Friends of ours decided to take a break from raising chickens and gave us the remaining part of their original flock.

About 18 chickens of various breeds ...

... and a couple of guineas.

The guineas, which I was really on the fence about taking but Fino really wanted, make a lot of racket and are pretty good at scaring away predators. And even if they don't exactly scare them away, the humans will hear the racket and investigate. Apparently the guineas have alerted our friends to attacks and ultimately saved their rooster's life. Twice.

After loosing Sassy, the girls are happy to have the guineas around and have been checking in with the flock more than usual.

We now have about 30 chickens, 2 ducks and 2 guineas now which is about the maximum number of feathered friends we've ever had at one time.

Hear the guineas

Since our friends asked us if we had the space for all of them - and were up for the care (the girls offered an enthusiastic yes) - I thought I'd post a couple of photos of Chickenland (our chicken coop).

The first phase of the coop was actually the middle chicken wire portion, which Fino built lickety-split because he bought the chickens before he had a place to put them.

Then he built the enclosed portion the following fall/winter and includes glass sliding doors he found at the dump. It's great to have a full wall of windows for a south-facing coop (more light=more eggs and happy chickens). Then he added the other end of the wired coop when our flock grew to 30 a year later so they had space to spread out.

The red string is linked to a bent nail that closes the door lock. After years of losing track of that darn nail, Fino decided to tie it to the nearby tree. He's a smart one.

After the third addition, the girls dubbed the coop Chickenland because they think it's sort of like a fun house/playland for their feathered friends.