Vermontmaple's Chicken Coop

ONCE IN A LIFETIME ADVENTURE:  The Raymonds have chickens?

What an adventure this has been!  About 2 weeks ago, my husband asked our children, Logan, 7 and Summer, 10, if they wanted chickens.  Of course they wanted chickens!  They spent a week looking at coop designs and learning more about chickens.  Summer was really excited and wanted to learn everything there was about chickens.  She looked on-line and read a ton!  (I guess that's one way to get a 10-year-old to read in the summertime!!)

So on Sunday, my husband, Kevin decided to start constructing the chicken coop.  Each evening after work, he would work on it for a couple of hours.  He had an idea of what he wanted to create from the many chicken coops he had seen on-line (thanks to all of those who post great pictures).  I typically don't post stuff like this but everyone else's posts really helped us design our own coop.

We were almost done our coop when we got 5 chicks from a lady up north.  We hope we got 5 females but only time will tell.  We finished the coop today and the chicks are loving it.  The most adorable thing I have seen so far is all the chicks sitting in the nesting boxes together.  Oh, how cute!!

Aren't they just the most adorable creatures?

Here's Logan showing you how to open the door.  You can see the roost and the nesting boxes are to the left.

Our coop I guess would be considered a chicken tractor in the sense that we have wheels on it so we can move it around the yard.  In this picture you can see our ladder/run?  We put the feed and water outside.  Not sure if it will stay out there or not.

 My husband made the nesting boxes so that they can come out and be cleaned.  He made 3 nesting boxes for our 5 chickens.  He made our door come down so the kids can actually get to the eggs.  If he made the door open on the top our little guy wouldn't be able to collect the eggs.

Not wanting to get his pretty little feet dirty; my husband made the door on a pulley system.  See the white tube on the right?  It goes across the door so no predators can get in and no chicks can get out!

You can see the roost area and the clear roof.  We'll see how the clear roof works; we thought it was a good idea since we live in the north and have some pretty harsh winters.  We could use all the sunlight we can get!

Our daughter, Summer picking out her chick "Jordan".  She named her after Jordan on Big Brother this year, that's who she wants to win!

Our little man Logan with his chick "Big Horn" (he got that off Daddy's truck :-)