Aussie Coop Risen.. Completed with Pix.

[Snoskred]

We have a major drainage issue in our backyard, so both the coop and the run have to be up off the ground. I took some pics of the drainage issue yesterday but haven't got them up on the computer yet.

In spring/summer we have an area down the side of the house that we would like to turn into a sand run, but we have to get through winter first!

The coop now has 2 coats of undercoat for the most part, the run has one coat all over. These pics are from a couple of days ago when I just started painting, I'll put up more pics when I can.

In these pics the one with white paint on it is the coop to be.

We are building this in a 2 car garage that has been turned into the "mancave" as we have other parking elsewhere.

Back to painting for me!

 

[rival001]

wow nice coop. Good luck until you finish the coop

 

[ChooksinChoppers]

G'Day! Your coop is going to look great! Question on the run though...what is the floor of it going to be? Do hope you are not planning wire? Very bad for their feet. When you get your pics posted maybe we can make some suggestions for drainage issues? If it were me I would be bringing in some gravel and sand and make a raised bed area to sit the run on and that way the chickens can scratch around on the ground like they should.

 

[Snoskred]

The floor of both areas is going to be painted plywood with laminate over the top of that. I'm looking at using sand on top of that at this stage seeing as I am reading a lot of good reports about it. We went to Bunnings today and bought all the plywood and I already have two floor panels undercoated..

Unfortunately the drainage issue is a much bigger problem than we can solve on our own - I am going to have to talk to the council about it. Next to our property there is an oval and a council laneway with ground quite a bit higher than ours and every time it rains our entire yard gets the run off - where it tends to congregate on top of the lawn. For our yard it will likely be a complete re-do of the lawn after taking it all up and laying down gravel and sand for drainage as well as drainage channels next to the fence - but none of that will do a lot of good if we're still going to be getting all the run off. When it rains here it tends to be an awful lot of rain all at once.

There is an area next to the side of the house which we will likely build a run for once we're done working on the elevated coop & run. It should be pretty easy to do seeing as it is fenced already, we just need to make sure there is decent protection wire wise around the bottoms of the fences and put some shadecloth or roofing up.

I do hope to let them freerange a bit when I can be out there with them but I think I need to develop a relationship of trust with them first else I'll never get them back in the run/coop

 

[ChooksinChoppers]

Oh yeah..I see your delema. Over here nobody is allowed to cause water runoff from their property to someone elses, so I hope the council get's it fixed for you soon. They should actually make a big "swale" as they call it over here, basically a shallow 3 ft wide canal between your property and theirs. So if you are planning to put sand in your raised run you would need some boards around the lower edge to stop the sand getting kicked out eh.
Oh and it won't take long to get your chooks following you around if you have some treats for them

 

[Snoskred]

Here are some pics of the water drainage issue we have. In the last couple of days we've had about 35mm of rain, which for us is not a huge amount of rain. In some places it is up to 2 inches deep.

So yeah, it isn't something we can fix short term but it certainly is on the to do list for long term. The good thing about this being a problem is, the way we have designed it, we'll be able to screen in the very bottom of the coop/run once we've fixed the drainage problem and create a shaded run area which will be great for summer, and they will still have a raised run area they can use.

Being Australia, I am assuming at some point we will experience snakes whether we want to or not. I grew up with a massive fear of snakes but then I became a zoo tour guide and learned to appreciate them. So I am thinking we will be using chicken wire over the top of hardware cloth for the very bottom once we get to that part, and more than likely laying a besa block foundation with half the brick buried and the wire wrapped around that. However that is some way off, so that is just a preliminary plan at this stage.

Mostly here we get red bellied black snakes which are pretty timid and I know what to do when I see one. We have snake catchers who come out and collect them and then release them in national parks.

I have a much bigger problem with spiders than I do with snakes, I am hoping my new chicken friends will de-spider the yard for me.

We did have some redbacks recently and I need to do some research but I am pretty sure the chickens can eat them without getting sick. We get what I call lawn spiders which are just plain crazy spiders, we get some huntsmans which can get to be pretty big, and some house spiders.

 

[Snoskred]

Totally exhausted!

Today was the last day of the other half's holidays from work, so we decided we had to work on the coop all day and get as much of it done as we can so that I can paint in his absence.

