8x30 American Coop (Carolina Coops) build - pix heavy

[John Canfield]

My wife and I decided it was time to have chickens since we stopped leaving here for the summers. Last October I ordered the coop (deposit required) with expected delivery of the kit late March. That got delayed due to various factors but the two pallets (1200 pounds) finally arrived about three weeks ago and I got to work right away. Our pullets were getting too large for my brooder build so I was anxious to relo them into their new housing. I'll put up more pix a bit later...

My buddy Tony assisting

Tony and Danny assisting (actually I'm assisting them!)

Me in the foreground - happy, happy, happy

Walls are up! Next are the roof rafters

 

[John Canfield]

This looks amazing! Congratulations on such a beautiful coop.

I’ve always wanted a Carolina Coop. My husband just said we could get one and the wait is 5+ months. I’m still deciding if it’s worth it or not.

Thanks!
Our coop was definitely worth the wait and the expense. At the beginning I was reverse engineering their drawing for the 8x30 American model and was about to start a material list. Dear wife said "just buy the kit!" After some consideration she was absolutely right - this three week project would have turned into a three month project.

BTW, I have zero financial interest in CC nor am I receiving any promotional consideration from them for my comments about our coop.

 

[John Canfield]

Taking a break for lunch. I have the network going, one more cam to install and then we will be able to keep an eye on our girls.

Dear wife bought a CoopWorx feeder a couple of months ago and it's now set up in the run; we put some food in it so all we need now are feathered customers. This is a well designed feeder and will hold 50 pounds of feed. The top is angled to keep the chickens off and is lockable.

We should be able to let the girls into the run in an hour or two.

A few more pix:

My usual attire for spray painting. I used several shields on the respirator (3M respirator with throw-away clear plastic 'shields'.)

Almost finished with the topcoat. The wind was blowing 15 mph+ so I wasted a bit of spray in spite of carefully directing the spray pattern. I used about 6 gallons of Sherwin Williams latex all purpose primer and at least 6 gallons of SW latex color paint. All of the parts except the structure were primed and top-coated before installation.

Roof is on, my friends have experience with R panel roofs so this went quickly. All of the fastener holes were pre-drilled (great feature!)

Getting ready to install the ridge cap. Thank goodness for my articulated boom lift (I bought it at auction a few years ago) which kept me off a ladder and off the roof. However you don't need a lift to install the roof and cap - it's a mild roof pitch. Get a piece of plywood to use while you are on the roof to spread the load. Note the netting covering the ridge.

 

[John Canfield]

Another day of not completing everything I had on my list but that's usually how it works around here. However, the plumbing is complete - I have two faucets on each side of the coop.

I bought Carolina Coops heated water bar drinker system with the 50 gallon plastic tank and hooked everything up according to the video instructions and lucky me, the tank's pre-installed plastic female bulkhead fitting is leaking. Obviously not properly installed by whomever made the tank (aka 'rain barrel') so Tuesday I'll contact CC and see what they want to do. I'm not opposed to trying to seal the gap between the bulkhead fitting flange and the plastic tank but that might not be a permanent solution.

Completed a long run of Cat5e cable from the far end of the run to the hen house gable where I'm going to install a Ubiquiti managed PoE switch to power the cams and network access point.

A few words about the building of the coop:

My buddy thought we should start installing the rafters at the end of the run and NOT starting at the hen house end per the instructions which turned into a problem. There are two sizes of bird blocks - most are 22" long but four are 20" long which are meant to be used for the hen house bird blocks. So I had to unscrew every bird block and swap three bird blocks for the correct length.

Speaking about instructions, there are none specifically for the 8x30 coop which had us scratching our collective heads several times. What would have saved us some installation grief was an itemized list of every numbered part (all of the parts were numbered!), the part description and dimensions of said part.

I will say I am impressed, very impressed with the design and engineering of the coop. Every part fit almost perfectly with just a hammer tap needed every so often to move something into position.

So a couple of pix......

Rafters and bird blocks installed, next is the purlin installation. I used a coil nailer and 1.5" stainless steel ring shank nails. The nailer made short work of attaching the purlins.

Purlins complete

 

[John Canfield]

The ridge cap is indeed a vent!

Yesterday afternoon I cleared out all of the construction stuff in the run and opened the door to the hen house. We had a few lookers but no takers in spite of some meal worm treats on the steps to the run. I opened it up just a while ago and still no joy with them checking out the run. The feeder in the house part will run out of food by noon so maybe they be more interested in exploring.

The cams and network are installed and working so I'll have some screen grabs to show here.

