Pioneer Woman at Heart

The Should part:  I should have waited to get chicks after we built the new coop. The Could have:  I could have had electric hooked to the coop, and no dust in the house.  Our garage is not heated, so their make-shift brooder is in the utility room with a heat lamp currently. The Would have:  I would have had a brooder inside the new coop, making the transition much easier to introduce them to the hens, and again, no dust and mess in the house.  If you follow my blog, you already know that a few years ago, there was a massacre in the original coop.  It was inside a barn, but after 12 years, raccoons and opossums , ripped holes in the chicken wire (rookie mistake in the beginning, don't ever use chicken wire), and killed more than half the chickens and all of the roosters. A friend sold me this coop for $75.00.  It worked, but has no ventilation, I have to crawl inside to muck it, and the roosts are on the floor, so we had to install plastic roosts high...