Chickens – Page 3 – The Reaganskopp Homestead

Posted on September 2, 2018January 20, 2019 by Brianna — Leave a comment

Online Permaculture Design Course

Because full time out of the house job, full garden, chickens, and four kids is not enough I finally did it! I signed up for a permaculture design course accredited by Permaculture Institute of North America. I have always wanted to take a permaculture design course (PDC) but lacked the resources to make it happen. Resources being time, location, and money. I was very excited to find an this online PDC (also sometimes called a permaculture design certificate) through Oregon State University. After hemming and hawing because it still costs a lot of money… and still costs a lot of time, but flexible time… I signed up with Adam’s encouragement. The online nature of the course will allow me to do it on the evenings and weekends when the kids are in bed. FYI- this is not an ad, I haven’t even taken the course yet!

Oregon State University has a free certificate program as an intro to permaculture I took this spring. From that course I was able to finish a first plan for our Urban Permaculture lot you can see here. I enjoyed the instructor and introduction to permaculture enough that I THINK I’ll get good value from the course. If nothing else finishing a permaculture design course is the first (in a lot of) steps to being certified as a designer or eventual permaculture instructor.

So why am I talking about my course? I rarely document personal stuffs on Craft Thyme, but I thought that a follow along as I go through this ten week course would probably be pretty interesting to those looking at potentially doing a permaculture design course. Especially, if you are looking at an online version. Plus 10 WEEEEEEKKKKSSSSS. I need something to keep me accountable for all the time it is going to take to work through the course material.

Can anyone be sad when looking at a sunflower? — Just a happy sunflower to also brighten your day! This is just one of the many volunteer plants I have growing in my urban permaculture microfarm.

Oregan State’s Online Permaculture Design Course

Let’s start with the course information:

Course Dates: 9/24/2018 – 12/7/2018
Time Needed: 9 to 10 hours a week. It is recommended you do not take a PDC less than 72 hours worth of instruction and time. So at 90-100 hours this more than meets the minimum.
Weeks: 10 Weeks. A lot of permaculture design courses happen in intesive 2-3 week blocks. I am hoping the longer time witll give me more time to digest the topics and practice techniques since I will lose a bit on the personal instruction a face to face might cover.
Instructor: Andrew Millison
Topics Covered:
- Observation and analysis of the natural processes of a site
- Design principles and methods
- Dynamics of water systems, soils, gardens and trees
- Urban permaculture
- Apply an ethically based whole-systems design approach
- Use concepts, principles, and methods derived from ecosystems, indigenous peoples, and other time-tested practices
- Learn about regional planning, ecology, animal husbandry, appropriate technology, architecture, and international development
Textbook (affiliate link): Practical Permaculture for Home Landscapes, Your Community, and the Whole Earth. Oddly enough Adam had purchased this book for me this spring. I took it as a sign ;)

Sounds pretty excellent to me! Plus you are guaranteed to have a completed site plan by the end of the course with lots of one-on-one instructor and peer interaction. The timing is great as I don’t have a large fall garden planted or a lot of plans to build anything major. Summer is winding down and the kids are back in school, which leads to a much tighter routine. So now I just have to wait 3 more weeks to get going!!!! Check back on the 25th and I will update each week as we go with the links below:

For those of you following along

- Introduction to Online Permaculture Design Course at Oregon State University
- Overview of the Online Permaculture Design Course
- PDC Week 1
- PDC Week 2
- PDC Week 3
- PDC Week 4
- PDC Week 5
- PDC Week 6
- PDC Week 7
- PDC Week 8
- PDC Week 9
- PDC Week 10
- Final Permaculture Portfolio Project

Posted on August 18, 2018January 20, 2019 by Brianna — 32 Comments

How to Know When Your Chickens Will Start Laying Eggs

When will your chickens start laying eggs?

If you purchased or hatched chicks for the first time this spring you may be wondering when your chickens will start laying. One of the things that will drive any chicken owner crazy is waiting for your first egg. BUT how do you know when your chicken will start laying? The general rule of thumb is that chickens will start laying around 6 months old (22-28 weeks) is the norm, but there are some precocious breeds that start earlier. Even if your chickens start laying in the normal range that still leaves 1-2 months of uncertainty, *le sigh*. While, we can’t predict with perfect accuracy when your chicken will start laying here are some signs that you may get an egg in a week or two, which, for my inpatient heart is a step in the right direction.

