Any Hawaii Folks on BYC?

[SuperK]

Aloha Kaitlyn,
I am a newbie as well, we don't have our chicks yet, but then I am just a bit behind you on the coop build. I am still in the planning phase. I live on the big island, Puna district in HPP on one acre. we are not going to free range our chickens, we don't want them joining up with the wild (feral) bunch! LOL- We should be starting the build in the next week or so and I'll be following your thread to get Hawaiian pointers too. Most of our land is pick and digging bar stuff- not like the great looking dirt you seem to have.

Keep the pictures coming- its looking like a great start for your birds

 

[KaitlynRae1]

We have an acre as well and are going to have their yard that is enclosed and then fence off our lower hard to let them run around a large section. We plan to clip their wings to prevent them from flying over the fence and just hope the wild chickens stay out of the yard but if they do oh well. How many chickens do you plan to have? Our dirt is hard to get through too. It was a huge pain to just dig small holes to pour the cement for the posts. We are planning on putting chicken wire on the bottom of their coop because we don't have to worry about the cold and it will be easier to clean. I can include pictures of our chicks and the design for our coop. I found this link for an article from UH that I found helpful http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/EB-020.pdf

 

[SuperK]

Kaitlyn,
What a cool resource- a good read even if it was written in 1914! knowing the pests that are endemic to Hawaii and their remedies / preventative measures is very helpful. I also like that we think alike in that the plans are based on a 4x8 sheet of plywood! Easy to work with and easy to expand.

Below is a graphic of the coop I am drawing up for our place. While we want it as close to code as possible, we want to avoid it needing to be permitted by staying below the counties size restrictions.

We originally thought to keep the layers and meat birds separate but decided that the center wall will be deleted so they will mingle, with a future addition to house more birds, as well as adding space for other species. We plan to have separate but run connected coops for pheasant, turkeys and maybe quail. Since we are stating our mini farm with the birds, where we put the coop and run on the property will dictate all other housing that follows.

We recently upgraded our own water purification system to a Viqua whole house system so we have reserved the old filter system for filtering the animals water supply. The roofs will be guttered for collection into a separate cistern but all water will pass through our old filtration system since there are nasties (Rat lung fluke, etc) I don't want my future food to ingest.

I plan on automating the coop as much as possible- Pop doors, lighting for the hens, Auto waterers, feeders, and perhaps an auto cleaning system similar to the Kitty litter box cleaners for the under roost areas, just super sized. I will be documenting this process with photos, and I already am in the build process for the hopper for the feed- I am re-purposing the old pressure tank from the water system for this. I have the adapter flange in place but need to cut off the top to weld in a retaining ring so it can act as a secure lid.

In the second photo you can see the tank I am working on. The old pressure bladder I removed from it is to the back left- it's the orangie/cream looking thing. This is a really good reminder to sterilize the system as often as they recommend it! As the tank currently sits in the photo, it would actually be upside down. The flange will be to the bottom side and connect to the piping to direct gravity fed feed to the vertical feeders.
The water filter unit for the chickens in visible in the right side in blue.

 

[Floof]

Kaitlyn, we got chickens this past August and I built our coop thinking wire on the flooring would make it easier to clean too but it's actually turned out to be a major frustration. I used hardware cloth, or at least I'm pretty sure that's what the wire with the 1/2 inch squares is called. I had imagined their poop just falling through and being easy to collect for the compost pile but instead it just sticks to it and dries! We have to clean it off every few days with a hand trowel and BBQ wire scrubber thing. If I were to make another coop I would make the flooring wood and put some type or plastic or vinyl on it so I could just scrape it off with a dust pan. I also didn't build on nesting boxes. I just put in 2 boxes from Costco and put in wood shavings when they started to lay and they seem to really like it. They happily lay 4-5 eggs a day in their recycled chicken thigh box and I just toss them out when they get soiled (one less thing to wash). Our coop is always open to their run but the run has a door that I can close when the weather gets bad or just don't want them free ranging. I do keep their food in their coop and I have water in a bucket with drippers that I got from amazon (25 for $6) but I also have a kitten litter box (new) that I fill with water and put in the yard for them. I don't know if my birds are just dumb but they seem to overheat and not go back to their run for water so the extra one has been a necessity. I have barred rocks which might not do as well in our heat because they get a bit meatier. I haven't seen any mongese around our area in Salt Lake so I haven't had to worry about them eating our chicks or eggs but I have noticed a few mice that weren't around before the chickens. Do you guys have these pests in north shore? How do you deal with them? I wanted to build a small coop and have a few chickens at the school I teach at (I run their garden club after school and the kids were really excited when I brought some of the chicks to school) but our principal was worried that they would get eaten or maimed by the mongese/rats so we haven't made any plans yet.

