California - Northern

[PetRock]

Your splash roo is gorgeous!

Deb

Thank you, Deb! He is beautiful but not sure he is going to make the cut for breeding. His chest is not deep enough, his body is not wide enough, and his tail is more pinched & looking more squirrel like than some of my other cockerels. But he is a looker and knows it!

 

[Miss Molly]

Not Cheryl, but I'll answer you.

I am not allowed to raise chickens in the house, garage, and I've been kicked out of the well house too because of the dust. I brood in a small coop. I too have an Eco Glow (love it!). I find this time of year when it's really cold, I put a 100 watt light bulb in addition to the Eco Glow for the first week and it works fine. I have 9 9 day old chicks in there right now. I'm going to swap out their 100 watt for 50 watt today.

It depends on how big your shed is on how much supplemental heating you need. Pet stores have the 50, 75, 100, 150 heat bulbs for reptiles. Those may help. My little coop is roughly 3 ft X 5ft, so it holds heat in well. (provided you don't open the door too much to check on them) There's no drafts too.

Thank you, All this input really helps. I am off tomorrow, I am going to work on that shed tomorrow for a temporary fix. Im getting some really good ideas from you guys and am very thankful.. Going to order that light and stand Deb has to add with the Eco Glows.. It looks safe to me..

im just trying to get this as easy and efficient as possible...Sometimes I think I make to much work for myself...Its hard with a full time job to care for 200/300 chickens.

I must be out of my mind! Molly

 

[zooweemama]

Quote: is it prebuilt? then that sounds correct. even 10x6 open coops will cost that much. You can do it yourself for less depending on what you use

Well an ultra basic coop design of 10x12 was coming over $1000 for just the wood. And we are talking the cheap wood. That did not include roofing material, hardware and cement and blocks. We found a wooden shed kit 10x10 with all the framing and hardware for $600. It still needs a roof and a floor - we don't want to put any coop directly on the floor. The wet earth molds the wood. This is what we just ran into. Am I missing something? The price of the basic coop design include cheap OSB stuff. What do you guys build your coops out of? Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

 

[Hangtown Farms]

I keep chicks in my garage in the winter. it is not insulated. I wait till they are about 1 to 2 weeks old and put them in the grow up pen with a red heat lamp. Have not had any freeze yet. At 5 weeks they go out in the small coop with the grow up run. I have a smaller full spectrum plant light I use which is better for the smaller closed coop.

 

[Hangtown Farms]

Well an ultra basic coop design of 10x12 was coming over $1000 for just the wood. And we are talking the cheap wood. That did not include roofing material, hardware and cement and blocks.
We found a wooden shed kit 10x10 with all the framing and hardware for $600. It still needs a roof and a floor - we don't want to put any coop directly on the floor. The wet earth molds the wood. This is what we just ran into.
Am I missing something? The price of the basic coop design include cheap OSB stuff. What do you guys build your coops out of?
Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

was the $1000 the cost of the materials or a prebuilt coop?
If you build it more barn style that may be correct.
I am going to build mine using farm fence. 2x4 plywood and a metal roof. with a gate in the front I had it at around $700 for a 8x10
that was including a roll of 100 ft no climb that I will be using around the run. Of the 100 feet I only need maybe 8 for the coop.

 

[zooweemama]

Quote: was the $1000 the cost of the materials or a prebuilt coop?
If you build it more barn style that may be correct.
I am going to build mine using farm fence. 2x4 plywood and a metal roof. with a gate in the front I had it at around $700 for a 8x10
that was including a roll of 100 ft no climb that I will be using around the run. Of the 100 feet I only need maybe 8 for the coop.