Signs Your Chicken Will Start Laying Her First Egg

How Much Time Since Hatch?

Remember below are just estimates of when these different breeds of chickens will start laying. However, it does help to know if you have a late or early egg laying breed.

Buff Orpington: 24 Weeks
Barred Plymouth Rock: 20 Weeks
Easter Eggers: 20 Weeks
Cochin: 30 Weeks
Brahma: 30 Weeks
Favorelle: 23 Weeks
Silkie: 32 Weeks
Polish: 26 Weeks
Sussex: 22 Weeks

Your Chicken Should Be Fully Grown

After knowing about when your chicken breed might start laying, the first way to tell that your chicken might be ready to lay an egg is the way your chicken looks! Most chickens need to be fully grown to lay an egg. Seems like a no-brainer, except with my first flock I wasn’t sure what ‘fully grown’ looked like. Pullets may look as though they are grown with large sizes and lots of beautiful feathers. To tell if a hen is fully grown you will need to inspect the comb and wattles. These should be dark red (or blue, or black, or whatever color your chicken breed has). The comb and wattles need to be fully pigmented and swollen to final size. The chickens will have all their adult feathers and finally lost their terrifying teenage look. Unless you were our speckled Sussex. She started laying waaaay before she was done with wattles and feathers… If I hadn’t seen her laying myself I still wouldn’t believe our pullet was capable of laying while looking so teenagery still.

Difference between a pullet and laying hen — Can you see the subtle differences between a pullet and laying hen?

Squatting behavior

When your chicken is ready to lay her first egg she will often do a funny little squat when you come up to her. Before our pullets began to lay even the tame ones would kind of sidle away and dart around when we would approach to pet them. Then suddenly, a few of them would stop and drop when we went to pet them. A quick brush of the hand and they’ll fan their rumps in the air. Not to be chicken graphic, but this is what they would also do for a rooster. If you want to be a little less gross think about how a cat will stick its butt in the air when you pet them at the base of their tale… Same concept.

Being in the Nesting Boxes

Another good way to know when your chickens will start laying is to note who suddenly started showing interest in the nesting boxes. We had a new flock this year and made sure to fill up the nesting boxes around 20 weeks with straw. They hens took a look at the boxes and then promptly ignored them.

Side note: If you have a small coop beware, they can get in the habit of hanging out in the nesting boxes due to lack of room. This makes for gross nesting boxes and problems later.

Anyway, a couple of weeks after I filled the nesting boxes with straw, I noticed the Barred Plymouth Rock rooting around in the box. Sure enough, she was the first to lay. Our larger Welsummer was in the coop a lot checking the nesting boxes out recently and I caught her laying this week!

There are a couple other ways that aren’t quite as easy to tell if your chicken is going to start laying. But they still they are generally true for a lot of chickens.

Start Making a Bock-Bock Noise

Don’t you just love my scientific description of chicken noises :)? I’m pretty sure my three year old can do a better impression of a chicken. That being said, chickens that are about to start laying will often be noisier. They will develop an egg laying bock-bock noise. It is hard to describe for first time chicken owners, but once you get accustomed to the sound you will know when they start practicing that noise. There are some breeds that a quieter than others like our cochins and brahmas but most chickens get pretty verbal around laying time.

Barred Plymouth Rock Pullet — Bock! Bock!

Chickens Become More Tame/Stand Ground

Some chickens are just not going to be squatters as mentioned above, but they all seems to settle down a bit when they are going to start laying eggs.. Generally speaking, chickens will also just lose some of their flightiness around laying time. Unless you are our Polish… That thing is always crazy. Chickens that are about to lay will just start to get more secure in their surroundings. Our layers will hold their ground when I open up the nesting boxes, even when they aren’t actively laying. They will come more when we called and just generally settle down and act like a mature, sensible chicken (again, minus our Polish). I have always assumed it was because they start to cement their adult pecking order and see us as the heads of the flock. Also, think about when you were a teenager (Crazy)… versus when you are an adult (~~sensible~~… Okay, less crazy).

All the above are pretty good signs to know when your chicken will start to lay, but also remember each chicken is an individual. We have two Welsummers that hatched at the same time. One had crop issues as a chick (we thought we might lose her at one point) and ended up smaller than the other Welsummer. She still hasn’t started laying and the other has been laying for over a week now.

