Our "Little Flocker's"

Well - This is our first time with Chickens and like I always do, I jumped in with both feet before I thought it all through!

I decided after a visit to some friends house that had some chickens that I needed some too.  I thought, "hey I can do that!" So I came home and in 2 days I had 6 little chicks to take care of. Went to the feed store and got the heat light, some feed and some pine and set them up in a cardboard box. The lady I bought them from said I should check out BYC and thats when I realized I had jumped into the deep end AGAIN! 

She haid they were hatched on March 8, 2011, so they should be 8 days old in this picture.

 I will be moving them to a larger brooder and will upload more pictures.

Ok - so they are now in their new brooder (dog kennel) and 10 days old.

2 week picture day (click on the thumbnails for larger picture):

The girls are 4 weeks old now and we are in the crunch time to get the coop completed. In same order as above so you can see how much they have grown! Click on thumbnails for larger picture.

Coop construction started when they were 2 weeks old. We are using the Purina plans as a starting point and making it larger.  First the floor was put together with 5/8 plywood and 2x4 (6x4 total floor space)

Then the walls were framed in

Then the frame of the roof. It is not attached at this point, just sitting in the brackets for now.

And the nest boxes were attached, they are not quite 12x12 so I hope they are ok

Then we covered the roof with more sheets of plywood (still not attached). You can also see the framing for the windows and clean out doors.

Window installed!

First sheet of paneling getting tacked on. This will be the front, so the pop door needs to be cut in and installed. Thinking of using an auto door for this.
 

The under side of the roof is now painted.

Pop door is cut in (i'm gonna make it bigger and put in an auto door...and I tried a little of the paint to see what it will look like.

The back wall is up with the window and nest boxes framed in.

Window Framed in

Hinges on the nest box.

Legs Braced up.

 Top door that will be covered in hardware cloth and can be closed in winter (there is another door just like this on the other side).

 Bottom door for clean out (there is another doo just like this on the other side).

Both doors closed down. These doors are all "lipped" from the inside to seal when latched.

Started priming and painting today.

Installed the auto pop door

Moved all the sand into the run

FINALLY got the coop moved from the shop to the yard. Dont have the shingles on yet so we had to tarp it cause of the rain here. We will shingle, and get harware cloth on the kennel and attach the coop this weekend. Hope to have the girls moved in by sunday!

Next we put the hardware cloth up the walls 3 feet with a 1 foot buried aron.

Then we started working on the roof - We used pvc to frame out the roof and fence brackets to attach to the run.

Covered roof frame with hardware cloth with zip ties to the frame

Then covered the hardware cloth with shade cloth and installed the misters.

We added a nipple water tube for outside water:

Inside water and food:

Poop Board:

First Day in the Coop (7-8 Weeks old)

Penny

Wilma (black) and Louise

Left to Right - Olga, Ursula and Thelma