This is the old "temporary" henhouse that ended up lasting me almost 5 years. What an eyesore! It was nearly 8ft long with the nest on one end. Unfortunately, the hens kept laying eggs in the OTHER part, forcing me to go fishing for eggs with an aquarium net duct taped to a PVC pole. What fun.
It is made up of wood pallets for floor and walls, covered in chickenwire and nylon feed bags.
Here is the start of my new henhouse built by my DS and SIL...SIL is the skinny one. We used four wood pallets screwed together to base the floor and then covered it with 2 pieces of plywood.
This is the east side, facing the garden where no chickens are allowed. The chickenwire fence you see surrounds my small corn patch, hoping to change the minds of any ground squirrels still lurking in the area.
Along the wall on the left side is a long wooden box- feeder that holds a 50 lb bag of layer pellets. You can see the sun shining in near the roof. This is a space of about 2 inches all around the top of the whole house for ventilation. There will also be an additional window placed in the left-side wall in future. This will create windows on both the east and west walls as the door faces the south.
You can't see it but the roof overhangs about 3 feet in front, slopes down toward the back and overhangs the back another 5-6 feet. This allows storage space behind the henhouse for extra bails of shavings, extra chickenwire and my lawn mower out of the rain, of which we get 33+ inches a year. This pic also shows my water system for my flock. There is a brass spout at the bottom of that barrel with a weight activated chicken waterbowl attached. The barrel stays closed so no yuck gets in the water and to clean the bowl just requires rotating it over a couple of times to allow fresh water to fill it up again. As I've said before, chickens backwash and that is the only thing that dirties my birds water. No wading allowed.
This is a pic of the 4'x8' "ladder" made of 2x4s that hangs about 3 ft from the rafters. This allows for even roasting
I mean roosting of all chicken persons. However, there is an old wooden saw horse for my few older crippled or just too fat hens who can't make it up to the top. There is about 2 ft space between the rungs of the ladder.
We tore down the old henhouse except for the 3ft posts, covered the posts with coregated fiberglass roofing and attached the old plywood roof to the side to give the birds more protection from the rain and wind. The leaning board is on the west side of the structure, which is the coastal side of my little world.
The whole run, enclosed on the west side by a 5ft chainlink fence and the east side by the side of my house, is now covered with critter netting over arched PVC poles as well. The run measures about 14x70 with the henhouse the farthest back. I've got some dark green and creme colored exterior paint but haven't painted yet due to illness this summer. All and all, I'm very pleased with the results. My SIL was very good at listening to what I wanted when he was putting it together. It only cost me about $225 for all of the wood and $10 for 2 gallons of exterior paint from the "mistint" section of the paint store. We've papered the roof but DS still needs to put on the rolled roofing.
It is made up of wood pallets for floor and walls, covered in chickenwire and nylon feed bags.
Here is the start of my new henhouse built by my DS and SIL...SIL is the skinny one. We used four wood pallets screwed together to base the floor and then covered it with 2 pieces of plywood.
This is the east side, facing the garden where no chickens are allowed. The chickenwire fence you see surrounds my small corn patch, hoping to change the minds of any ground squirrels still lurking in the area.
Along the wall on the left side is a long wooden box- feeder that holds a 50 lb bag of layer pellets. You can see the sun shining in near the roof. This is a space of about 2 inches all around the top of the whole house for ventilation. There will also be an additional window placed in the left-side wall in future. This will create windows on both the east and west walls as the door faces the south.
You can't see it but the roof overhangs about 3 feet in front, slopes down toward the back and overhangs the back another 5-6 feet. This allows storage space behind the henhouse for extra bails of shavings, extra chickenwire and my lawn mower out of the rain, of which we get 33+ inches a year. This pic also shows my water system for my flock. There is a brass spout at the bottom of that barrel with a weight activated chicken waterbowl attached. The barrel stays closed so no yuck gets in the water and to clean the bowl just requires rotating it over a couple of times to allow fresh water to fill it up again. As I've said before, chickens backwash and that is the only thing that dirties my birds water. No wading allowed.
This is a pic of the 4'x8' "ladder" made of 2x4s that hangs about 3 ft from the rafters. This allows for even roasting
We tore down the old henhouse except for the 3ft posts, covered the posts with coregated fiberglass roofing and attached the old plywood roof to the side to give the birds more protection from the rain and wind. The leaning board is on the west side of the structure, which is the coastal side of my little world.
The whole run, enclosed on the west side by a 5ft chainlink fence and the east side by the side of my house, is now covered with critter netting over arched PVC poles as well. The run measures about 14x70 with the henhouse the farthest back. I've got some dark green and creme colored exterior paint but haven't painted yet due to illness this summer. All and all, I'm very pleased with the results. My SIL was very good at listening to what I wanted when he was putting it together. It only cost me about $225 for all of the wood and $10 for 2 gallons of exterior paint from the "mistint" section of the paint store. We've papered the roof but DS still needs to put on the rolled roofing.
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