OmegaMom

Le Grande Coop, c’est fini. 

Yesterday was miserable:  it seemed the damned thing would never be done; there was always yet one more thing that needed doing before it was inhabitable.  I went in to visit the birds, reached down for my fave, Angie, and realized that Comet and Winnie were chasing her around, they had blood on their beaks, and Angie was bleeding from her foot.

Ack!  Bloodthirsty savages!

So I quick rescued Angie, and she was given free rein of the garage for the day while her foot recovered and Comet and Winnie forgot about the alluring and seductive taste of blood.

We were trimming doors down and painting doors and hanging doors and OmegaDad was wiring into the wee hours of the night, and I was sure it would never get done.  Like Sisyphus.  We’d push that damned boulder up that damned mountain, rest a night, and discover that it was back down at the foot of the mountain yet again.

But!

But the end was in sight.  And so today, OmegaDad and I hung another door.  Then it turned out he needed to do some dremeling, because the trimming we had done had trimmed off the inset where the latch plate was sunk in.  And then, when testing a doorknob mechanism on the other door, OmegaDad shut the doorknobs themselves into the coop (luckily, he knew what to do).  And it was getting later…and later…at 9:30, I was about to declare an end to the nonsense for the night, but OmegaDad claimed that All Was Well and we’d be able to transfer the birds tonight.

And It Was So.

OmegaDotter opens up the bale of fluff:

Of course, the nice clean fluff was too much to resist:

Angie and Buffy, our two sweeties, were the first to go.  I placed Angie in the box…

Then Buffy (note the dotter mugging for the photographer):

Birds in a box:

The dotter transporting chickens:

Decanting birds:

Then back to the garage to grab Comet and Winnie.  First Comet:

Then skittish Winnie tried to escape:

All the big girls at their fine new industrial-strength chicken feeder:

OmegaDad and dotter enjoying some quality time with Comet:

The reddish tint to the majority of the pics in the coop is due to the heat lamp.  Also, it appears that the lens on our digicam is getting schmutz all over it, and we have to figure out how to clean it.  Though I do like the halo effect on my pic with Angie; haven’t I said all along I have a halo?!

Our silkies are still in the garage.  They are younger, and smaller, and likely to be picked on if we put them in with the bigger girls.  In addition, they’re smaller birds in general…while the big girls will keep getting bigger, the silkies will likely only be as big as Buffy is now.  So, until we partition off an area of the coop for them, into the temporary coop they go, upgrading from the black box we had them in before.

What is needed now is:  hanging the feeder and the waterer…nesting boxes…the partition for the silkies…  So, in reality, le Grande Coop is not totally done, but it’s done enuf.  Maybe we can now have some ordinary peaceful evenings for a while, without the omigod-the-birds-are-going-to-peck-each-other-to-death-we-MUST-GET-THE-COOP-DONE-NOW urgency.

And the sun came out today.  Cue the chorus of angels singing "Ahhhhh!"