I did start a short story (not a "War and Peace" effort like this thing), about how we hacked the ghastly pre-fab to make it useful, but got distracted by life, hehe. I'll finish it off. I'm amazed anyone would ask for more after the slog through the above!
What a beautiful expose′ on the adventure of building a hospitable coup. I was thoroughly engrossed in your story the entire time (I couldn't stop reading it).
Thank you so much for this delightful yarn about you and your spouse's adventure in chicken coup building.
What an enjoyable story, thank you! Your coop and run look like mine, just a little bigger. My husband too, researched Carolina Coops quite a bit before we started to build. Your girls are very lucky indeed!
Oh boy. Great looking coop so well worth the effort! Our story is so much like yours- tried with the biggest pre-fab that could be posted, marvelled that anyone thought one chicken- let alone 8 stated on the box - would ever want to live in there - so built our own. The local hardware man believed for a long while we were extending our house but nope, just chicken house. Built the largest allowed without planning permission. Since you have an orchard, I suggest you look into ducks too. Their poo on the sugar cane mulch (which we have to use too since hemp doesn’t seem to exist in Aus) seems to go well on the trees without crazy long compost time. It’s a pleasure to scoop out their house for our nut tree orchard. And if you get drakes the pre-fab prison makes a very handy drake gaol!! Your coop looks amazing and you must be so proud that you actually just stuck in and did it.
I know right! Who would put full size chookies in those things! We've used it to break the Sussex when they go broody, only one in there at a time, and it feels so cruel.
We did find a supplier of hemp, but it's horrendously expensive, so we've stayed with the sugar cane mulch, which we use masses of (lucky we get a Hammer Barn employee discount). I don't know how long it would go for as we're pulling it out for the garden every second month, but the henhouse always smells like molasses, not poop, haha!
I would love some Indian Runner ducks, but the boy is not keen on ducks. I'm working on him...