The Eglu Cube arrived in 5 big boxes. I had to pick them up at the local greyhound station so I stacked 3 of them on top of my roof rack and tied them on with my kayak straps. 2 of them fit into the car., Fortunately I had a friend over to help with some gardening and he helped me carry them to the back yard.

This is what it looked like when I took everything out of the boxes before I assembled it. Looks like it exploded!

The Eglu Cube, assembled. The cube I bought has a 6' run but you can buy 3' extensions for it as well. I plan to let the hens free range in the yard so I got the smaller run for now.

The cube tucks nicely into the back of the yard. This photo was taken while the new path "Y-shaped" path was still under construction but you can see how it will look.

Path to the cube.

Last weekend (Nov 14 2009) I added 1/2" x 1/2" hardware cloth on the whole run. We have raccoons in our neighborhood and if they can get to the chickens they will kill the whole flock in minutes. Omlet, the company that makes the Eglu Cube, is in England and apparently they don't have raccoons, just foxes, so the run has 1" x 3" wire on it. That's not small enough to keep out a raccoon hand, which is why I spent 5 hours putting the hardware cloth on it!

More pictures with the hardware cloth.

Front view

Side view. Here you can see the section at the top front where I haven't added hardware cloth yet, but I will this week!

Ok you can only see the butt of the little red Amerecauna in this photo. She is what they call a "rumpless" Amerecauna since she doesn't have a tail.

Tentatively we've named the girls (front to back) Gert (Cuckoo Marans), Agnes (Black Australorp) and Milly (Red Amerecauna).

Maybelline Marans and Myrna Lorp - steppin' out

All three girls - Myrna Lorp, Maybelline Marans, and Millie Americauna

The cats (all indoor dwellers) are fascinated by the new critters in the back yard.

The backyard flooded badly in the storms in mid-January 2010. The whole chicken pen sat in a puddle.

Boychik examines the egg that I'm so excited about. This is the first egg that our hens have laid (after 2 months of waiting!) This lovely green egg was laid by Millie (she's the red and black chicken).

Millie's first egg - it's perfect! Large and pale green.