nervous and disoriented and ran to the corner, huddling up.

Overnight we got a nice rain.  I went out and checked on the pullets first thing in the morning after milking.  I brought along some chicken feed to put in their trough and refilled the water containers. They were acclimated to their new environment by this time and were running around inside their new home.

This week I'll move the last remaining brooder out of the garage.  I would have moved it out this weekend, but we were watching a Cornish Cross meat bird that was looking sick.  We were going to move this bird into the former Rhode Island Red brooder as a sort of Urgent Care facility to attempt to save it.  However, it seems to have made a stunning recovery

I'll go ahead to move the last remaining brooder out of the garage, reclaiming it for our use.  The birds belong out on pasture anyway.