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Page created by:jnjross View other pages: our-chickens;
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ROSS TREE FARM CHICKEN COOP We begin building in june 15 in 95 degree heat, dh had to change clothes several times as you'll see, I tryed to take pics inprogress ,but since I was hands on I had to take some at the end of each day . I total the receipts for the build and it comes to $675.75 not including the recycled salvage. We have 7 easter chickens and my 15 beautiful blue/ black orpingtons chicks. We live on 11acres In John Deere Green. 
First we built a run that was 24ft x 10ft. We used landscape timber for post and recycled fence from a construction site 
After getting the post up and one side of fencing, it became very clear it was too small and the coop was too small for 15 orpingtons 
Plans were made to expand the run to 36 x20  and plans for a 12 x 10 coop (but that doesn't mean they were followed) 
Coop day 1 June 15 We built a sloop roof with a 3in fall. the floor will be dirt. We framed the coop in 4hours and over budget already. yep thats one of the nest boxes already in, to measure for the door 
Coop day 2 june 17 We covered the coop with 7/16 osb the cheapest we could find (in the day between buying the lumber and buying the osb the price jumped $2!!) 
2ft x 6ft front door was cutout , in the corners you can see where we ran out of lumber and used cut off scraps to support the osb 
Here is the side wall before windows were cut out, and Taylor is drawing pictures so the chicken will really feel at home 
2' 6"x3' Windows cutout 
Window framed out 
Window 2 framed out, that's the old coop though the window 
All sides done 
And here's how we attached the rafters 
Coop day3 here's the roof. We used the chain saw to cut the corner post level to the rafters 
We put on a sheet metal roof, grandpa owns a steel construction company, we bought a stack of odds for the porch and had some left overs, this took 3 sheets 
Since the osb is laid in the framing we needed to add trim to cover gaps and cracks 
We used 1x2 (1x4 ripped down) 
We painted with a can of oops paint  This is the door, hung with salvage hinges from construction site 
We built a simple window using the cutout osb and framed it on the outisde 
Window finished, outside view, closes with a slide bolt latch. The window is hinged at the top and opens to the outside key west style. This became a design flaw, after the chickens learn to jump on top of the opened window and on to the roof and out to freedom. crafty little things they are !  Inside view, it was covered with hardware cloth after this pic 
Since we have two differant stages of chicken, peeps and juvies, we needed to seperate them, so i made a pvc door and frame with 1in left over from setting up the house and made a wall using a roll of bird net, I attached it to the studs with staples and zip/cable ties to attach it to the door and frame. To hold the door up i used a scrap piece and drilled 2 holes for the pipe to stick through, then screwed to rafters , the top pipe pieces are shorter than the roof and are not glued so i can take the door down just by pulling them out, the hinges are 1 3/8 gate hinges from the chain link section of the hardware store 
I also drove two metal bars in the ground and sat the pipe over them to keep the door straight After the peeps got big enough to room with the big boys the net door was place in the front door to serve as a screen door for those hot Mississippi days 
Here's more post going up to expand the run  And the fence is salvage chain link with hardware cloth (1/4in weld wire) on bottom and 10 foot of the fence is poultry wire since we ran out of chian link  We covered the run with shade cloth attaching with zip ties, we used salvage 1 3/8 fence poles across the top to hold up the cloth  Here's the big boys on the roost made from a tree stand ladder cut in half, the first nest box, the fan at the top of the roost is on a timer I have since hung it from the rafters , and the brooder box was cleaned and now stores feed, they have one large feeder, grit feeder, and one auto waterer 
The baby's side has two feeders and one auto waterer  And here's the auto waterers I bought from www.jefferslivestock.com for $15 they had the cheapest price!. we used some 1in to plumb in then reduced to the 1/2in to screw in the waterers, I bought a 4 pack of plastic plates from walmart and drilled a hole larger than the pipe but smaller than the coupling to make a cover for both waterers and the baby's feeders Here's a closer look at the waterers 
This is the inside after we removed the net wall, and moved the net door over the front door to serve as a screen door 
These are a few of the blue/black orpingtons 
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