Here's some more pix:

My buddy Tony with one end of the chalk line. We snapped a chalk line so we could line up the ridge cap sections. We kept saying "it's only a chicken coop" but old habits die hard and we couldn't resist doing a quality job.

Almost finished. I have to replace three of the screens - my nephew was running the crown stapler (we stapled the screens) and got one screen way off. Before he noticed the screen was way off plumb he compensated by making an ugly fold. I have to remove the screen and replace.

We made an installation error by using two 34" x 68" screen (or whatever you prefer to call them - hardware cloth or whatever) under the hen house where we should have used four smaller ones. So we are short two CC supplied screens. Three replacements are on the way. Temporarily I used some hardware cloth I bought at Lowe's so we could use the run.

My bud Tony hanging the Dutch Door

The hen house is almost complete, I just need to install the roost bar hangers. Amazingly the fit was just about perfect when I placed the roost bars in position. Another tip of the hat to CC and their CNC produced assemblies. (And to us for making the base 6x6 timbers perfectly square and level within 1/4".

Mystery pullet at 9 weeks of age- what is this girl?

 

[3KillerBs]

We snapped a chalk line so we could line up the ridge cap sections. We kept saying "it's only a chicken coop" but old habits die hard and we couldn't resist doing a quality job.

When we were building Neuchickenstein DH had one post just slightly out of line.

He asked me about it. I said, "It's a chicken coop. The birds won't care. But you're going to look at it every day for the next 20 years."

He moved the post.

 

[NatJ]

Any tips for getting the girls out of the roost and into the run? We've tried holding meal worms just out of the opening and teasing with a bite or two, tried placing the snack on the roost steps, throwing just outside the steps so they can hear it, rustling the bag and dear wife even caught a lavender americana and took it into the run feeder and run water. It flew back into the roost.

This morning we took the feeder out of the roost hoping a little hunger will trigger exploration.

I would leave the food and water in the coop for now, leave the pop door to the run open, and be patient. A few more days of staying in the coop will not hurt them, and they should go explore eventually (after they stare at it and think a lot.)

Lots of people have trouble getting their chicks to go back into the coop at night. The longer yours choose to stay in, the more they establish the habit of sleeping in there, so they may save you some trouble that way.

 

[aart]

The ladder from the roost to the run has traditional steps like any ladder - here's a pix:

Not the best for chickens.
Too steep for one thing.
A flat board set at less than 40° off horizontal with cleats at 4-6" spacing works well.

 

[John Canfield]

Dumb girls - only the rooster and one or two lavenders apparently spent the night in the penthouse (the roost). He was also out the door about 6am so he's got it figured out. Maybe the rest of the flock will follow at some point.

I wanted to discuss why we placed our coop in its orientation, it was after careful deliberation and discussion between myself and dear wife considering several factors. She wanted to place it maybe 30 yards from our bedroom but that got quickly discounted due to the abundance of trees in the area.

Second choice was about 150 feet behind the house to where we could see the coop from the kitchen window. We wanted to see the door into the roost (henhouse) so that side is visible from our window.

One very major consideration was placement for environmental reasons. We get some very strong cold fronts from the north and north west in the winter so I wanted the side of the henhouse (roost) facing in that direction. I can close the one long vent on that side to block most of the winter wind from the henhouse. Additionally a nice grove of oak trees is between the coop and the northerly direction which will break up a strong air flow.

I was very concerned about keeping the coop in as much shade as possible in the summer so I thought a NE to SW placement would be a good all around compromise and sure enough the run is mostly shaded for the entire day which was somewhat a pleasant surprise. I could have gone full anal/scientific and done some modeling of sun angles, etc but in the end I relied on a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess for those not familiar with the term.)

What prompted this post was observing how shaded the run was in the afternoons - I thought this would be a good item for discussion. I realize not everybody has the luxury of acreage like we do and some are very constrained but even so it's worthwhile to be aware of important considerations when planning on coop placement.

Previously posted pix but it's useful to put an image with my verbiage. The coop run is facing southwest and of course the house is facing northeast. To the right of the coop is a the grove of oak trees which will block quite a bit of cold fronts. I'll probably use poly-carbonate panels on the right side of the run (as we view it now) and on the run end for winter.

 

[John Canfield]

Added a bit of coop bling - stars on both gables. Also added three hooks in various positions in the run so we can hang stuff to amuse the chicks. Wife bought a small watermelon which should provide entertainment for us and the chickens.

Scout the guard Lab in the foreground. He's not interested in the chickens but our Heeler like to hassle them in spite of our corrective efforts. Difficult to take a good picture at this sun angle.