Crazy polish chicken — Just a crazy, flighty Polish. But isn’t she fantastic?!

Early Laying Breeds

Finally, if you just can’t wait to get some eggs consider raising breeds start young. Here is a quick list of young egg layers, that also happen to be good egg producing chickens.

Plymouth
Sussex
Easter Eggers
Orpingtons (though in our case our Oprington was sloooow to lay)
Australorps
Leghorns

We would love to hear when your different breeds started egg laying. If we get enough comments then we can work on honing down our averages!

Posted on May 15, 2018December 29, 2023 by Brianna — 49 Comments

Egg Laying and Chicken Tracking Spreadsheet How To

Dashboard for free egg production and chicken tracker

Edit: We now have a 2024 Version Available!

Do you have chickens? Do you like spreadsheets? Then I have the Egg Laying Spreadsheet for you! No really, joking pitch aside, I have created this free chicken tracker and egg production spreadsheet for you in 2018 and now use this post to show you how to fill it out. We have updated it over the years and it tracks all your poultry, not just chickens. However, the guide below will still get you started. If you need the newest version see the link at the very top of the page!

Who is this chicken tracker and egg laying spreadsheet for?

Both the home hobbyist, the small farmer, and geek extraordinaire.

Truth time: I made this egg production spreadsheet for myself because I am a geek and wanted to know if my chickens ever broke even, cost-wise, when I sell their excess eggs (Spoiler: I’d keep the chickens anyway). I love tracking all types of things, but I just cannot do it on paper. I like using Google Sheets because they are free and easily accessible from my phone. Right now I am offering the poultry tracker and egg production spreadsheet only as a Google Sheet. However, if you desperately need this Egg Laying Spreadsheet in an excel format let me know in the comments. If there is enough interest I’ll convert it for you.

We have had a number of enhancements over the year thanks to people like you! Please keep giving us your feedback about what else you might want to see.

Here is what the Egg Laying Spreadsheet contains:

At a glance chart (auto fills)
Summary statistics, example: average eggs per hen, eggs per month (autofills)
Poultry Log
Egg Log
Expense Tracking (optional)
Income Tracking (optional)

Best Part! You enter you expenses, income, and eggs in each sheet and the statistics and charts automatically update! Booyah!

Egg Laying Spreadsheet Dashboard

My day job is in Business Intelligence so I know people need a variety of ways to digest data. For visual learners the Egg Laying spreadsheet starts with some at-a-glance charts. First you can see how your monthly profit is going and how your running year-to-date profit is headed. Trust me, the fake data you see below is nothing like my actual profit… Which is well below zero this year.

My favorite part are the egg spreadsheets. Even if you have no interest in profit and loss you can see your total eggs, egg size, and color all compared!

Poultry Summary Statistics

Need more numbers? Average eggs per hen? Year-to-date profit on your chickens, quail, ducks? Then the Summary Statistics page in the Egg Laying Spreadsheet is all for you. All items automatically populate from the items you enter in the next few sheets and is far expanded beyond the view you see below.

Poultry Log

This is the main portion of the spreadsheet. It started as a place to keep information about all of our new chicks but has evolved to meet a variety of your needs. The whole spreadsheet links from knowing when your chicks start laying, if they died or were sold, and other notes. The key fields that need to be filled in correctly for the Egg Laying Spreadsheet to work:

Laying Date
Death/Sale date if applicable
Type of Animal

Those three items will automatically calculate if you have a laying chicken, duck, or quail hen. It will stop counting if you have sold or the hen passed away. Don’t worry you can track your roosters, they just won’t count in your hen totals.

Egg Log

This is the fun spreadsheet! I simply pull this sheet up on my phone when I collect eggs and put in the numbers. It is pretty simple, just put how many eggs of each type and color in the appropriate slots. The totals will auto-calculate for you and update the summaries and charts as you go. I have left what exactly goes in sizes and colors up to you. I tend to put cream eggs with white and tan eggs with brown, etc. but that decision is up to the individual chicken owner. The newest charts include species and egg size tracking. Pro-tip: you can put in total eggs in the EZ total column (not shown), and skip color and sizes but you will lose your size, color, and species charts.

