Chickens are gone

I'm sorry to report that our nearly 2 month-old chickens are all gone.

It's been a few weeks since I've reported on them at all, but they were unmanageable at this time and not due to anything they did wrong.  Unfortunately, the coop needed a lot more work than we realized when we first got it.  Because they weather hasn't been cooperating, we haven't really been able to dig into doing repairs.  It wasn't until a few days ago that Wifey was able to have a warm enough, dry enough stretch of weather that she could apply the mold killer needed to head off respiratory issues for the birds.  As she was doing final prep work, she realized exactly how bad a shape the floor was in, that there was mold on the side panels, and discovered that the wall framework needed to be completely replaced.

In other words, we needed to completely rebuild the coop.  Because the birds were almost 2 months old, they were creating a ton of bird dust (grit + atomized dried poo) which was causing health issues for the family.  Ordinarily, they would have been out in the garage (or coop) a week or two ago, but with it being as cold/wet as it was, we were worried about the birds' health.

This morning, we decided that there was just too much to do to get the coop rebuilt (a new one built from scratch) in a very short timeline that we were getting stressed out about the whole thing.  As a result, we decided to "punt" on doing chickens for now and just focus on the yard.  We'll likely give them a try at a later date (maybe this time next year), but certainly not right away.  We want to do things the right way.

We were able to find a family through our church who was willing to take them (they're big into livestock, anyway) so at least they have a good home until they stop laying.