My current home doesn't have a verandah or even a porch but I dream of owning a little farmette again, with a verandah overlooking chickens, goats and gardens. Absolute heaven!

OUTSIDE CHICKS

Worked hard on two 6x6 kennels to get them ready for temporarily housing chicks. Added chicken wire to the chain link. Covered with netting. To keep them from blowing off in our horrible winds and to make more predator safe, we used baling wire to attach boards along the bottom and to wire the two kennels together, and to the fence they abut.

Then it started to snow so we called it quits for the day.

Did a tad more this morning, added feed buckets and waterers, then moved in the chicks. The bantam blue silkies and bantam easter eggers (9-weeks-old) went into the right kennel. The 5-week-old miscellaneous chicks (leghorns, black australorps, some of our own) went into the left kennel.

A couple of hours later, it started to drizzle, so I went out to convince them to go into their little chicken houses I scrounged. No go. Dum dums. Grabbed a spare 6x8 tarp (only size I had) and used it to cover a little of both.

Around 9:30 p.m. I did a check on them. Dum dums on the left had decided to huddle in the corner that was NOT covered by the tarp. Really? Little things were WET! The other group were also huddled in the same corner but it WAS covered by the tarp. Still, they were at the edge, so getting a tad bit wet.

I ran back inside, got a spare shower curtain and some towels and a new container of large safety pins. I pinned the shower curtain over the left group that were most in the rain. There's a little 2-inch hole that I couldn't get covered but did a nice little portion of the top and side. I pinned the towels to the right kennel group to give them a bit more protection.

That's all I can do for tonight. Tomorrow the Kid and I need to go into town anyway for an RX refil for the Kid so I'll pick up another tarp or two. It's supposed to rain for the next couple of days but I'll go out and provide them a fairly dry coop even if **I** have to get wet to do it.

Now .. if they'll just stop peeping ... if they don't, every fox in the neighborhood will be sniffing around and making out their menues!

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