11/09/10 A few weeks ago, one of my husband's coworkers offered him a few Rhode Island Red hens, and that's all it took for me to catch "chicken fever"! We own a 2 acre fenced lot across the street from our home that had a 4 stall barn of sorts on it, which my DH has set about turning into a suitable home for chicks. Since I love looking at everyone else's pictures, and I can't help bragging on my man, I thought I'd share some photos of my own
First, take a look at what he had to work with - a barn apparently put together with whatever scraps they could find and no planning whatsoever:
He had already done a lot of cleaning up, but you get the idea. You can't see the chicken wire, but it looked as if not only had something gotten in, but something had worked very hard to get out - it was a real mess! Speaking of mess...the former owners previously had chickens and I think they used the deep litter method - without the litter! There was poop 3-4 inches thick piled up on some of the framing.
We are much closer to chicken happiness now - even though it doesn't look like it, lol! Okay, so we only have 2 walls, a floor, and a backless nesting box, but we're making progress here people! The end picture is the nesting box sitting in the workshop. When complete, there will be a lid on top so we can keep stuff up there without the chickens being able to get to it, and there will be 3 doors on the back: 2 opening for gathering eggs, the third to allow access to the top shelf. The "coop" area is 10x18 I think, as it used to be 2 stalls. We haven't decided whether or not to put the divider back or where to put the roosts. We are planning to use 4' hardware cloth from the roof down, then solid wood from there down - but with a twist. DH is thinking hinged panels so that for winter, thunderstorms, or any bad weather, we could enclose the coop easily. We shall see!