I started in March of 2013 with a kit coop from Tractor Supply in Tomball. The plan was to order three pullets and a cockerel or four pullets and build a sixteen by twenty four foot secure yard around them. But chicken math... I ordered seven pullets and one cockerel, lost one unsexed chick and so ordered three more chicks with a cockerel just to be on the safe side. So we have ten birds, two of which are roosters. A third of my Dominique turned out to be Barred Rock (in each shipment). At first I thought Meyer Hatchery got the eggs mixed up twice which seems really unlikely. But now, understanding how genetics works and that the Dominique had to be brought back from their dwindling numbers, I have come to the conclusion --strictly my opinion, that they must have had some Barred Rock bread back into the Dominique from which they came. In which case, the correct eggs would have been gathered but some of the chicks turned out like Barred Rock. So this is how My Dominique flock became so diverse. I will say that the birds are bigger than expected and so are the eggs. Who's complaining?
After the fence was secure a foot under ground and six feet high I built an eight by eight chicken house into the southwest corner of the yard. We started by roofing the west third of the yard with metal. And then built the house into the south half and maintained the north side as a covered outdoor area for summer shade and relief from the rain. On the northeast corner of the yard we created shade cloth from an old trampoline. It's a tacky thing we like to call the chicken cabana. Dion's redneck ingenuity, my name.
I'm very happy with the overall design of the yard. I got some ideas from my natural father who taught me how to build a chicken house when I was in ninth grade. I got some ideas from you folks at backyard chickens and other websites and I made some design modifications that I'm sure would make Jesse Peavy proud. There is a dirt floor with a two foot high loft (my rename for poop board) under the roost on the south wall. Behind this, two flew doors drop down for effortless cleaning from outside the yard. The East and North walls are inside the yard. The East wall holds the people door and the automatic pop door which rises at six in the morning and lowers at seven thirty in the evening. The North wall holds the egg boxes set to the exterior, allowing the eggs to be gathered from the yard without entering the house. This wall is insulated since the cold wind blows here and it sits across from the roost. The West wall holds the upper window which is covered in hardware cloth and has wood shutters to block the wind in the winter. We live in the gulf coast region of Texas where heat is an issue for the birds so all sides except the north have hardware cloth ground level windows/ground vents to keep the house cool in the summer. To block the draft in the winter there are vent doors that drop closed on hinges. When the vent doors are closed the wind is blocked, but we can open part way to block rain and more to create shade and all the way up on pleasant days. It was a great idea, and one I worried about a great deal but its working out great. These are not all completed yet. This year we made the west side functional and blocked the vent windows on the east and south side. Something different will have to occur on the south side because of the flew that drops down. Here I am thinking of hanging wood tiles that will not compete with the drop open flew doors and will allow a little ventilation under the loft, just in case. Then in the summer the tiles can hang on the exterior south wall above the flew doors.
The ventilation for the house is the top of the hardware cloth reinforced, screen door. We have a blanket screwed onto the lower half this year (my redneck ingenuity) but that will be upgraded by fall. Because we ran into a problem with the dominant rooster, D'Roo, sleeping in the nest boxes so he could guard the door, I added top and bottom boards to shorten the opening from eighteen to ten inches and added a window apron to serve as a landing for the ladies as they made their way into the nests. Each of two 48 x 18 inch boxes are divided into three nests. On the hot west side by the window I installed full dividers to block the sun shine from the window but on the East side I cut a curve into them to accommodate larger ladies. They are all 18" high in front and 12" high in the back. The bottom of the egg boxes are 18 inches off the ground and the loft is 24 inches high to discourage roosting in the nest. Not to mention the two roosting bars are much higher than this. After blocking the poor, distressed D'Roo out of his perching place, I installed a crows nest on the west wall directly across from the doors. Until it got too cold to roost alone, he used it and seemed much happier.
Installing the hardware cloth 12 inches into the ground, at the base of the yard fence, proved to be a grueling chore and so when it was time to build the chicken house into the corner of the yard, I dug down and installed two courses of cinder block (the best $1.13 per block I ever spent). I used Quickcrete to make up the difference in the length of the wall needed and the length of the blocks on end. It was much less work to dig down, level the trenches, lay the blocks, level the blocks, lay the blocks, level the blocks, drop in some wood for a mold at the ends, pour the quickcrete, pour the water, remove the wood and back fill the trench than to dig and fight the flexible hardware cloth against the rocks, roots, kinks, and the just when its done it gets pulled out. Augh! never again. The east and west walls were built with standard wall construction technique but the fence walls were build with fence construction technique (more like a fort than a house). Since I cant lift 4x8 sheets of building material and siding is expensive I used privacy fence boards for my exterior covering. It works out great with the lower windows because I don't need more than six feet high and I improvised with the nesting box side that was eight feet high, using scrap from the flew side. There are some minor tweaks still to be done but its functional and secure for the winter and we are working on getting it completed by summer. We have temporary chicken wire on the top of the yard in most places. We plan to make this better too but we want to allow shade and shelter from the rain and cold without eliminating the rain and sunshine. So we probably wont roof the whole yard.
The chickens have lay feed hanging in the house and water hanging under the loft, where they like to dirt bathe. In the yard there is water under the shade cloth on a cinder block and a flock block in an old dog house there too. In the center of the yard is a post on which we screwed rabbit feeders with grit and calcium. In the afternoon we serve chicken salad-- no the other kind, they get greens, peas, squash and seeds or oats.
Folks that see our yard like to give us a hard time. It has been called everything from the chicken resort, spa, palace to even the Taj Mahal (which ironically would probably never allow chickens). We still have some work to do I appreciate the features and I have learned a lot in the building and the chickens are healthy and happy. Of course these days Nique has moved up in the ranks and D'Roo, while still the bouncer, is now second in command. Officers D'Roo and Nique run a safe yard. The ladies are quite satisfied with their security team and they stay busy scratching and perching and producing almost every day even this cold winter.
