Let the building begin!!!!

[Sand blister]

Looks great. How many hens will it house ?

 

[PapaChaz]

I like it! making progress for sure

 

[MickeysChicks]

Looks great. How many hens will it house ?

Max capacity 24. I have 9 now, plan on ordering about 10 new fluffy butts hopefully this month! We'll use the old coop as the baby coop while the older girls get used to the new coop. Once we blend the two groups that'll give us 19, but as soon as the new babies start laying we plan on culling our 5 leghorns. They're just too aggressive for us, and we're bringing breeds that are less aggressive and more sociable. Once we cull we'll be down to 14 so they should have plenty of room during the winter months when they're cooped up for longer periods of time. Of course you could also say that gives us more room for chicken math to strike! lol

 

[MickeysChicks]

Our best friends came out this weekend and helped us with the roof, walls and clearing the space for the community room and runs! The biggest thing left is painting and building the screened in tarp covered community room! But there's alot of little stuff...trim work,nestboxes, chicken ramp, screens in the windows, the human door, and the poop door! Meanwhile...a little birdy has informed us that the local feed store has a shipment of Buff Orpingtons coming in this week and a shipment coming in 3 weeks of Cuckoo Marans,Easter Eggers, and Silver Wyandottes!

So I may not have to order new fluffy butts from online!
Looking at the front of the coop.
A side view of the coop.
The new coop is the building in the back, the building in the middle is our garden /storage building, and the old coop and run is attached to the side of the garden shed. To give you an idea of how much bigger the new coop is,the new coop is the exact same size as the garden shed!

 

[aart]

Sweet, you're gonna love it!!

 

[RJSorensen]

Yep, you have a keeper there. I like walk in coops, they are the best.

Best to you and your setup,

RJ

 

[MickeysChicks]

We have worked on the coop for the last two days and we are exhausted! But the year old hens are officially in their new home tonight and the new babies are in the old coop. We gutted the old coop down to the floor and the walls, pressure washed ,scrubbed and sanitized and repressure washed, inside and out. I had to repair the old run, apparently the girls tried to dig their way out but couldn't get past the buried fencing...lol! After letting it airdry all day we put the babies and their kiddy pool in the old coop, the run door is closed for now but the way they're growing we'll probably open up the run to them by the end of the week. The "old" girls were allowed to free range all day Saturday and Sunday, I lured them to the new coop using the kitchen chicken scrap bowl. Though they had been "supervising" all weekend, while digging a trench to bury the new fencing they all came over and helped dig and then were very helpful in burying the fence! We plan on keeping them cooped up for two weeks to give them a chance to "rehome" to the new coop.
We still have alot to do, painting, trimwork and working shutters around the windows, the outdoor play area is going to be covered but right now it just has a bird netting top, need to build two runs, but at least it's functional! We've agreed to take the next week off from coop building and catchup on the lawn mowing and house cleaning ....and rest!

The old coop all cleaned up and housing the 3 week old chicks.

Nesting boxes still need curtains, you can see the broody nest with her golfballs in front of the window!

The girls get to use a second roost ladder now that they have all that room! You can see the framing for the last window between the ladders, that's on the todo list! We plan on having a sand floor, it'll be next week before we can get the load of sand, in the meantime I have poop dropcloth under the ladders covered in pine shavings.

Started installing recycled garden pavers around the base of the fence. The scalloped concrete pavers will go all the way around the outside of the fence to help keep rainwater from washing out the outdoor room, then after all the repairs I had to do to the old run I'm going to put pavers on the inside of the fence to keep them from digging out the fence! We also have to install rain gutters and a rain barrel and tie it into a water nipple system, but for right now we'll use their old waterer! you can't tell from the picture but there is bird netting on the top and wrapped around the outside of the fencing, I'm tired of cleaning bird nests off out of the coop!

 

[Sand blister]

Everything is coming together. Looking good !

 

[aart]

Nesting boxes still need curtains, you can see the broody nest with her golfballs in front of the window!

Hmmm interesting idea, cleaning them would be a breeze!
...but....I see the nesting material, and possibly eggs, being scratched right out of those nests.
How big are those bins?

 

[little buddy]

You guys have been working hard and it shows. It looks great.