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Thanks for your reply and advice! As it turned out, she only skipped one day - she laid the same day I posted, just later. the first egg was laid about 2am and the second (two days later) was laid in the late afternoon and we didn't find it until later. Also the eggs yesterday and Wednesday...

We'll give it a shot. we're also giving crushed baked egg shells occasionally to increase calcium.

We have them on grow-out feed and supplement with kitchen scraps like cabbage. Also give a nice seed mix with mealworms mixed in as a treat and to try to get them to socialize. the kids rip off grass blades and feed those to them through the hardware cloth too. Thanks for the reassurance on...

In April we got our first flock. We have a Buff Orpington, a Silver Laced Wyandotte, an Easter Egger, and a golden Sexlink that turned out to actually be brown and white when her feathers came in. The Buff laid the first egg a couple of days ago (Monday) - it had a soft shell and was small - and...

Have any of you in cold, windy climates used a gear driven automatic door like this one? Does it let enough wind into the henhouse to be a concern in the winter?

This is obviously still under construction. I'm still working on purlins and rakes, my wife is still painting, and we have the nesting box door built but not hinged or attached. We'll probably take the wheels off it too - it's heavy enough that we'd need something motorized to move it, and we...

Actually, the advice about thickness of materials and penetration was very helpful. Thank you! I probably am overthinking it - I do have that tendency,vrspescially when trying to protect someone/something. The multi-pronged extension cord solution is simple and would work, I'd just like to...

Thanks for the link. The outlets on the extension cord shouldn't be dangerous, just awkward in how much space it takes up on the wall. It's the same principles as outlets in the walls of a house or on the walls of a shed - a box mounted to (or inside) a wall where the wire connections are made...

More questions! Roof: I'm trying to decide between corrugated polycarbonate and asphalt shingles. The shingles are easier to get hold of and the systems cost about the same when I did the comparison but the proper way to install shingles leaves the nails protruding through the bottom of the...

Looks pretty and functional. what are the dimensions?

Haha..that's a great explanation and made me laugh. Thanks! and thanks @U_Stormcrow for the engineering explanations too. Between the two of you, it sounds like the design I'm using is strong enough but still needs a hen house floor if I don't want to spend more on lumber and siding to...

I was thinking of still having the hen house suspended two feet above ground, the bottom of the nesting boxes even with the bottom of the walls, and the roosts coplanar with the top of the nesting boxes or an inch or two above them, I would have enough vertical space between the roosts and the...

Thanks for replying. the space in your picture is where we were thinking of actually intentionally allowing them to destroy the space, then turning it into a garden. That's not really the plan anymore. We have more backyard than that to move them around and (assuming the coop does turn out to be...

So I've started build on a modified version of this coop where I changed it to be 5x10 instead of 8x10 in hopes of keeping the weight down and putting wheels on it so it's moveable. I wonder though - do coops need floors in winter climates if the nest boxes are enclosed on all sides except the...

Does it snow where you are? if so, do you have condensation problems in the winter with only the one ventilation hole? Now that it's been 8 years, can you tell us if the magnets kept the plywood flat and if the tractor is still in use, how it's held up?

What are the measurements and where did you place the roosts? Are you doing the deep bedding method or changing the litter often?

We get wasp/hornet nests every year (under our deck, under the house eaves, etc.). Do I need to worry about them building nests in my new coop or will the girls hunt and eat any that get in there? Can stingers get through all the feathers and hurt chickens?

Interesting thought. So something like the coop up against the wood gate, a chain-link (or other permanent) fence down the middle, and the coop would have a chicken door on each side of that fence so we could control which side the chickens went into? garden on one side, then run on the other...

Plans are still forthcoming. I keep trying to generate them in sketchup and then get bogged down in analysis paralysis. But here are some pics of the area: The grass area is where We'd be moving the run and coop back and forth. the vinyl fence is east and the east-west measurement is the 14ft...

Thanks for taking the time to answer so many of my questions! I can probably have my family help me move it most of the time, but I'm sure there will be times that it will just be me. We don't own a farm tractor or riding mower and our camping trailer is in the way of getting the truck into the...