A Needy Future Chicken Farmer's Impossible Journey of Raising Chickens. Ideas appreciated.

[teddyjames]

Have you considered electric fence? I have a small electrified area (20'x20') that cost me about $250 to set up, including the fence charger and solar panel. If the fence is running hot, you can house your chickens in a cardboard box as no animal will cross the hotwire.

that is a lie! Raccoons will climb trees and drop down. Snakes can slither inbetween the wires. Humans will also step over them to steal your chickens. My birds must be locked up and secure.

 

[saysfaa]

Log construction. Or Timber frame.

Houses use huge posts and beams but a coops are so much smaller and carry so much less load that much smaller pieces are needed for either log or timber frame. Besides, houses often use oversized pieces for the look they give. A coop I designed (timber frame) needed only about an inch diameter roundwood except the main beam that supported both roofs (it was a Prince T Woods design) needed somewhat larger diameter. That was for 4 to six hens as a coop/run combo - about 8x10 feet. For your twenty, you may need a little bigger diameter. Or maybe not, an inch was partly overkill and partly bigger than needed so it would be easier to work. It depends on the species of wood available, also.

Roundwood (using the entire tree rather than sawing it into dimensional lumber) is many times stronger than dimensional lumber because the fibers are not cut. If you have trouble netsearching for information, add butterpat jointing to the search terms.

Coops don't need floors. So you would need sheathing for the walls and roof only. A good big part of the walls should be sheathed with hardware cloth - for ventilation - even in cold climates. If you are in a warm climate then you might have hardware cloth for all of the walls of the coop except some storm protection around the roosts.

Edit to add: round wood is about two and a half times stronger than squared lumber of the same size and type (species, etc), according to some sources. Other sources say 50% stronger. Best I can tell, both can be correct depending on what is being compared - how many knots, for example.

Older than metal fittings often used today is the mortis and tenon (pegged or not). Older than that is lashed construction. The older methods still work well.

 

[fat brown hen]

that is a lie! Raccoons will climb trees and drop down. Snakes can slither inbetween the wires. Humans will also step over them to steal your chickens. My birds must be locked up and secure.

A layer of bird netting at ground level will keep snakes out. If raccoons and dropbears are a concern, locate the fence away from trees. Place a hotwire above crotch level if you dont want humans stepping over it. It's doable with a bit of common sense.

@Vanakrishna has a good suggestion. Get some game hens. They can fly like pheasants and roost in trees. A fenced run just makes it easier for a predator to wipe out the whole flock, as opposed to picking off one or two.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I don't have suggestions but I want to follow this thread and wish the OP all success. Sounds like a challenging premise. Best wishes!

 

[Krugerrand]

Please pardon a slight side track ... be sure in your '20 chickens' for calculation that you account for egg production to slow with time. So, you may want to ramp up to 20 over a couple of years for rotation purposes, or at least be ready to raise replacements one way or another.

also, curious to see how this unfolds for you.

 

[FunClucks]

If you get some game-based highly predator aware chickens or mediterranian breeds that can reproduce often enough that roost in trees, they may work out better/cheaper than a totally enclosed coop. U_Stormcrow has a "landrace" he's working on in north florida - might check out how he's managing his chickens. There's a juggling act between predator aware, size, and # eggs laid, and ability to get nutrition from the land instead of commercial chicken feed.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ctive-culling-project-very-long-term.1433421/

Basically, you have to hatch a lot and often, and/or have sufficient broody moms and have smart enough / agile enough chickens that the predators can't wipe them all out before they replace their numbers. You can train them to lay in certain places and show up for food. You may get less eggs and smaller eggs than production breeds, but if you have enough chickens, it makes up for this.

If you want a totally enclosed, predator secure coop, it's going to cost money for the initial outlay. If you plan to sell eggs, you'll also need a market. We have enough chickens for our family and to sell enough eggs to break even with feed costs, but the initial coop cost was about $1500-$2000. I ordered a 200 sq ft (10x20) greenhouse frame off of Amazon and covered it in hardware cloth, with a 3 ft apron. Tarp over the top, no actual coop since I don't get snow here, and it holds ~13 chickens at ~15 sq ft per chicken. I put egg stamps on my eggs to make them "boutique" and sell to folks who I know that live near me. If it required more effort/traveling/advertising, it would be hard to make the money back.

You may need to use chain link fencing/dog kennel panels covered with hardware cloth if you're concerned about dogs. You can put kennel panels over the top, or top rail with T-brackets, but again, it will be pricey. And if you have snow, you'll need to be sure to slant and support your roof.

There is an Article or Thread on this site where someone converted a camper like that into a coop, and then they had a run outside the camper using electric poultry netting (Premier one electric netting). It does work, but she had some rodent/snake infestation issues in the camper so sealing up all entrances/exits was key.

 

[teddyjames]

Ok, things are looking up. The already built coop aka an old camper didn't work out, neither did another affordable camper. I scrapped the idea all together and decided to use what I got. I got my floor/foundation squared off. So far I'm using an old trailer frame and some old power poles for starters. I'm going to use poles for the most part and try and saw up some small boards for the sides etc. The coop will be 14'x14' (196 sq feet) If I'm generous and give my flock 10 sq feet per bird that should be enough for 20 chickens. My outside run will be 35' x 14'. Thats 24 sq feet per bird if I have 20 in my flock. I'll keep posting

 

[teddyjames]

Ok, now I need to figure out somehow to cover the floor of this bad boy. My first thoughts was to use saplings but my calculations say I will need 1500 of them 4' long x 2 inches wide to do the floors and walls. That is way too many for my old bones to do. No buying supplies! Now what could I use hummm... no old barns or structures to tear down. Waiting on God to drop something my way. Until then looks like I'm at a standstill.

 

[teddyjames]

If I was a bird I would personally prefer living outside and sleeping in trees over being trapped in a refurbished camper

There's absolutely zero reason to be using a coop if you raise healthy breeds. Egg-drops are sufficient

Any birds here would love to be kept safe from the 28 stray huskys that roam around 24/7 lol. There isn't many trees to roost in here its mostly open bottom. If a chicken can't fly 100 yrds and 20ft high they are dead here.

 

[saysfaa]

A dirt floor? With 2' or so of hardware cloth laid flat on the ground around the walls to keep digging animals out.