Today we started with the basic frame that we had built and the plan was to clad it in pine cladding. The other half decided to add in some cross braces before putting in the floor, and those got painted right away.

The other half also had the excellent idea to paint the inside of each plank before it was nailed into place so we would not have to worry about painting it from the inside of the coop. It worked extremely well. I did have to get in to paint a few bits and pieces but this idea saved a lot of time and effort.

These pics are from when we tipped it on the side to paint the underneath of the newly installed cross braces -

By the end of the day we had the floor installed and the majority of the side cladding in place and undercoated. Sorry that some of these images need flipping, I am just too tired to do it right now..

We also had paint covered hands, I had some wicked blisters from the paint brush and the roller, and we had used well over 4l of paint. We are using a primer/sealer/undercoat 3 in one paint by Taubmans. I had to sneak out in the middle of the day to buy another can. We'd had about half a can left from a previous project which we used up, then we bought a second can a few days ago, and a third can today! I am mostly done with the undercoat on the coop now. There are two pine cladding panels missing because we ran out of wood so I will have to undercoat those once we get them, but other than those panels it is done.

It was a long day of hard work but it feels extremely satisfying to have got so much done today. And even though it was hard work, we had a great day.

The next step for me is to start on painting the gloss paint on the outside and the inside. I managed to talk the other half into a different color - he wanted it to blend in and be cottage green (sort of like a dark forest green) but I saw too many pictures of everyone else's coops and wanted a different shade of green which is more like a teal/aqua shade. It is *stunning*

The inside will be yellow. I forgot where I read that someone painted theirs yellow but that stuck with me and I thought it would be a good idea. So if you painted yours yellow and wrote about it here, probably I stole that idea from you.

Sorry but thanks!

 

[Snoskred]

It has been a while, and a lot of work has been done. Chickens are installed into their coop!

Here are some pics of the process - these are from a few days ago

The roost you see in this pic below has been flipped onto its side as we found out it was too narrow.

The lino has actually been laid - we discovered a flaw in our plan of not laying it properly and having it so you could remove it - eg it would be very heavy and it can be brittle and crack or snap, so the other half attached it. There is a lip on the inside of the door so the sand can be built up a bit, but even the lip has lino over it. I have to say it is more awesome than I anticipated.

Re the vents, these were about $5 from Bunnings, and they are plastic. These pics are from before I finished off the painting nicely.

In the summer depending on how hot it gets on the inside, we might install a whirly on the roof for extra ventilation. Maybe. But my hope is by then I will have created several runs so the house only gets used at night. That is my next project and I have been reliably informed I have to do that one on my own because the other half has a lot of projects waiting thanks to my chook project taking up all his days off!

Here is a shot of how it will look once we are completely finished with the run attached.

I'll post again in a minute with the story of Chicken Eve and our first day owning chickens..

 

[MuckyPuppy]

Very nice, love the paint job! We're in England (I'm American and hubby is English) right now but we (hubby's side) have family in NSW. Do you know them?

 

[Snoskred]

On Chicken Eve, I went to the poultry shed where the auction was being held to check out the birds and get to know a bit more about chickens, thanks to the awesome local poultry group who I was lucky enough to get to know by posting on an Aussie chicken forum.

I got to hold a chicken for the first time, learn about handling them and watch them being put into their pens as they were arriving for the auction. It was a cold night - winter here in Australia! When I left it was 7 degrees according to the car.

I fell in love with a chicken. She is an English Game bantam hen with a red comb. She was in a pen all on her own and kept sticking her head out to see what everyone else was up to, and she had this personality.. even after all the other birds settled down in sleep pose, she was still trying to keep an eye on everyone and everything.

Just up above her but one pen to the left, there were two other English Game bantam hens. These ones had a purple colored comb and splashes of bright blue on their ears.

There were a few other birds who spoke to me - a trio of leghorns and I had quite the conversation. Who knew I spoke chicken?

A little light sussex bantam and I also had words. There was a gorgeous ex-show stock Australorp who everyone adored.

I went home thinking about that little bird and sure I wouldn't be able to sleep.. and afraid I wouldn't be able to win her in the auction.

I woke up at 5:15am thinking about that bird, tossing and turning and pondering.. and went back to sleep just before the alarm at 7:15.

Next up, Chicken Day!