Upgraded My Coop.....Long Sad Story Short

hello everyone, to make a long sad story short, let me begin about my old coop. Back in Jan of 2012 i came across a big pile of wood of an old house that was demolished. I picked it up and built me a decent size coop. The bad thing about it is that i built no walls on it, i just used regular chicken wire on it to enclose all three walls (the back was against concrete fence) anyway everything was good until this past holidays (xmas and new year) when we went to Houston Tx to spend the holidays with my older son in his family, you see i have a pair of neapolitan masriffs and somehow they were able to get out of their cage by lifting the fence from below. They got out and ripped the chicken wire fence of my coop and killed all 50+ layers of production reds and golden comets. They didnt get my quail layers cause their egg production cage is pretty high for them to reach. Anyway, i was all depressed when i came back after the slaughter that i didnt want anything to do with chickens anymore. It's a good thing having friends cause my neighbor and my cousin told me to get everything FIXED and they would give me some pullets and a couple of cockerels (production reds/white leghorns mix). That got me all excited and tore the old coop apart, bought me some second hand green fiberglass panels some timber and a couple of plywoods from my cousin along with a used door and a 16 ft thick welded wire panel and started building my coop once again from scratch and this is the result.




32 feet Coop/Run left side of door is 8ftx16ft, right side of door is 12ftx16ft



thick welded wire on the outside and cage building welded wire thru the inside (there is no way my dogs will rip this apart)



quail egg production cage (12 compartments which hold 1 male for 3 females in each)



baby chicks/baby quails brooder



welded wire cage hanger given by my neighbor. it has 10 compartments (5 on each side)


egg laying boxes



a couple more egg laying boxes



35 white leghorn pullets bought from ideal poultry on the 16th of this month



another 25 production red and golden comet pullets also bought from ideal poultry on the 16th of this month




couple of production red/white leghorn mix pullets given to me by my neighbor and my cousing



more pullets given to me along with 9 white silkies



couple of more pullets



a couple more of them pullets



and some more





my "KILLER" neapolitan mastiffs "Brutus and Luna"



under lock and chain



and also screwed shut!!!


1 month later after all the killing and thanks to my neighbor and my cousin, I made a new coop that is well protected and have approx. 150 all together pullets and babychicks plus 48 quails on my egg production cage plus 300 quail eggs in my homemade incubator who just started hatching as im typing in this post.

REGARDLESS OF UPS OR DOWNS, I WILL ALWAYS BE AN ADDICT!!!

Oh wow, that is both a horrible and great story. I'm glad you didn't just quit. Did ANY of the chickens survive the attack?! I wish I could have that many chickens. Oh well. I guess I will have to wait until I move on to a farm some day. For now I will have to stick with a maximum of 5 chickens. Good luck with your new hen house! It is amazing!

hello 3D, no, none of my chickens survived even the 35 baby chicks that were born on the 21st of Dec, the dogs also pushed my incubator down where i had a dozen gamefowl eggs that were due on the 26th.............i just saw the clip on youtube of Hope.......she is getting BIG and **** Cute!!!............she still has no buddies?

rgv awesome coop!! I need a coop and a lot of farm space too

Sorry bout your first bunch.It was sad but in the long run it made you wiser.Sounds like you have awesome neighbors.What you have now is an excellent coop.I don't have that many chickens.I,ve got bout 27 and I love them.I plan on getting some more this spring,but I'm thinking on the order of meat birds.Good luck with the new setup.

Excellent looking coop.

rgvchicks said:

hello 3D, no, none of my chickens survived even the 35 baby chicks that were born on the 21st of Dec, the dogs also pushed my incubator down where i had a dozen gamefowl eggs that were due on the 26th....

.........i just saw the clip on youtube of Hope.......she is getting BIG and **** Cute!!!....

........she still has no buddies?

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That sucks.
As for Hope, no, she still has no buddies. I am going to incubate some more eggs hopefully soon. As for now, she'll have to deal with just me. lol She gets sad at night time. I caught a video of her wailing like she has been every night. I feel so sorry for her... She only does it at night time. I'll load it on Youtube and put it on here.

So sorry you had to learn the hard way that poultry wire isn't safe. You are lucky to have awesome friends and relatives, good luck with your new flock.

trooper said:

Sorry bout your first bunch.It was sad but in the long run it made you wiser.Sounds like you have awesome neighbors.What you have now is an excellent coop.I don't have that many chickens.I,ve got bout 27 and I love them.I plan on getting some more this spring,but I'm thinking on the order of meat birds.Good luck with the new setup.

Click to expand...

thanks trooper for your comment.....let me throw my couple of cents regarding the meat birds, i ordered 60 for my neighbor from ideal poultry in the begining of Dec., we ordered 20 white cornish cross, 20 black broilers, and 20 red broilers. in my opinion the best to raise without any problems at all were the red broilers. the white cornish at 6 wks (average 5.5 lbs) got leg problems and couldnt walk neither to the food or water. the black broilers were ok but a lot slower in growing than the whites or reds. the red broiler was the best, at same 6 wks we had them at an average between 2.5 and 3 lbs. we slaughtered the whites and kept the blacks and reds, reds are huge compared to the blacks that are a little bit slower to grow than the reds. ideal poultry has them right now at .90 cents when ordering over 25 ......................thx again.........rgv