What do you mean by ganging up on?? We are first time chicken people too, and have 13....unsure how many roosters we will end up with so paying attention to these types of threads.
Plywood is always the best on the floor, you want to make sure the structure is safe to walk on so take a close look at the floor joists to make sure they are sound also.
We hunt elk, moose, mule deer, white tail deer, black bears, coyotes, wolves, and upland birds. There are more species we are allowed to hunt but that is all we currently do.
A couple of winter shots from out homestead....we plan on tarping in the outside run so they can get outside over the winter, although we are a little concerned about how they will handle the -20C and -40C temps we sometimes get in the winter.....
That is all we have for now, still need to stain up the outside of the coop, permanently connect the electrical [extension cords now] and start planning for the cold season....it will be here again in a few months.
WE have the framing up for the covered run, some skirting board, and adding a little stain in this picture prior to covering with hardware cloth [2x4]. Funny thing was we thought the chickens would freak out with all the hammering etc, but they spent a lot of time just watching us from their...
So we have lino on the floor and a divider wall which gives us 8x8 for the coop and 2x8 for storage. We have some roosts in with poop boards, and a slider door for the chicken door with 1/2 hardware, and hardware cloth over the windows...we are ready to move our birds!! The nesting boxes will...
Well the babies are growing amazingly fast!! We will have to get them in there sooner than we thought [first timers] so a couple of long construction days are in the works to get them moved into the coop!!!!
Here is framing up the new insulated door, it will be filled with 1 1/2" of styro...
We had a hard time finding windows and ended up with these 2x3 sliders from a local building supplier, one placed on each end for flow through ventilation. We figure if this isn't enough we will add another venting window where the old door is.
We needed a ceiling so I got in there and...
First we frame out a new doorway, and nail the old one shut.
And one for the ladies [14x17], we figured our birds were going to be so big we went a little larger than the 12x14 many recommended.
It took a little bit of effort but we got it moved and lifted up onto our 'foundation', not sure how we would have accomplished this without our tractor.
Here it sits, a little over 2 1/2 feet off the ground and ready for the transformation.
Step 1 was to get the 'foundation' ready so our coop would sit up off the ground so the chickens could get in under it for shade [we saw this design used in other builds on here].
OK, looks like this will work. ;-) We started with an 8x12 storage shed that we were no getting any use out of, so we figured we could re purpose it for our chicken coop.
We started with a bakers dozen of week old chicks and went about trying to secure them while I got the coop built for...
I started a coop build thread...and now it appears to have disappeared? Anyway, having trouble posting my pictures from photo bucket for some reason, have never had this problem before so maybe photo bucket is working on something again?? I usually just insert the img link and all works, but...
Trying to put in pictures from photo bucket, never ran into this problem before. Hang in there, we will figure it out before proceeding.
Seems I can get them off my laptop, but not from photo bucket for some reason. Which is way easier than off the lap top.