Bird-Mobile

The pigs have less than a week remaining before they go off to the butcher, and the meat birds are now four weeks old, halfway through their brief lives. It is time to get them out on grass, but we don’t fancy the attrition rate we had last year with the chickshaw only. We would like to have them fully enclosed if possible.

So we took the pig shelter and modified it to make a Bird-Mobile.

Of course we can’t do anything without our helpers. Why this one is wearing Daddy’s sunglasses (upside down) and not wearing her shoes, I am not quite sure.

We took the feed trough off and tilted the thing up on sawhorses. This allowed better access to staple chicken wire around the bottom of the frame.

She’s helping keep it balanced so it doesn’t fall back down.

Once one side is finished, we tip it the opposite direction to staple the other side. Alas, the wire didn’t quite make it all the way around, so I had to splice in another section. Let me tell you, splicing the ends of chicken wire is one of the most tedious jobs on the farm. Of course it is necessary to make a good, strong, neat splice, but it takes forever and you get lots of pokes in the fingers from the wire ends.

The door was the most time-consuming part, but quite fun. I enjoy wood-working, and even when framing a relatively cheap and easy door like this, it is still a lot of fun.

And there it is! The Pig-Mobile has become a Bird-Mobile.

Once it was out in the pasture, the next step was to get the birds into it. This was a simple task, with the help of our trusty wheelbarrow.

That’s a whole lot of tasty chicken, right there.

Seppi wanted to get in on the action as well, so he grabbed out his wheelbarrow too.

Because he’s a man.

Home sweet mobile home!

After that we moved the turkeys into the larger brooder that the meat birds had been in. When we butcher the meat birds toward the 3rd week of August, we will then move the turkeys into the Bird-Mobile, so they can take their place in the great circle of life known as rotational grazing.