Million Dollar Manor :)

4 the Birds said:

Very nice and it looks like you put alot of effort into your set-up! Cleaning below your ladder roosting bars area may be a chore. A few bars at the same height with poop boards below will go a long way with the clean-up efforts.

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I can get in between the rows pretty easily - but I am going to look into finding something I can attach to them to catch the poop in some sand so I can just scoop it out...... I'm still not sold on my roosting bars just yet - they could very well just be temporary......that is the only thing I seriously struggled with in my design.....

Absolutely amazing, talk about super coop!!

I love it, but hold on one second. What's that nifty feeder you've got there.... I need to make one and I love that one. How much does it hold? What size pvc is that?

PrincessChicky said:

I love it, but hold on one second. What's that nifty feeder you've got there.... I need to make one and I love that one. How much does it hold? What size pvc is that?

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It's just pieces of PVC that I grabbed from Home Depot. It's 2" - when I make the real one (this was just a test one), I am going to use two 3' PVC tubes with one feeder at the top that I can access from my work area. I use a kids cup from Olive Garden to fill it right now - it holds 4 of those cup full's and it lasts about a day for my 25 chickens.....the best part is, they eat the dust in the feed too - not just the pebbles.....unlike the long feeder I bought from TS - they never eat all of it....

I'm still not completely one - about 95% - but here are some more progress shots.

My little work area - I painted gray and white stripes and then used zebra print duct tape for the stripes - I had to make it girly! I brought a trash can in to keep feed in - and then there is room for a bale of shavings on the floor too - and the jug of water I cart back and forth..... I also need to hang that cheap light I got - it is very dark back here at night!


This is the south side - I had a spacing issue so I decided to use fence panels where it was too wide for the chicken wire I had - which works out fine - it blocks some of the sun during the day for the ladies. This was turning lemons into lemonade for me.

I am already planning a run addition to this side - just something I can add on and take off that is about 2' high - probably out of PVC - that way the girls can have more space when the meat chickens are in town......



Roadside pallets make another great shady spot during the day - and a place to roost on for now - until I get the tree brought in here and put up perches in the corners.



I still need to build some sort of door on a pulley system for here - but for now, a piece of plywood screwed over it at night works. I was going to build a real ramp but this piece of shelving works great - and it is easily cleanable. Perfect! This is where the ladies like to hang out too.....chickens can be so weird sometimes!


My coop isn't un-level - it's just the angle I took this picture at. What is un-level however is my yard! Ugh! That is why the lower boards are all at different heights - they are actually level - but the hardware cloth went down to the bedrock at different heights so I had to keep adjusting the height of the cross braces. (sorry for the crazy coloring - I took this one picture with my phone - the rest were with my camera)


I need to paint the doors - they are driving me crazy! They were the old screen doors that we had on our French doors - but they never got hung up in the last 4 years so I snagged them for my coop. There's a small gap under the right door that I need to fix - stupid un-level ground! Ooh - and those boards that are to the right of the doors - those are to hide the blue rain barrel from the road when I put up the gutter to collect the rain water. I thought it would stick out like a sore thumb so I wanted to cover it up a bit - but still be able to see out the window from my work area. I put the fence panels on the west side to block out the weather. A lot of our storms come from Lake Ontario - which is on the backside of the coop.


Sadly, last week, there was an article in the paper about someone who woke up and found the majority of her flock - the big laying hens - but not the rooster or the smaller chickens - were STOLEN! Who does that??? Anyways - it made me feel better to put a lock on my coop - even though I know that it won't truly deter anyone - they could easily break into this place - but still.....I would be devastated to wake up and find all of my laying hens gone! I hope whomever took them, needed to feed their family with the eggs and didn't do it just to be rotten.....



My indoor feeder - just some 2" and 3" PVC - works pretty great!




I have another elbow that attaches to this that I pour the feed into - but I can't leave it on because the cupboard doors don't open with it on - which is fine - I just leave it in the trash can and grab it when I need to put more feed in. I bought a kids rake to mix around the litter too - works pretty good - and this is the perfect spot to hang it in!


When I am outside working in the garden, I do let the girls out of the run to free range a bit, even though legally I'm not supposed to. They love it and we're good at getting them back inside quickly. I'd never leave them out if I wasn't there to keep an eye on things as we do get the occasional stray dog (maybe once a year at most) - and there is a family of foxes up the road.....



I wanted to leave under the coop open to give the girls a shady spot to rest in the summer - and I am so glad I did! They love it under there! I tacked the hardware cloth to the building and then bent it outward at the bedrock and covered it with sod......I also left pointy edges where it is bent around the cement blocks to deter any animals from trying to pull at it - although the sod is doing a great job holding it in place.


I still have to do a bit more - like dig a trench for the electrical line, finish up trimming out the front of the coop and most importantly, build a chicken door - but it is really predator proof so I'm not worried. I do screw a piece of plywood over their hole at night to keep them extra safe - but I was told, I have the Ft. Knox of coops. The only thing getting in here is a mouse, maybe.

Here are my littlest babies - they are almost 4 weeks old - but that one chicken that looks different - I got it from my kids school. It has not grown at all - and it is 8 weeks old. I don't know what is wrong with it - but I have an affinity for the runts so I keep her, hoping she's OK.


The runt - I think she's 8 weeks old now - all I know is, she's one week younger than all of my bigger chickens - and she's actually smaller than my almost 4 week old ones.......Any idea what could be wrong with her?

really spectacular job. the feeders are great. i'm going to have to do something similar.