Hidden Forest Coop

[vehve]

For me, keeping it at 18 C just seems like a horrible waste of energy. And with the pump I would be afraid of mechanical failure.

 

[Jetpad]

I decided to take the hardware cloth off my chicken ladder. It gave them good traction and they didn't have any problems with getting toes stuck in it. The problem is it was the dirtiest part of the coop and was getting caked with chicken poop behind the grid of the hardware cloth. Unfortunately, now it is a little slippery. If it's still slippery after it gets a little dirty, I'll take it down and put some sand mixed with paint on it. I might even cut some slots in the board behind each step where the poop seems to collect.

 

[smcgill]

Hay....Is that a dog dish in there. What happened to the empty PVC feeder in the back ground??

 

[Jetpad]

Hay....Is that a dog dish in there. What happened to the empty PVC feeder in the back ground??

Actually a cat dish. I had been bringing (spoiling?) my birds with a morning dish of cold weather hot mash using the powdery part of their feed that I don't think they are interested in eating otherwise.

The PVC feeder is working well. The food stays dry and nothing gets kicked out of it. I've found the food will gravity feed just fine into where the first horizontal hole is located. Just the chickens in there pecking at it will push it over to the middle and last sections. By the time it makes it to the last section, they've picked over it and it has a lot of dust and other bits of the feed they don't like. Leaves and grass that they kick into the feeder also end up in that last section. I'm thinking of taking the cap off the last second and see if it'll kind-of "self clean" and dump the debris they don't eat into the run (without wasting too much feed).

Here's what it looks like from the ChickenCam. There would be more dusty feed in it (especially that last section) but I cleaned it out yesterday to make the mash. I think after they get to the layer stage, the feed won't be so ground up and dusty.

 

[Jetpad]

The water tank is hooked-up. Here's the view from under the coop. The green stuff is the PVC-ABS glue. It came apart once when I was moving things around and had to reglue it again. Also, when I was flushing out the tank after drilling holes into it, I realized how heavy 125 lbs of water really is. So I added another metal strap to hold up the tank. I think that'll be enough to keep it from falling.


And here is where I stick the water hose to fill it up. Water squirts out of it a little when I fill it because it is mounted on the side (instead of a downward angle) but luckily I won't have to fill it up too often.
\

I'm using vertical nipples for now but probably around the time I do a heated version of the waterer, I'll try switching over to the horizontal ones.

 

[aart]

I decided to take the hardware cloth off my chicken ladder. It gave them good traction and they didn't have any problems with getting toes stuck in it. The problem is it was the dirtiest part of the coop and was getting caked with chicken poop behind the grid of the hardware cloth. Unfortunately, now it is a little slippery. If it's still slippery after it gets a little dirty, I'll take it down and put some sand mixed with paint on it. I might even cut some slots in the board behind each step where the poop seems to collect.

Just put a concrete block, tallways, under the end of the ramp to lessen the angle...it's pretty steep.

 

[Jetpad]

I taped off some grippy treads on the ramp, painted it, sprinkled some sand on it, let it dry and then painted it again.


Here's the outcome. I also have a little piece of pressure treated lumber screwed to the bottom to help raise the bottom of the ramp. I'm sure it'll still get dirty but not as bad as when I had the hardware cloth on it.

I also noticed that when the ramp was too slick, they didn't like standing on it for long so there was absolutely no chicken poo on it.


I also found out my water tank leaks around that same fitting when it is full. I'm going to have to drain it today and stick some more of that PVC-ABS glue on it.

 

[aart]

Nice work on the ramp!

Never seen nipples like that before, are you going to paint all that for camouflage?

Does it get freezing where you live? Maybe i missed it before if you have pans to keep the nipple from freezing in the winter.

 

[Jetpad]

Nice work on the ramp!

Never seen nipples like that before, are you going to paint all that for camouflage?

Does it get freezing where you live? Maybe i missed it before if you have pans to keep the nipple from freezing in the winter.

Thanks. I think I found those nipples somewhere on ebay. They are nice in that you can easily remove part of them to clean them out without it messing up the seal. I'll might try camouflaging it a little bit, maybe replace the white pipe with a piece of black PVC if I can find it.

We do get some freezing weather here and I do have some plans for keeping them from freezing but haven't finalized exactly what I'm going to do.

 

[Jetpad]

I'm totally sold on doing the deep litter method in my run. I've been dumping leaves, some compost/dirt and grass from thatching my lawn into the run for the last 5 weeks. I thought I'd over done it and had noticed that it was a little too deep so that the chickens couldn't dig down to the dirt layer at the bottom of the run. So I raked some of it up into a pile in the run so that they could get down and dig a little in the dirt. Today is a very rainy 54º F (12º C) and I dug down into the bottom of the roughly 12" tall pile and it felt warm. I used my point thermometer and I found the temperature in the pile was as high as 80º F (26º C).

And at least so far (they aren't grown chickens yet) there's been no smell.