Expense & Income Tracker

For those chicken owners that want to get a little more into the numbers the expense and income sheets exist. I have some suggested categories for chicken owners, but in reality you can put whatever you want. I am hoping to add more statistics and charts based on the categories in the future. Some examples I am considering: Cost of each egg per amount of feed, Average Carton Price, etc.

If you are a hobbyist and just want to look at how many eggs you have, you can skip these pages or fill out the bare minimum:

Date
Amount

Categories that must be filled out are marked with an asterisk *. Filling those columns in is all that is required to use the Chicken Egg Tracking Spreadsheet. I really want feedback from you about what else you might want this spreadsheet to do. Please let me know in the comments and if you found it useful then please share this on social media.

I spent a lot of time creating something I thought might be of value to you, chicken owners, and would like to have your feedback. Please let me know in the comments what other items you might want to see in the spreadsheet. I’ll see about future enhancements for later this year!

Posted on April 11, 2018January 20, 2019 by Brianna — 7 Comments

Modern Chicken Coop Custom Design By US!

Modern chicken coop design that we custom built and designed

The custom built, modern, chicken coop is finally here folks. I quit totaling hours, cost, and number of minor flesh wounds received somewhere back in March. Building a custom chicken coop is definitely a labor of love BUT you get an end result that can REALLY meet your needs. We chose to make a modern chicken coop design to match our urban locale. We needed something fresh to update our 1927 home space and to compete with all the new modern houses in the neighborhood.

If you are more a video person we made a video tour of the features and construction of this modern chicken coop design on our YouTube Channel. (Also embedded in the post for you convenience)

We had some specific needs in mind with this modern chicken coop design. First, our chicken coop needed to be predator proof, easy to clean, lots of space, and aesthetically pleasing. We live in an urban environment with a good mix of old houses and very modern structures. This means we can’t let the chickens roam all day but that we can build a modern looking structure and still have it blend nicely with the 1927 house. If it looks large in the pictures, that is because IT IS. It is hooouge… 14 by 7 feet in the main structure alone. The u legs of the runs are 4 feet wide and 6 foot and 10 foot long respectively. This gives us slightly more space than needed for 14 large chickens. If you are thinking of making your own coop I have a series of chicken calculating spreadsheets that I will make available soon for everyone to use.. We want to keep the chickens in a location with above standard size spacing since the whole point of raising fancy backyard chickens is to have a good environment for their egg production. Happy, healthy chickens make yummy eggs.

Modular nesting boxes for easy cleaning — Nesting boxes and roosting bars all come apart for easy cleaning and replacement

We also planned the chicken coop with our neighbors in mind. We are highly sensitive to our neighbors needs, simply because it seems like the neighborly thing to do. We wanted to make it look good and smell decent because, frankly, I would want that type of thoughtfulness from my neighbors as well. Plus, I have to look at the chicken coop and smell it all the time too!

We probably keep our coop a bit cleaner than most to reduce flies in the city. I also plan to plant lots of herbs around the coop to deter insects and cover smells. Plus who doesn’t love the yummy scent of mint, lavender, and thyme? This modern chicken coop design incorporates a lot of neat features to make cleaning a breeze. Double coop doors with a linoleum under sand make raking our droppings a breeze. Roosting bars and nesting boxes are removable for thorough cleaning. Run doors and human sized runs make raking out wood chips for final composting a lot easier. (Note: Behind the structure I am building a couple compost bins to hold old litter we usually remove a few times a year and replace fully with fresh litter. I am super excited to graduate into my own building projects!)

Red, black, and grey detail shot of our modern designed custom chicken coop — Plus, who doesn’t want to look at this awesome modern coop design back when scooping poop? It is honestly my favorite part of the coop!

Safety was paramount to the entire design. When we first moved over to our new home we had chicken issues abound (You can read our tale of chicken woes). Plus I have had enough bear encounters for a lifetime! Remember how I said urban? Yeah we have an odd urban bear population in the mountains… These bears seem to like chickens an awful lot. Anyway, we did as much as we could to deter predators.

