June 5, 2018
Crafting Cages
Last month we built two big mobile cages for our livestock
One is for the “teenager” chickens (those between just feathered and adult, about 6 weeks to 24 weeks). Rebeccah bought the clearance Buff Orpington straight run (mixed males and females) from Tractor Supply at the end of their chick days and they are now a little over 12 weeks old – time for selling the males before we eat them at 24 weeks!
The other was for Rebeccah, Kimberly, and Christina’s newest project: Guinea Pigs. They had one named Jack, who, just like his namesake, was adept at getting out of cages (starting with a two-day excursion on the day she brought him home!). On one of his excursions, he decided to disappear into the wild for good (I think he’d heard some Wild Kratts: free and in the wild!).
But TobyMac stayed with his two girls, Taylor and Avery.
The bright orange is TobyMac and the pretty one below is Avery. Taylor is camera shy.
Shop day had us designing and building the cages. They are night-time predator proof and easy to move. We discovered that Guinea Pigs are a perfect lawn mower: one day and they graze the grass to ½ inch height. (Formula = 3 adult pigs to 32 square feet of grass.)
Kimberly and Jaquline using the portable drill to make pilot holes and drive screws.
Rebeccah tacking on the chicken wire.
Notice the painted guinea pig on the door when it’s open.
Even Lucas was helping! He painted, held screws, fetched tools, and helped measure boards to cut.
The best drill ever! Plus wire cutters for the chicken wire.
Three different lengths of screws and our poultry staples
We precut all of the lumber for the second cage!
The girls learned and practiced using power tools, critical thinking (this looked good on paper, but in reality it will cause this problem, how can we fix it?), planning, budgeting (looking prices up online and estimating our actual cost before we went), and applying this knowledge in a practical way to create a final product. We painted the walls to help keep them from rotting, but Rebeccah, who is never satisfied with leaving something plain and functional, turned them into a work of bi-colored art. (I only had white, so she had to mix dyes to get another color!)
Although this was a “day off” from school, the girls learned and used various practical skills and developed two products for our family livestock. They had a blast! They learned a lot. They had a very successful and memorable day creating and a huge surge of pride when they look out there now – something they made is being used everyday by cute little animals!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later…
~Nancy Tart