- Thread starter
- #41
KenStorm989
In the Brooder
SUPER Helpful!!! There is a fence to the left of where the coop will be, but no fence behind it, just the trunk of the tree.I'm a little late to the party, but I think that the first thing I'd do is check with planning and zoning or your town council ordinances to find out about setbacks. I read the ordinance you quoted about having the animals, but all that really addressed was the keeping, not specifically the building of the facilities to house them. In most areas (mine included, where I sat on both the Planning and Zoning commission and the town council) setback requirements are for ANY construction, so they often don't break it down again separately in any animal ordinance. The general gist is that the setbacks are already spelled out under "new construction" and are, for the most part, iron-clad. With good enough reasons, you can go to P&Z and request a variance, which if approved then has to go before the town council for final approval, but that's a process that adds time to the project and puts you on the radar. I enlarged your photo (we would have killed for that kind of clear illustration included with some of the applications we got, by the way!) and if I'm looking at it correctly your setup practically touches the fences surrounding your property. So do look into setback requirements more fully before you commit to a design and construction. One other thing you might want to think about before you build....there might well be times when you NEED to be able to walk all the way around your setup to tend to things behind it. If you build as close to the fence as the photo looks, that might be an issue. Now, as I said, I'm just going by the photo and things might not be as close as they look.
We found ourselves in the same situation you are in - limited construction skills, living in town and having to build something aesthetically pleasing to the neighbors, but I stupidly had the added burden of already having 22 chicks in the house who desperately need to be evicted and no place to put them yet! When you add to that the fact that I was serving on the town council, I also had to follow the letter of the laws completely or risk that old, "Well, I guess when you're part of the government you can do what you want" complaint. I live on a corner lot so our setup is visible from the north side and the east side of the street. Here in Cowley, evening bike rides and strolls (or just walks in winter bundled up against the cold) are the norm - we're still in the sit-on-the-porch-with-an-iced-tea-and-wave-at-folks-as-they-ride-or-walk-by kind of community and people notice everything in our yards!
So for our run we opted for cattle panels. Yep, just $22.00 cattle panels, 3 of them, and some steel fence posts! Hubby and I are both in our 60s and both of us have some degree of disability, so we needed easy, fast, and good looking. It also had to withstand snow loads and regular winds in the 40 mph range with gust much higher! Why, here just this Tuesday we had a wind gust of 94 mph. Cattle panels fit the bill - cheap and effective. We pounded steel posts on two sides, then arched cattle panels between them and wired them into place. No elaborate framing needed, no fussing, and the two of us were easily able to handle them. We covered them in chicken wire to deter overhead predators, squirrels, and wild birds, which can create havoc when they get into the coop or run, then added an apron extending out over the ground almost 2 feet and a skirt of hardware cloth going up 2 feet, because chicken wire in and of itself is no true deterrent. This setup has exceeded our expectations, and when we opted to enlarge the run all we had to do was remove the end panel on the south side, add one more fence post on each side, add another cattle panel to the end, and then put the end piece back on. Took us old geezers about 4 hours. That's my kind of "home improvement!" The entire coop/run is easy to keep up, keep clean, and we can walk upright in it, which at our ages is a big plus!
As for predators, that's a mighty inviting looking tree right next to your planned coop. Great for shade and weather protection, but easy for anything - a stray cat, an owl or hawk, family of racoon or possum - to use it as a ladder to gain access, so covering and predator proofing would be essential even if you didn't get snow or need rain protection. For that we just use landscape fabric in the summer for shade and to encourage water run-off, and clear plastic in winter, ala greenhouse. Just because we don't see predators doesn't mean they aren't there, especially in the suburbs or in town where pickin's are pretty easy. I once watched an entire family of raccoon come up out of a storm drain in downtown Denver....yep, right downtown amid the brightly lit skyscrapers and traffic.
Our setup in summer....
And in winter.