First, the structure has cemented posts to anchor it to the ground. Then we wasted ridiculous amounts of money to bury hardware under the entire structure. It kills me to spend money on something you are just going to hide but the hardware cloth keeps digging predators out but allows the thick layer of chips to slowly compost while in location. Half inch hardware cloth and metal roofs cover all exposed surfaces. These are anchored with screws and washers instead of staples. It takes a lot longer to install but really stands up to random dog attacks. All the external doors, including the nesting boxes, have wooden stops to make sure they can’t be easily pushed in and to minimize small gaps in the frames. We used heavy duty slide clasps and hinges for the same reason. If we end up having raccoon issues we can add bolts or locks to the clasps to make sure they can not get in.

Natural roosting bars for our modern chicken coop. — Roosting bars are strapped in over vinyl floors to make easy cleaning!

Chickens, outside of their will to die by predator, are actually pretty self sufficient when grown. You really just have to offer protection from major elements and lots of ventilation. The coop location is meant to assist with both. Our climate is more often cold than hot. That being said August is not the most pleasant. We set the coop back in a U shape of vegetation (called a sun scoop in permaculture world). In the winter they get sun at different sections of the coop throughout the day. In the heat of the summer they will get morning sun, but shade from the worst afternoon heat. The large windows can be closed in the winter to allow more wind protection but open in the Spring, Summer, and Fall to allow for lots of ventilation. An underfloor ramp allows for fresh air all year around but cuts down on wind. Finally we took the time to line the roof of the coop. That way chickens on roosting bars couldn’t come in contact with cold metal and get frost bite or hot metal and overheat.

Finally we wanted to make this easy, fun, and accessible for our enjoyment. This area was formerly an overgrown dog lot. The kids liked to play down in that area as it is shady in the Summers, but even they stayed away from the overgrown infestation of English and poison ivy. We beat back the wilderness and have all manner of edible and aesthetically pleasing plantings planned for the area. We left cleared around it and plan to have nice paths down and around so you can enjoy the plantings and sit and watch the chickens. Lots of doors and human sized runs allow us to go in with the chickens and easily pass them treats and eventually let them into the yard to hang out. The nesting boxes make for quick egg retrieval and plenty of space to leave the broody ones alone. Finally, we made much of the area view-able from the house so we can always just peek out and see how the ladies are doing.

Overall we are stoked with how it turned out. Now to get our last batch of chicks old enough to join the rest of the flock! Hopefully the chickens will enjoy it just as much as the humans.

Posted on October 8, 2017January 20, 2019 by Brianna — 23 Comments

Make a Indoor Rabbit Hutch From a China Cabinet

What?! A twenty-five dollar Craigslist china cabinet becomes what?! An indoor rabbit hutch. Perfect for your pampered bunnies.

Want a rabbit hutch that looks elegant? Well, we did! We wanted to DIY an indoor rabbit hutch for our new family members Ollie and Biscuit. We got these rabbits from Adam’s work as a co-worker’s friend was trying to rehome her bunnies before embarking on a lot of travel. You might wonder how we decided to get some rabbits and it went something like this:

Forwarded email from Adam: Want to get some rabbits?

Me via Instant message: Ummmm… Sure?

Adam via IM: The boys will love them.

So we have rabbits. All kids need pets, right? These rabbits needed a indoor space… We are talking adorable, cute, pampered, litter trained, indoor rabbits. So we needed an adorable, awesome, and elegant space for the rabbits. Queue the DIY indoor rabbit hutch. We found an old china cabinet on craigslist for $25 that just said: refab me into the most awesome indoor rabbit hutch ever!

Of course, this china cabinet wouldn’t fit in any car we have… Because that would be waaaay to0 easy. So, thanks again Richard, for helping deliver said china cabinet. (No really THANK YOU! I have had rabbits in the middle of my living room for two weeks…)

In comes the china cabinet and before you can even say “DIY indoor rabbit hutch” Adam has already ripped out the middle glass panel. So yeah, no picture of that! From that we did a lot of measuring, talking, internet research, and experience from having the rabbits. Our main goals:

More space with interesting areas for the rabbits
Something that looked good in our house
Reduce how much litter, hay, and rabbit pellets end up all over the floor
Provided good ventilation for the buns
EASY TO CLEAN! (Brianna’s major requirement)
Make it quirky and interesting

We designed the bottom hutch space to hold litter pans and sleeping areas. There are ramps that go up to an eating area. Above that are two more levels with a timothy hay tunnel, chewing twigs, and toys for fun. We created areas for the hay to stay in the hutch and planned how to make this easy to clean!

