Turkey and Chicken Coops The good the bad and the ugly post your Pictures

[chicken pickin]

chicken pickin': i really liked your coop #4. looks like it's wood pallets and a sliding door wall. do you have hardware cloth screening under the propped window? how wide is the doorway? how do you clean it out?

we currently have15 turkeys using 2 dog kennels opened up to create a 10x20 run with a 10x8 wood pallet structure added at one end. the entire interior is covered with about 4 yards of sand. using a 20' long tree trunk (young tree), mounted on 2' logs as their roosting pole, set in the middle of the run. all my turkeys roost on it at night, and it has a good 4' safety zone perimeter in case we have racoons with long arms. we had to put down 3 turkey poults after coons reached through the tiniest of openings and removed one leg from each earlier in the spring. they are let out of the pen daily to roam a 1/8 acre fenced pasture area.

Thank You! I love the coop so far its working out great. It is 5x9 1/2 and roughly 6' tall in the front and and 5ish' in the back. It is made mostly of pallets(the floor and 2 side walls and back wall) and then plywood to fully cover the inside. I do not have a sliding door it is a regular door that opens and closes so I can close them in at night. Yes there is hardware cloth in the opening of the window so I can leave it open at night. The doorway is probably close to 3' wide and so far for cleaning I just walk in and shovel it out the dorway into a wheelbarrow. Though soon I am going to be cutting a small door out along the floor of the back of the coop that will be on hinges with a latch to close it. That way when it is time to clean I will open the small back door and just push everything out the back of the coop into a wheelbarrow(that way I wont have to walk it all the way through the run out the gate all the way back up the hill and into the woods lol) Our run i think is roughly 12x40.

here is the link to my build if you want to check it out https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/686677/the-start-of-our-turkey-palace-house-updated-pics

And I love the idea about putting the roosting tree trunk in the middle of the run. I have a tree also that is going to be put up for roosting and I was going to kiddie corner it in the farthest corner of the fence from their house. I might do what you did instead. We are currently working on the top of the fence. We are putting up pvc pipes to create a high arch over the fence and then putting aviary netting over the top Just waiting on the netting to arrive. I am also putting small coop #3 inside the turkey run and turning it into a seperate nesting area for the hens.

Id love to see your pics if you have any.

 

[Sandrachx]

the last 2 years we had put a few shorter poles in the pens but the turkeys were pretty much beating themselves up trying to get up on them each night. so this year we tried the one long pole and it has worked great. if you put it in the kiddie corner, you may invite night raiders as well as limit their wing spread as they jump up. just a thought . . .

also, our run is covered with strong aviary netting (works great!) as well as a tarp over the top to reduce the sun. last year we used cheap blue tarps from the hardware but they weren't water proof and so when it rained outside, it rained inside. not good. this year we used a much stronger tarp, darker color, and placed some 2x6 boards every few feet. worked great, but then it trapped water and created tears where it pulled across the ends of the corrugated metal roofing. sigh. we only have them spring, summer, fall and don't have to worry about snow weight.

i'll try to get some pics of the turkey run, but it's not a pretty coop.

 

[Glenmar]

Mine is a gazebo type. This one is 8x8. I just moved my 4 turkeys to a larger one that is 16 x 8.

 

[frank53061]

My Chicken Coop is a old gazebo that I bought from my boss for $50.00 don't think that was bad there was a good amount of lumber there.
I had to add to it because of crowding.

Sorry off subject of Turkeys.
My Turkeys do visit from time to time and eat the Chickens feed LOL.

 

[foulweather]

Love that tall fence. We need that for our dogs, but that chain link is expensive. I was lucky to get a bunch of 4 ft used chain link for only a case of beer, LOL! I used it for the chicken run and our pig pen. I still got about 25 ft left I think but need the tall stuff for dogs. What did you pay for your fencing???this pic was when i first built it. Its totally covered with chicken wire to protect them from hawks and other flying predators.

Wow those are some impressive accommodations. What a view. We have a real resident owl a bit larger than the one you have on your post there so I will definitely have to cover our poultry areas. I am thinking of building the laying coop so it has four doors to four different quadrants so as each gets a little trampled and dug up I can move them. Not sure I am smart enough to figure the logistics out for that but am going to give it a whirl. With all the helpful information on this site I am sure to be able to figure it out. Thanks for sharing.

 

[foulweather]

Thought I'd share this video of one of my turkey poults flying from our oak tree

They are crazy good fliers.

Do they go in their pen by themselves at night? How do you keep the hawks from attacking them, or don't hawks attack turkeys?

 

[Moochie]

Not sharing what my two turkeys currently live in

I do have 2 questions though: How high should a fence for turkeys be? My mom and I are trying to pick a nice spot to build them a coop and run.. We come across building problems with each other because she's 4' 11" and I'm 5' 6". When we make the fence it can't be too tall because she's so small and I'm terribly afraid of heights so I won't touch a ladder. A steppy stool, maybe. Only a stool though, like a little tikes plastic play chair.
How much space do 3-4 turkeys need? I'd like to have 2 more hens for my tom and hopefully I can get poults this weekend.

If we get this built then I will share pictures.

 

[frank53061]

You could just build it as tall as you are or a little shorter but you would have to bend over to enter you would also need to put a cover over the top if you have a say 3 to 5 ft fence.
If you clip there wings they can still fly or jump 4 to 5 ft.
I clipped the wings 4 to 5 times as they were growing and now at 7 months they don't try to fly any more than flying to the roost in the pen about 4 feet off the ground.
My fence is 7 to 8 ft high I just took metal fence post and drove them into the ground and using steel wire tied another post to the one drove into the ground extending the height.
Then went round the out side and using the steel wire cutting the wire into 6 inch lenghts tied the chicken wire to the post and over lapping the Chicken wire tieing the fence together.
There is probably a better way of doing it but this was the cheapest way to make the 25 x 30 ft Pen.
Its all what you have to work with and what end results you want.

 

[flocksalot]

Well I would post a pic, but I haven't been able to find my camera since we sold our old house two years ago. We just house our turkeys in our greenhouse. They use the benches to perch on when they get to large and the Midgets find any ole thing that's up high to perch on. I did run some 2x4s across the lenght on one side so they would quit fighting over the corner braces. We don't use a run they can run all over our property whenever they feel the need. They did an awesome job cleaning up anything they could find in the gardens and kept the alfalfa weevil under control. People often ask us if we have problems with predators. That's what live traps are for. I also keep a light on to help steer the predators away from my birds. The only real predator problem we've had is human. Darn varmits stole one of my Midgets while we were in the house eating a late lunch. We saw them go down our very long driveway and later came up short when we counted. Other than that we prefer them to run around and chase whatever takes their fancy. Last week it was a squirrel, so my husband shot it. Now my babies will have to go back to chasing the ducks, geese, or chickens. The horses don't run from them no matter how much the try to get them too.

As for a real coop for the turkeys we are planning to gut and refurbish an old green feed wagon over the winter. That way after the hay is baled we can move the turkeys around on the field so they can work a bit more for their snacks. This will only be for the younger BBWs and the Midgets. My older BBWs that I keep are my pets and they will live in the greenhouse until they die. They love it in there over the winter, and so do I.

 

[Jenny1]

Your coops look way better than mine. Mine looks pathetic...