Chicken Jacks Chicken Coop

Persimmon Ridge Farm

We are a military family. We've moved just over 10 times and Lord willing we'll make Middle Tennessee our final home. We've lived here two years now and each day we make small improvements to our 64 acre farm we call Persimmon Ridge. Approximately 50 aces is rolling hills and wooded. We use the wood to heat our home in the winter and to heat our water rear round.
We have a 30' x 50' metal barn, which over the past two days we've partitioned into a 20' x 10' foot coop for our approximately 50 chickens. We'll start on the chicken run immediately following the coop construction.
We've raised chickens for about eight years and love the experience. We've always allowed them to free range and have been blessed not to have had a varmint problem, save one year when the neighborhood dogs about wiped out my first flock. Since that time, rat shot for my .22 is always nearby and as a result, I've never had a problem like that again.
We raise chickens to help us teach good work ethics to our kids and for the eggs. I'm not a breeder, but some of you have encouraged me to maybe move along that path. We've homeschooled our children most of their lives and then introduced them to public school for about their last five years of schooling. Through these eight years our children have learned a tremendous amount from these beautiful creatures. I pray I can pass this love on to our grandchildren some day.
Here are some pictures of our family, our place and our chickens.
My wonderful family. Our new daughter in law isn't in this picture. We need to make a new family picture.

In this photo our chickens home is in the barn up on the hill. Our new pullets will be joining the "older chickens" this weekend. The pullets are currently living in the garage; see photo below.

This is where my chicks have been living since they arrived from the hatchery in late February. It was cold so I used some foam insulation I had to cover the chick's pen. I also had two heat lamps (cords hanging from the ceiling) and a small space heater located on the opposite side of this photo. I cut a hole in the plywood, covered it with hardware cloth and placed a small space heater outside the box to blow warm air through the hardware cloth and into this pen.

This is a picture of Missy, one of our Easter Eggers. She is four years old and is a wonderful hen.

Here's one of our Black Austrolorp hens. We really love this breed. Of our new 50 pullets we just received this past February, about two thirds of them are also Black Austrolorps.

Here's one of our new roosters. He was hatched out by one of our Black Austrolorp hens. We have four like him, all very docile. I'm hopeful they will all remain that way.

We live on the side of a small mountain and our barn is on higher elevation than our home. We considered having a new building made for our chickens, on the same elevation as our house, but when we saw the quote we choked! So, let's renovate the barn! Here's an inside shot of part of our barn. I'm partitioning off a 20' x 10' area for our chickens. I just began this project on April 29th. I tied in three 4 x 4s into the existing 2 x 6s. I also made a roost out of 2 x 4s. The chickens I brought from our last home came to this place with no coop of their own, so they've been roosting in the rafters (9' off the ground).

Here's my lovely wife and I adding the 2 x 6s on April 30th. Beautiful day!

It's now May 1st and as you can see we've added some bracing and the door. We had a lot of rain today!! It's darker outside and very, very, wet. I have to work on the gutters and elevation as water has entered the barn floor.

Well, we've got the structure completed. Still have to add the chicken wire and then we can call it home. I was hoping to have it done by today, but I'm a slow builder so I shouldn't be surprised.