Quick little note about me...
I live in the Denver area and am the son of a 60 something year old ex-chicken farmer from europe that used to help run a family farm of 50,000 chickens. While for some reason my dad now hates all things chicken, I have recently discovered urban chicken farming here in the city and am hooked. My coop is just about finished now and my chickens are in it full time. I need to add more pics below that show it in it's mostly finished state, but you can see the basic structure here. My chickens are about 4 months old now and one of them started laying eggs this week (07/13/2009). Posting some pictures below of my (stage 1) brooder and the refurbished dog kennel (the kind you can crate train large dogs in), which is where they lived for several more weeks. Eventually I had to move them into my garage because we had a really wet spring and I wasn't able to finish the coop in time. Even now, I have to still finish predator proofing their run, but they are locked up really well at night which is my primary concern. I'll be making updates to my page here from time to time, I have more pictures to upload soon.
Here's a pic of my brooder before I had my chickens. It's a 15 gallon aquarium, with the typical required items. This was big enough for 4 hens for a couple of weeks.
Can't forget about the mouse trap
Here are my babies around 5 days old:
From Left to Right, you are looking at a Speckled Sussex (at the feeder), a Rhode island Red and 2 buff Orpingtons. Right after taking this shot, I cleaned out the waterer for the 8th time that day.
Now I have the waterer and feeder on top of a 2x4 board at one end of the tank. It seems to be helping.
and a few days later:
One of the buff orps here (probably the one with his fuzzy butt towards the camera ended up being a rooster. We found him a great home at a farm not far from here when he started crowing, thanks to BYC)
Coop in progress:
My hen's have been living in their coop since July 4th, 09 (independence day for me was getting them out of my garage).
After the shots above were taken, I wrapped the exterior with osb plywood, then wrapped that with Insulfoam, and finally put the siding up around that, put in the doors and have the run about 80% complete (the chickens are already pretty safe in there, but I'm never satisifed) The area under the coop is now enclosed, I found my first egg right next to one of those dek blocks this morning. The run spans off to the left side. All that's left is I need to bullet proof the 'roof' of the run from the local hawks, add a little bit of trim to the coop iteself and then paint it. Should be about a week out from being officially finished... but my definition of being finished keeps changing. Going to come up with a semi-auto, coop based, waterer and feeder once everything else is in, always thinking ahead to winter.
I have a little bit off trim work and painting still to do. Run is getting better, will add more hardware cloth under the main door here. You can see the first layer of fence material here, this forms an apron about 15 inches along the ground which I covered with a layer of sod.
I live in the Denver area and am the son of a 60 something year old ex-chicken farmer from europe that used to help run a family farm of 50,000 chickens. While for some reason my dad now hates all things chicken, I have recently discovered urban chicken farming here in the city and am hooked. My coop is just about finished now and my chickens are in it full time. I need to add more pics below that show it in it's mostly finished state, but you can see the basic structure here. My chickens are about 4 months old now and one of them started laying eggs this week (07/13/2009). Posting some pictures below of my (stage 1) brooder and the refurbished dog kennel (the kind you can crate train large dogs in), which is where they lived for several more weeks. Eventually I had to move them into my garage because we had a really wet spring and I wasn't able to finish the coop in time. Even now, I have to still finish predator proofing their run, but they are locked up really well at night which is my primary concern. I'll be making updates to my page here from time to time, I have more pictures to upload soon.
Here's a pic of my brooder before I had my chickens. It's a 15 gallon aquarium, with the typical required items. This was big enough for 4 hens for a couple of weeks.
Can't forget about the mouse trap
Here are my babies around 5 days old:
From Left to Right, you are looking at a Speckled Sussex (at the feeder), a Rhode island Red and 2 buff Orpingtons. Right after taking this shot, I cleaned out the waterer for the 8th time that day.
Now I have the waterer and feeder on top of a 2x4 board at one end of the tank. It seems to be helping.
and a few days later:
One of the buff orps here (probably the one with his fuzzy butt towards the camera ended up being a rooster. We found him a great home at a farm not far from here when he started crowing, thanks to BYC)
Coop in progress:
My hen's have been living in their coop since July 4th, 09 (independence day for me was getting them out of my garage).
After the shots above were taken, I wrapped the exterior with osb plywood, then wrapped that with Insulfoam, and finally put the siding up around that, put in the doors and have the run about 80% complete (the chickens are already pretty safe in there, but I'm never satisifed) The area under the coop is now enclosed, I found my first egg right next to one of those dek blocks this morning. The run spans off to the left side. All that's left is I need to bullet proof the 'roof' of the run from the local hawks, add a little bit of trim to the coop iteself and then paint it. Should be about a week out from being officially finished... but my definition of being finished keeps changing. Going to come up with a semi-auto, coop based, waterer and feeder once everything else is in, always thinking ahead to winter.
I have a little bit off trim work and painting still to do. Run is getting better, will add more hardware cloth under the main door here. You can see the first layer of fence material here, this forms an apron about 15 inches along the ground which I covered with a layer of sod.