Once we had the ideas sketched out we just got going! It took minimal supplies. Affiliate links may follow:

DIY Rabbit Hutch Supplies

1 – 1 x 8. UNTREATED. We used it to cut the ramps and grips. Make sure it has no chemicals that could harm the bunnies.
Hinges: We bought three hinges so that the ramps can be to clean. They simply push up so we can just sweep and litter out from underneath
Peel and Stick Tile 13 – 12 x 12 We lined all the shelves with peel and stick tile to make it easy to sweep bedding, litter, and bunny poops out of the hutch.
1/2″ Hardware Cloth (Chicken wire or other metal wire would work. Indoor rabbit hutches don’t have to protect the rabbits from predators like an outdoor hutch would)
Screws & Staples

Additional Supplies (Optional)

Paint (We made our own chalk paint with this awesome recipe we had used before)
New Knobs: Oh yes, that is a rabbit knob! We happened to find three awesome knobs on sale for $2.50 at Anthropologie (Trust me I am too cheap to buy anything there full price)

Equipment

Drill
Saw

Optional Equipment

Miter Saw
Jig Saw
Skil Saw
Hand Sander

Transformation Steps

For this build we really winged it. Adam used a skil saw to cut out holes for the ramps and a jig saw as a I wanted a fancy opening on the bottom. Yep, that’s me, “Can we cut this center panel out?! It will look hella cool and ventilation… But mostly it would look awesome…And RABBITS!” Once the rough holes were cut, Adam, ran a quick sand on the pretty rough cut holes so the buns wouldn’t get hurt on rough edges. We didn’t worry about beautiful cuts as we were going to cover the floor in tile anyway.

Painting a Indoor Bunny House

As soon as the holes were cut on the DIY indoor rabbit hutch I went to work on the paint. The cheap wood finish was pretty intact in the interior of the cabinet so I focused on a rustic look. The green came from the deepest green of a painting we have in the living room. Those poppies were painted by Adam’s grandmother and one of my favorite paintings. (Poppies are my fav flower… Now if I could just get them to grow!)

Painting that inspired the green diy rabbit hutch — Love this painting!!!!

Homemade chalk paint decorates an indoor bunny house — I actually taped for once!

Ramps for Rabbits

Adam made simple 45 degree cuts on the end of each ramp. He just measured from holes to floor and took a guess on length. He made small cuts to make the treads and give the rabbits something to grip while climbing. Quick nails to hold everything together and then sanding to make sure none of the rabbits could get hurt. We bought some hinges and connected them to the end to the end of each board and then to the inside of the rabbit hutch.

Other Items

Rabbits need lots of good ventilation (according to the internet :)) and make lots of poop (real life experience). They also need free access to lots of timothy hay and water. To accomplish all of these we did the following:

We used heavy duty staples to affix the hardware cloth to the open panels.
We lined all the shelves with peel and stick tile. My hands will never be the same after cutting all that tile to fit the space! BUT poop clean up is as easy as sweeping it out of the shelf an into the trash.
We drilled small holes to hold hay feeders along the back solid wall (helping to reduce the hay all over my living room)

After that it was simply a case of setting it in the living room and adding some fun toys like willow sticks and timothy hay tunnels!

OH! And before I forgot. The lovely lady who gave us the rabbits also gave us a metal rabbit playpen for them to run around in. We added hooks to the back of the DIY indoor rabbit hutch so that we can simply hook the play space on. We open the bottom door and let them run around. Being litter trained the worst I have had to clean up was a few hard bunny presents from the living room.

In Practice with an Indoor Rabbit Hutch

We LOOOOOVVVVEEEE having something nice in the living room. It allows the kids to interact with the bunnies and keep them as part of the household.

I might be a bit of a neat freak (As some people might have mentioned, Adam) and super sensitive to smells! So I am psyched to be able to just renew litter easily and keep it from floating all over the house. A cage was just allowing them to kick litter everywhere! I just can’t stand a smelly animal space and want something that is super easy to clean and this fits the ticket.

Details of additional rabbit play space on our indoor rabbit hutch — They also have a play place!

Also, I honestly am over the moon about how cool it looks. The green was perfect and looks great with the painting. The chalk paint gave it a soft matte finish that keeps the color fun but not overwhelming. I, frankly, would be happy with just a china cabinet that looks this good! But it is even better as a nice home for Ollie and Biscuit!