Building the Chicken McMansion (Part 3)

[Chieftain]

Thanks for all the kind words folks, please take whatever I have shown here, and use it any way you can.

I've been puttering with finish work this week in between rain showers, but in general I have been taking a break from construction, primarily to let my hands heal, and to attempt to hoe my workshop out.

I did finish the front door and ramp. I talked about raising the end of the ramp to soften the angle in another thread here, and I thought some pics might help.

Recall that this foundation is the height of two 4x4 PT timbers with a 2x4 sill plate on top. I placed about a cubic yard of gravel and tamped it down, then added a cubic yard of sand in 2 batches, tamping and watering it in. It is pretty solid now and the chooks will have no problem scratching up a good dust bath, as well as getting plenty of dietary grit.

I made the ramp from a cedar 1x6, and ripped the treads from cedar board scrap. I glued them with Gorilla glue, and tacked them in place with my air nailer. Gorilla Glue foams and expands, then hardens like a rock, and is waterproof. The treads will probably keep the board from ever bowing.

The coop door I came up with is simple as well. This too is open for revision down the road as experience dictates. For now it is secure and draft free, and will enable me to use the coop as the next-stage brooder once the chicks outgrow the rubbermaid tub. I installed an additional electrical outlet inside the coop, along with a brooder light that is hung over the corner by the closed coop door. It will create a warm spot for the chooks as long as it is needed.

For the door, I cut a couple of pieces of 1/2" scrap plywood for the sides, and ripped a length of 1x3 white pine for rails. I used Gorilla Glue and lots of clamps to install the rails, then cut a plywood door to fit. It was a tight fit on purpose, and sanding the plywood door smooth on both sides where it contacts the rails makes it open and close very smoothly. For now, I simply drilled a hole through rails and door, to fit a locking pin made from a piece of coathangar wire. It locks the door shut and holds it open until I decide on how I want a remote operator to work and where best to put it.

Pretty simple construction and made from leftover scrap. A few screws here and there, some good glue and a bit of stain and paint, and voila!

Since the weather has been unusually warm here, I got a head start on restoring my landscaping in the back yard yesterday. I graded and tossed some grass seed and starter fertilizer out in the yard and the wet weather will get that germinating in no time. I use a lawn food with "natural" ingredients in it as opposed to strictly chemical fertilizer. It dissolves quickly and really builds good grass. By the time the girls are ready to hit the yard, there should be a healthy turf for them to graze on.

 

[Chieftain]

My chicks are doing quite well and are growing rapidly. They all have some nice wing and tail feathers coming in and it will not be long before they outgrow the rubbermaid brooder tub. It's time to start testing the Chicken McMansion to see how warm it will stay.

I set out this morning to buy a thermometer to hang in the coop to monitor the temperature, and when I got to Home Depot and started looking at what they had, I went a different way. I ended up with a wireless "Weather Station Forecaster" that does everything I want and then some. Once you install the batteries and do some basic programming, the stations synchronize, and the remote unit sends Outdoor Temperature, Outdoor Humidity, and the High/Low Temperature for that day. The base station also displays Inside Temp and Humidity, along with an accurate clock and a "forecast" based on the barometric pressure. It was about $40 and that's not bad considering all that it will do.

I set the remote unit on the roost in the coop, and shut all the doors and windows after I turned the 60 watt brooder lamp on in one corner. I have it set to the same height that the rubbermaid brooder lamp is at, as measured above the top of the litter. (The coop has a 3" layer of pine shavings in it now too).

The plan is to leave the light in the coop on this week and keep track of the temperature. I want to make sure that the coop stays warm enough for growing chooks, and this will show me if a 60 watt bulb is too much or too little, and we will see what the light does to the humidity in there too. I know the chooks will drive that up, but I want to see how much the added heat and air flow affects the humidity too.

Handy info to know long before the girls are ready to move in. I encourage this kind of testing of any design, and I think the long term ability to know what is going on in the coop climate will be useful year round. This will help prove my long term ventilation plan for the warmer months too.

Onward!

 

[flgardengirl]

Really great job and very inspiring. Can't wait to see how the chooks like it. You should make a little video when you release them in there

 

[Chieftain]

Quote:
I plan on it. My daughter has a better camera than I do, and it makes better vids than mine will. She's just as excited about the chooks as we are and I'm certain she will fix me up. The roost is such that you can count heads through the windows, and my wife likes that feature in particular.

The temp inside the coop is up to 63 degrees with 61% humidity. I think the litter may have gotten a bit damp at night and the rise in humidity is from that moisture being driven off. The outside air temp is 48 degrees with a relative humidity of 45%, so clearly something is going on in there in a positive way. If the air temp at roost level is that warm then it is no doubt a lot warmer down on the floor underneath the brooder light. So far it seems that the 60 watt bulb is working well. We'll see how well it holds heat overnight and what kind of temperature trends we see over the coming week.

Developing...

 

[Chieftain]

Progress!

Overnight the outside temperature dropped to 34 degrees, and the coop temp dropped to only 44 degrees. The humidity is stable at 61%.

That tells me the 60 Watt bulb is effective, but not quite effective enough, so I swapped it out this morning for a 100 Watt bulb, and we will see how that does. Another forty watts out there should make an immediate difference.

I was reading Storey's last night, and they said that an adult chicken generates about 135 BTU's of heat per hour. That means five of them would produce 675 BTU's an hour, and that is plenty of heat in a coop this size. The only problem is that while they do generate body heat when they are little, it's not enough without supplemental heating in the coop.

(For review, a BTU is a British Thermal Unit, and one BTU is equivalent to the energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit)

So today we continue temperature testing with the 100 Watt bulb, and I will go out later and check the temperature under the lamp too. I may have to raise the hood a couple of inches but that's not hard to do.

Onward!

 

[pacetruckguy]

I'm not exactly sure how much heat a chicken provides, but I can tell you if you get an egg right after it's been laid it's almost hot to the touch. They are pretty warm little creatures.
They also are smart enough to cuddle together to stay warm. There is all this talk about how each chicken needs a foot of roosting room, but my coop is 3 feet wide with two roosts, and 6 out of the 8 chickens cram together on the top roost. I guess they like it close like that.

 

[Chieftain]

Hey PTG...I took the brooder light out of the coop yesterday and left the windows closed but the door to the run open. The outside air temp this morning was 38, and it was 46 inside the coop even with no extra heating, except the chooks. They were out at the crack of dawn scratching for food in the run, so all is well. They have been hitting the dustbaths under the coop pretty hard this week too. I got a couple of pics of them flinging sand around yesterday...

Once the sun hits that end of the run about 10 in the morning, they all park down there until the sun goes over the house around 3 or so.

 

[pacetruckguy]

Hey they're getting big, starting to look like chickens! You're chickens are spoiled. I think I want to come back as one of your chickens. On another note I have a hen that has given me two double yokers. They are so big that the look like they came from an ostrich mix. They bottom out the egg scale, and you can't get the egg carton closed. I'll try to get a picture up when I get home today.

 

[pacetruckguy]

Well I think I finally got the picture uploaded. Now tell me, that had to hurt. She's done that twice now.

 

[Chieftain]

MAN!! That'll make a meal-sized omelet all by itself! Whatever you're feeding your chooks, don't change a thing!