Sorry Steve, your right I have been neglecting my many fans by not posting recently. I have been busy creating the Ottinger farm and petting zoo. I built a bunny hutch, bunny pasture cage and chicken nesting boxes in the last few weeks. The chicken coop is ready for the arrival of its residents on August 6th or 7th. That is actually about 10 days earlier than expected. I pretty much have everything I need like the bedding and the food and such, I am just putting the special Patti touches on everything. Like....painting a chicken scene on the trash can that I have the chicken feed in, and I had to add the name tags to the bunny hutches. I still need to put some shingles or something on the plywood on top of the bunny hutch but I am waiting till I can find some used or free. Everything I have made so far has been from scrap lumber that I had from other projects or recovered from things that were going to be thrown away. I'm looking forward to going to another auction this Saturday that I hope will prove fruitful. It's an estate auction from an old working farm. Should be some good stuff. I am worried though about the chickens. Like Steve said in his comment there are all kinds of varmints lurking around just waiting to attack the chickens. I have the solution though. Cow bells and a baby monitor. I have about 200 cow bells that where used as decorations at a work party that Bryan attended. He was going to throw them away and naturally I rescued them figuring I would find some use for them. Well that was about 3 years ago but now I know what I am going to use them for. I strung them on fishing line about 6 inches apart and attached them to the upper area of the barn stall where the chickens will stay. If anything tries to climb over the wall, the bells will ring and alert me to an intruder. That's where the baby monitor comes in. I will have it near the coop and the receiver next to my bed. Sooooo when the bells ring in the middle of the night I can jump out of bed, grab Joe's 22 rifle, put on my leopard print rubber boots, run to the barn and probably shoot a chicken in an attempt to shoot the coyote that is eating it. You probably think that I am kidding, but I am totally serious. I will get some pictures posted soon so you can see that I mean business.