Anyone else buy their chicks before they had a coop?

[Nicole01]

That would be us!!! We are no where near having the coop ready! We are waiting for our cousins wife to get back to us. They know someone who has a brand new coop they don't want. Hopefully, it's still available! We find out today. If not, hubby will head to Menards for wood and start building one this weekend. We are debating of keeping the coop in the garage and cutting a door out the side for their chicken run or having it along the north side of the house in the backyard. We own 4 acres and 3 acres is wooded. We want our babies safe as possible! Until then our 3 girls are in the house.

 

[tgperg]

We didn't on purpose. I had a wonderful side room in the barn that I spent weeks getting ready for chicks. Building perches, putting hardware cloth over the windows. Turning the power on to the barn, building chicken doors. It was AWESOME! We got chickens on Friday night and on Sunday night there was a HUGE flood.

I spent the next couple months building an outdoor coop while the chickens lived. . . wait for it. . . in my sunroom. IN MY HOUSE!! I didn't know whether to

or

New coop is nice though.

Traci

 

[mdbokc]

Us too. I needed the coop badly by the time it was done. The girls did too. But it was worth it all.

 

[Mak]

Yep, my hans were almost 3 months old before the coop was done last year. More than ready to be out of the brooder and into more space!

 

[mcjessen]

Nope, ours isn't ready. It's started but we have plenty of time since our chicks are only 4 days old.

 

[sgtmom52]

Yep ~ Twice!

 

[allysuzz]

COOP??? YOU MEAN I NEED A COOP. I have about 15 now and what's not in my rabbit pens are in the house. and just set 39 more eggs in bator. i do need to get to work on one ....Coop that is

 

[catchthewind]

We didn't mean to! We were planning all along on getting day old chicks at the end of March. We figured we'd have lots of time to build a coop. But then in February we went to a poultry swap, and came home with 5 chicks, two of which were already 6 weeks old at the time! What were we thinking?

No problem, we knew where we wanted the coop, we had plans figured out. Well, we're in the PNW, and the friend helping us build the coop lives an hour away and has two young children. So between the weather, illness, kids, car troubles, etc, our coop still isn't built and our oldest chicks are ten weeks old and still in the house. Thankfully, we should get it roofed this weekend with our friend and then it's just a matter of my husband and I getting the roosts and stuff inside done and everything painted. I'm hopeful all the big chicks will be outside by next weekend and then our day olds (the ones we got at the end of March) can move into the bigger brooder. The brooder is 12 sq ft and so I don't think they're crowded, I just think they'd be happier outside! We have been putting them all outside on nice days when we can watch too.

 

[Emmalion]

I have a small coop that I already have 4 chickens in... I decided this winter that I was going to hatch some eggs and build a new coop for my lovely chickens in the spring... Like April I would start.. Or so I thought. I started in March and once I got the floor down I started incubating more eggs. I had 3 walls up before they hatched this past weekend and I only got 5 chicks out of my hatch.... Of course 5 was not enough so I went to TSC and got 6 more. I see how big my coop is and well I didn't want to not have enough for the coop

Now I have duck eggs and one goose egg going in the bator got all 4 walls up on the coop along with the roof rafters and one sheet of plywood.

It will be long since ready by the time they are going to be coming out in the nice weather. BTW I am also going to include a brooder in the coop so they can move out earlier

 

[Suechick]

I thought it was just standard procedure to build the coop while you have chicks in the brooder. Are you suggesting that you could build a coop BEFORE buying chickens?