 

[KaitlynRae1]

We are planning on using chicken wire for everything because I heard that the holes were wide enough for the poop to fall through. I am a little worried about their feet hurting but they wont be in the coop for long and most of the time they will be roosting so I'm not too worried. We don't have too many mongoose on the north shore. A couple of days ago is actually the first time I have seen one. We have some feral cats around our house so I feel like they will keep them at bay. We have tons of wild chickens, that is actually how we got our first chick. Our chickens will be our pets as well as egg layers. We wont kill them after they stop laying eggs. Right now we are only going to have nine chickens. I am supposed to be getting six more in May/June. Our chickens are going to be half in their safe yard and half free range. We are going to fence off a good portion of our yard and clip their wings so they can't fly over the fence. Right now I have one chick that is around 8 or 9 weeks old (we don't know when she was born) and two that are two and a half weeks old. I will post more pictures of our coop as we build it. We don't plan on having 15 chickens but we are making our coop/yard big enough to have that many. So far we only have the yard structure up, I will include a picture. Ours was difficult to make due to the ground being uneven so half of our coop is 8 feet the other is around 6 feet high. We are going to bury some of our chicken wire to prevent things from digging in, although the ground is incredibly hard to dig through and I doubt an animal will try. As far as rats go we do have quite a few rats and mice but we are going to make sure that rats cant get in but the mice we cant help. We have some rat/mice poison housing things that we will put out near the coop. I think the cats also help with the rats and mice. I have never seen an animal poop as much as chickens do. I tried originally to have a bowl with a lid that I cut two holes in for their food and a water dish with marbles in it to prevent them from falling in but they pooped in it so much and the dish for food they would sit on top and poop in the holes. Since I am getting 6 at the end of May/beginning of June I ended up getting the chick waterer and feeder which is much better. I have had it for two days and they have not pooped in either. I plan on moving the babies out with the older chick when they are 8 weeks old but, the six babies I am not sure I will put them in that young. If you have any other advice for me let me know. Should I put a fan in their coop during the summer months when it is super hot?

 

[SuperK]

For heat in the summer, we are planning for this kind of fan set up run by thermostat so its automatic on and off- This idea is from the e-zine "The Home Handyman".
might as well try to keep the dust down too. I am going to start with 6-8 laying stock, then add 25 meat birds after we expand the coop. We haven't started on how we are going to deal with the manure issue other than knowing that we want it to be automatic or at least semi auto with a deep clean every week or so.

 

[Brada Puhi]

Aloha,

If you are letting them free range in the day, no need to feed them until late afternoon. Chickens forage better when they are hungry and sleep/lay better when they are full.

Have fun.

Aloha, Puhi

 

[KaitlynRae1]

Our chickens are going to be pets as well as egg layers. We plan on letting them live our their life. We have our three and this week we decided to put in an order for 6 more from a hatchery close by. We are probably going to stay there for a while. I don't think we could fit that side of a fan in our coop. We may try to put a little fan in but we are just trying to get the coop, yard, and fence built (we are sectionioning a part of our property off for them and then a yard when we don't want to worry about them. I will post a picture of what we were able to complete this weekend.

 

[AbsolutGoddess]

Aloha Rachele & Christie!

I'm also from Captain Cook my name is Amanda. I have 3 RIRs from Pearl's (was 4, but a mongoose got her) and i'm also planning on getting some silkies, barred rock, and easter eggers soon
I will post pictures of my chicken coop soon, would love opinions/suggestions.

 

[KaitlynRae1]

Here is what my coop ended up looking like. We finished it last weekend