Saturday, October 4, 2014

Repairing chicken sheds.

The good old Cornish weather has gradually rotted the skids on our three chicken sheds, meaning that we couldn't move them around the field onto fresh ground as we would like, before repairing them. Thankfully we eventually managed to persuade a carpenter to come and replace them so we could move them before the winter set in.
One of the broken skids.

Raising and supporting the sheds to allow work.

Kit, Stephan and Adam finishing the final shed.
Each end of each shed had to be carefully lifted by tractor, then supported with two sets of scaffolding to allow the work to be carried out safely. The skids (which support the whole shed, like two enormous skis, allowing us to drag the sheds by tractor) and cross-beams needed replacing, which took six days of work - but we completed the job today and all three sheds are now on fresh ground. This also entailed swapping chickens between sheds, which is easiest done at night by torchlight whilst the chickens are roosting and docile, carrying two at a time from one shed to another, meaning working late into the evening for three nights. We are now ready to welcome our new flock of 120 point-of-lay chickens which arrive on Tuesday - this will mean an end to the current egg shortages!

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