We started our little home flock with an Omlet Eglu Cube, rated for six birds. That should have been fine as we were only keeping three, but without much opportunity for them to free range around the garden, it quickly felt a bit cramped, even for those of us on the outside.

So a couple of weeks back we bought a much bigger compound from Forsham Cottage Arks, had it delivered and, this weekend, set about putting it together.

Chris and Jenny came around from next door, mum and Andrew came over, and Rich and I pulled on our boots, and together we spend the day in a big building party, variously screwing together the panels, trimming chicken wire for a fox-dreterrent skirt around the bottom, hammering on gravel boards and emptying into it bag after bag of wood chippings to stop the floor getting muddy like it was inside the Cube.

It was a long day, and clumsy but not particularly hard work. Lots of lifting and supporting things while Andrew fixed the screws. I dismantled the Cube and re-built the coop part and wheeled it into place at the back of the new run where we’ve put it on paving slabs to stop the chooks digging under the wheels like they did before.

We broke for tomatoes, cheese and olives for lunch and then cracked on, lifting on the roof, stretching over some tarpaulin and eventually dropping the chickens into their new home as the sun went down. They scratched around for a while in the new, exciting chippings, uncovering some grass for a pre-bed snack and then, literally as we hammered in the last nail and the solar garden lights came on, the first of them got on the ladder and went up to bed, swiftly followed by her sisters.

I don’t think it’ll take them long to get used to their new home. And I certainly feel a lot better about having them in it.

Related posts:

1. The chickens keep digging
2. The chickens dig for victory
3. A year with the chickens