Coop

I just lost my whole post that I stayed up too late working on.  So not a lot of commentary from me this time.
Working on the door.

Color choices

Fish scales that we made!

Cute chicken door.

Lower roof about to be finished.

Everyone getting along.  Names have been decided (all but one) so stay tuned!

Work work work

We got a lot done again this week/weekend.  We finished installing all the windows, got some trim up, put the floors in, got the nest boxes mostly finished, worked on the upper roof and maybe most importantly...found a door!  We had been waiting for just the right thing for weeks, checking the Re Store, craigslist, every store that sells used/damaged doors.  

Aaron found this door for free on his bike ride home from work!  Total score.

It needs a lot of work, I got most of the old paint off one side today.  Luckily Aaron saw online that you can use a heat gun to get the paint off more easily.  

And, also luckily a heat gun came with the house.  It does work well, and made the process much less tedious.  

Lots of little helpers!  It turns out, I think all of my chicks are girls.  Good because they are all girls.  Bad because I was really banking on that Welsummer (bottom left) being a boy, and because of that got some extra chicks.  Now I have 9 birds, which is wonderful, but I think too much for our city lot.  I have a home for the brown one in the middle if it's a girl (it's the only one I'm still unsure of).  He/she is way too skittish even with all the people time I spent with it.  After having Bert, who we can't even get near, I'm not doing that again.  It makes it so hard when you can't catch them easily.  So I think Bert is getting the boot too.  Anyone want a 3 year old easter egger?  7 birds sounds much more manageable.  

It's really hard to take good pictures of the coop, it's really tucked in, both behind our garage and near the corner of our lot and next to a tree.  Kind of too bad because it will be hard to see once it's all done. But we like that it's not visible from the street.  

I'm hoping we can get everyone moved in by next weekend.  We still need to finish the lower roof, the nest boxes and the door, which is going to take some time since it needs to be cut down and mended in some places.  I'm ready, I miss my automatic door locking everyone in and letting them out first thing in the morning!

It's Happening.

It's happening and there's no going back now.  The big chickens will be sleeping in the garage until further notice.  We're planning as we go, so hopefully this will turn out well and go quickly!

Custom Coop

Aaron's co-worker asked him if he could build her a chicken coop that looked like a barn. He said that he could and we set to work on making her one. We had a lot of fun building this, but I will say that we got in over our heads. We had forgotten that even though chicken coops are small, they are not particularly easy to build. You have to put a lot of thought into the design if you want it to be optimum for both the birds and the humans.
He framed the basic barn shape, while I got to painting.


Next we added the supports for the roof, added a floor and the nest box area, and framed out the people door. You can see in the background the side walls are completed - painted, windows cut out and hardware cloth in place (the backside is showing here).


Here Aaron is working on the ramp to the roost area. We used 2 x 4s because we are in a cold climate, using a wider roost space allows the chickens to keep their toes warm with their bellies, as opposed to something like a broom handle, where the toes are wrapped around the roost and exposed to cold. We secured one of the roosts, but designed the other so that it could be removed depending on how many birds there are. On a cold night you don't want excess roost space, the low bird on the totem pole won't have the others to help keep her warm. So the other 2x4 fits between two piece of wood sticking up on one end, and the other end has a hole that slides onto a large bolt and can be screwed down with a nut. This project got, um, a little rushed toward the end, so I didn't get good pictures of the inside unfortunately.


The roost area now has walls, and the chicken door opens into a ramp. The ramp is on a hinge and can be latched if you wanted to close the roost area for any reason.


To the right of the chicken door he made a large door that can be taken completely out for cleaning. He also put the inside roost ladder on a hinge so that it folds up out of the way for cleaning. Building in these details was so much easier now that we actually have chickens! The door ramp folds down onto a fixed platform, which has another hinged ramp attached to it. This ramp hinges to make space for a person to stand inside.


This side has the nest box access, the door folds open to three nest boxes, which I painted black to add darkness for the hens, they prefer a dark area to lay their eggs. We purposely made this coop short, so that her little ones could collect the eggs. One of the bigger challenges with this coop was trying to find small enough windows. We went to several places looking for used windows and couldn't find any, so Aaron framed these pieces of plexiglass and made his own. We weather stripped them and added a latch for windy days.


Here is Lexi checking out the new coop, she impressed me with all of her chicken knowledge and had fun feeding my chickens. This side shows the people door and the chicken door. It's not painted, because did I mention this project got a little rushed? Aaron added a tin roof as per the recipient's request, and it looked great.


Here it is all loaded up ready to go. It has a cupola for ventilation and looks also, but it wouldn't have fit out of our garage with it on. We had a great time making this together, I can't wait to build more - especially our dream coop someday with room for lots more chickens!