Not a pre built coop. It was the lean to style coop design. Extremely simple, no frills. That was our cost for wood, some roofing and we are not insulating anything lol. The chickens can snuggle. The 10x10 shed kit is cheaper. But it still needs a floor and a roof. We want to do metal. Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

 

[Hangtown Farms]

Not a pre built coop. It was the lean to style coop design. Extremely simple, no frills. That was our cost for wood, some roofing and we are not insulating anything lol. The chickens can snuggle.
The 10x10 shed kit is cheaper. But it still needs a floor and a roof. We want to do metal.
Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

with the floor and roof is it cheaper? you can do a cinder block floor fairly cheaply. I am assuming there is a floor in the shed you just dont want it touching the ground.
check craigslist sometimes there are cinderblocks pretty cheap

 

[chiqita]

Zoo,
I used a lot of repurposed wood ( read used, ha!) I really found the old fruit boxes good for frames. Around here they are about 20 each. Unless they get backed up then they are free. I also use them on wheels as a brooder in the garage. There is a place in Oakland that has wood from old building projects, we used that a LOT when we were rebuilding a coop, because I ain't spending 1k on chickens! Maybe see if there is something around there?

Today they still here older chicks went into a shed in the very back of the property. they still have a lamp for heat, I'm hopeing it wont get too cold for them, Ill put some snuggling shavings down too. they have reached the poo a rama stage. if it wasn't raining so much I'd put them in one of the brooder coops, but there are a lot of them and I think they would need to range a bit. I Finlay put up an ad for the chickens yesterday, but i didn't get the calls I would expect, think I have to put up some pictures of all these crazy breeds in my brooder. Those frizzled polish are craaazy looking, sooo cute.

Ron, I usually cook a turkey too, i love turkey, but I cant imagine doing everything all in 1 day ( I'm back to work on Monday for a last hoorah cleaning, PLEASE let us finish then!!) and have to settle Joe in on Tuesday, that just leaves wed for everything, and i like to do stuff a little at a time over a few days, and not do anything on the holiday but the actual cooking. I might still sneak in a key lime pie if I get home early enough on Monday, there is a place in Fremont that has awesome key limes. They sell them as Mexican limes, but these are not your normal Mexican limes, they taste like the ones from Florida.

It rained like mad here too, but we have everything drained from the first year we moved in where the entire backyard kept flooding. I dug some natural drains for the water and it goes to them and just snakes down rather then pools. All the sand pits for dust bathing are a mess, however!

OK, break is over, back to washing floors!

 

[ronott1]

Quote: Not a pre built coop. It was the lean to style coop design. Extremely simple, no frills. That was our cost for wood, some roofing and we are not insulating anything lol. The chickens can snuggle.

The 10x10 shed kit is cheaper. But it still needs a floor and a roof. We want to do metal.


Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

Wood is very expensive now. My coop was in the $600.00 range and I built it myself.

You will have a much nicer one than the kit coop. Flooring and roofing is expensive too. Can you get some of the smaller boards from pallets? Monster Clucker could probably help you find some pallets in Redding.

Happy Coop building!

 

[lawatt]

Not a pre built coop. It was the lean to style coop design. Extremely simple, no frills. That was our cost for wood, some roofing and we are not insulating anything lol. The chickens can snuggle.
The 10x10 shed kit is cheaper. But it still needs a floor and a roof. We want to do metal.
Excuse my typos. Sent from my iPhone.

my coop is just wood framing, with no floor -- but we set cinder blocks in the ground to make it level & the wood sits on those, so isn't in direct contact with the wet ground -- and i'm using the deep litter method for the "floor," & haven't had any trouble at all so far.


here it is when just the framing was up -- you can still see the cinder blocks at the base of each upright -- the "shelf" at the back became the "floor" of the henhouse

I then put wire mesh all the way around the run, and extended it in a "skirt" about 2 feet beyond the edge, so no digging predators can get in:



and i really like the plastic corrugated panels we used for the roof("Suntuf" polycarb plastic, in white) -- they let the light in, but not the harsh sun, & seem perfectly sturdy in weather -- here's Henry putting them up:



no predators of any kind of gotten in, & the chicklets are all dry and cozy... and i don't think it cost more than $1000 for materials? size is 8x12' -- i know there's LOTS of potential predators around here (i live near the edge of a nature preserve & a state park), so preferred to err on the side of spending a little more and making it as safe as possible.