I finally got my coop painted today! I've been doing little things here and there over the past month and it's nearly complete. I need to add the fencing over the top and reinforce the bottom for predators. I also need to add nesting boxes as my girls will hopefully start laying in the next month or two.
The coop itself is a recycled kids playhouse that I got for free from a friend. The fencing is dog kennel fencing that I also got from a friend; one panel was bought from CraigsList so I could expand the run area. The logs and lumber for the perches came from the garage. They have the coop and run to be in during the day and in the evening, I let them in the "safari" area for digging and eating grass. The fencing around the safari area was given to me by a friend as well. Not including the price of the chickens, I have spent about $100. I have a few more improvements to make but it's pretty much done until it's time for winterization.
Hope you like my coop!
This is the outside of the coop in the run. I keep their food in the run all the time.They have two perches to fight over for sleeping.
This is a perch for them to sit on during the day. It gives them another prespective of the yard. The blue box underneath has grass seed growing in it so they will eventually be able to eat the grass without messing up the dirt.
I keep their waterer and a small "pool" filled for them to play around in. Yes, it mostly gets filled with dirt but I work from home so changing it a couple of times a day isn't difficult. Come winter the water will be in the coop with a bulb to stop it from freezing.
This is the patch of grass I had been growing for the past month. It didn't grow well because of being in the shade so I let the girls get at it and have some fun. It was gone in about 45 minutes.
This is the outside of the coop. The inside fencing is from the run. The outside fencing is for the safari area.
The area to the right of the picture is their enclosed supervised free-range "safari" area. It is a really tall mound of dirt that has massive grass and weeds growing on it. They get to spend about an hour a day digging in this area, right before bed time. It's not covered but the grass is fairly tall so it hides them pretty well from hawks flying overhead.
The coop itself is a recycled kids playhouse that I got for free from a friend. The fencing is dog kennel fencing that I also got from a friend; one panel was bought from CraigsList so I could expand the run area. The logs and lumber for the perches came from the garage. They have the coop and run to be in during the day and in the evening, I let them in the "safari" area for digging and eating grass. The fencing around the safari area was given to me by a friend as well. Not including the price of the chickens, I have spent about $100. I have a few more improvements to make but it's pretty much done until it's time for winterization.
Hope you like my coop!
This is the outside of the coop in the run. I keep their food in the run all the time.They have two perches to fight over for sleeping.
This is a perch for them to sit on during the day. It gives them another prespective of the yard. The blue box underneath has grass seed growing in it so they will eventually be able to eat the grass without messing up the dirt.
I keep their waterer and a small "pool" filled for them to play around in. Yes, it mostly gets filled with dirt but I work from home so changing it a couple of times a day isn't difficult. Come winter the water will be in the coop with a bulb to stop it from freezing.
This is the patch of grass I had been growing for the past month. It didn't grow well because of being in the shade so I let the girls get at it and have some fun. It was gone in about 45 minutes.
This is the outside of the coop. The inside fencing is from the run. The outside fencing is for the safari area.
The area to the right of the picture is their enclosed supervised free-range "safari" area. It is a really tall mound of dirt that has massive grass and weeds growing on it. They get to spend about an hour a day digging in this area, right before bed time. It's not covered but the grass is fairly tall so it hides them pretty well from hawks flying overhead.
