The Coop Progresses

Ok, the Ex Compost is not in place, with the sides reattached together and one of the front supports in place.

This is QUITE A FEW hours later, with both front supports in place, a new floor in place and the whole thing elevated onto cinder blocks.  Getting this far required a lot of back and forth between the chicken run and the garage, cutting boards, cutting them again, swapping out the drill battery, getting more screws, blah, blah, and each and every time I went in and out the chickens swarmed me, both excited and terrified about what I was doing.

They quickly realized that Coop 2 was THE place to hang out and moved right onto it.

This is Sinead, the chick that got caught in bird netting and was then attacked by her fellow chickens.  (That sounds weird, but it's basically exactly what happened: she got all wrapped up in bird netting, panicked, peeped like she was dying and (I suppose to speed along the process) her coop mates ran over to pecker her head.  I don't know if they were expressing hate for her tiresome squawking or trying to kindly quicken her death process.  I heard her screams and freed her from the netting, only to see the top of her head missing and immediately regretted everything--chickens, coops, everything.)  She was traumatized and her coop mates seemed slightly ashamed.  I painted tree sap paint (the stuff old people paint on tree stumps) on her head, sort of sweeping her neck feathers up and over her bald skull so the wound was entirely covered.  (Chickens peck at anything red, including wounds, so you have to paint up all injuries otherwise they pick, pick and pick until the chicken is just one big wound.  Nature is a wonderful thing, isn't it?)  We kept her separate that night in her own box and by morning she was feeling pretty spry, itching to get back with her mates.  After day 2 of isolation we let her rejoin the group, fearing for the worst.  But, amazingly, the black tar paint worked and she was left along, and slipped right back into the group.  The tar paint lasted about a week and a half, and last week I saw a shiny pink skin covered skull peeping out from among the neck and face feathers. It sort of looked like an avocado pit.  Yesterday I noticed feather stubble regrowing on her head.  She still looks like like a monstrous horror, but she doesn't know that and, apparently, the other chickens don't care.  (Just for reference, the chicken in the foreground is the same breed, with a full head of feathers, so you can see what Sinead is SUPPOSED to look like.  Some day, if she stays away from bird netting, she will be back to her full feathered self.)