I’m late again, but better late than never, right? We’ll start with the purchases this past week. I spent $36 on Rhode Island Red chicks, which I ordered online from Tractor Supply Co. The minimum order is 10 chicks, so I ordered 10, but I received 12. 1 died after 2 days, but the other 11 have about doubled in size and seem healthy. I spent $100 at True Value on 2 chick feeders, 2 chick waterers, a scratch block, a 5 pound bag of dried mealworms, and a few bags of feed. I spent $25 at Wal-Mart for a large plastic tote with lid, which I drilled air holes in and use to house the chicks indoors at night.
During the day I let them wander a large fenced area, but I bring them inside at night for predator protection. Once they get a little larger, and I complete a structure for them, they will start spending nights outside. I spent $85 on lumber and hardware for their shelter, and $14 on a ratchet strap to secure the lumber to the roof of my car in order to get it home. Finally, I bought a galvanized steel trash can to keep my bedding material for the chickens in, which cost me $30. In all, I spent $290 on chicken-related expenses.
I only had one non-chicken related expense, which was 4 bags of water softener salt that I bought at Ace Hardware. That ran me another $30, for a total expenditure on purchases of $320. However, I also got a lot of things for free this past week. I was gifted enough welded wire fencing and steel stakes to fence in about 250-300 square feet for the chickens, and still have a number of stakes left over. I was also given a used lawn tractor with a 42″ mowing deck, and a used gas-powered weed-eater.
Mowing the lawn with the tractor is certainly noisier and less peaceful than using my 18″ reel mower. But a 3+ hour job with the reel mower takes about an hour on the tractor, freeing up time for other projects. And with the tractor its not as big of a deal if I can’t mow when I should, and the grass gets a bit longer–it still cuts just fine.
As far as projects go, I fenced in an area for the chickens, built nesting boxes, and started on building a roosting area. I can’t remember any projects that weren’t related to the chickens.