Selling and going big -- 100+ chicken ideas

[Rock Home Isle]

I am not sure what the climate is like where you live, but I am on the Oregon Coast,. Here we do not seem to have mice like I did in California, here we have giant Norwegian Rats! I HATE them and our barn cats wont touch them, but that is beside the point. Here we have found that if you can get your hands on old chest freezers for storage of feed, the feed stays dry, and the rats stay out! Maybe that will help with storing large amounts of food for the number of birds you want. We use them in our horse barn and our chicken/rabbit area. I have 43 birds currently and this holds their feed, bedding and hay for the bunnies just fine. Congratulations on your upcoming move!

Pellet gun with a night camera through the scope = AWESOME!!!

 

[Percheron chick]

So, we've sold our house and close in a month. The buyer's realtor quote was "In my 21 years of doing realty, this is a first for me. The buyers offer is contingent on the coop and chickens staying." Here's our coop for our 12 chickens: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/933725/das-h-hnerhaus So on to the new place. We have an offer in, but who knows if it will stick, and the place is 20 acres. The new place has two large barns, but we're thinking about building a dedicated chicken house for 100 or so chickens, split into three flocks for breeding and eggs. Does anyone have any coop pictures/ideas they can share for this kind of set up?

Pictures of the barns? If I were building from the ground up for 100 birds and multiple breeds, I would make my life as easy as possible. I would go with a 4-6 stall horse barn. Stalls down one side or 3+3 with a breezeway. Doors on the back opening to runs. Nestboxes on the inside breezeway so you go down the aisle with your cart collecting eggs without entering the coop and easily keeping eggs separate. Easy to secure with doors on both ends. Good airflow for humid summers and bright natural light. Easily reconfigured to a horse barn for resale.

 

[Alabama Jack]

Percheron, we actually thought long and hard about your idea. The place has a horse barn! However, we decided to rent the stables out for boarders (income!) However, the barn does have an addition that looked like it was meant for ponies or donkeys. We plan to convert this into our chicken coop. We also decided to go with one breed (most likely Orps).

Based on pacing it off, the structure is around 500+ square feet and the run area has up to 1300+ square feet potential.

Here are some pictures:







Oh, and we now have two Great Pyrenees pups Hoping to raise hair sheep

 

[Alabama Jack]

And here's a drone shot of our new place The chicken coop will go in the North barn on the south side. (house is north of the barns)

 

[OilyChick]

Beautiful place! LOVE the drone shot!!

 

[Alabama Jack]

Got some work done on converting a double horse stall into a coop. Put in a concrete threshold (goes down 12 inches.).

Closed off the top of the stall:
Before --

After--

Put in flashing on the bottom of the wall and about 10"s down. Wanted to protect the walls from the deep litter. Interested in folks opinions on using flashing. I plan to put gravel down against it in the hole.

And my wife's cousin giving a hand:

 

[aart]

Cool!

Hopefully gravel will be deep and/or heavy and large enough for birds not to be able to scratch down to edge of flashing, could cause some nasty cuts.
I am forever amazed at how deep they can dig, and they seem to especially dig down next to things like walls or concrete blocks/pavers.
Otherwise, should be a good barrier to protect bottom of wall boards.

They're gonna want to roost on the board the ladder leaning against in the second pic..maybe you have a plan to deter that.

Best of cLuck.....looking forward to following along.

 

[Alabama Jack]

Thanks for the reply aart! We have a bunch of old brick we can throw in there too, with the gravel. The one board that the ladder is against is 8 feet high, so not sure they will be able to get up there.

BTW, I was reading through this thread and realized our plans have changed several times. We're now using an internal stall, and the lean-to that's pictures from 6 months ago. Also adding a run to the lean-to. We have 74 chicks coming on 21 March. Mixed flock, as we are going to focus just on egg production for now. 4 of those will be roosters. Not sure if that's too many or not enough.

 

[Alabama Jack]

Got the first 3 posts of 11 for the outdoor run put in. Will be 25x36.

 

[aart]

Looking good!