Can you help with the brainstorming please?

[Momagain1]

When we were given these chicks from the Pre-k, we had planned on giving some away..but
now we have them until they are old enough to butcher..

..so we have our ones we had originally and have a permanent large run and coop...

(these pics are from before it was completely done..but only so you can see a bit of size...
so we plan on using the side (on the left of the coop/run), which is quite narrow about 5 ft but long about 30 ft..for these newer chicks..
but we are needing cheap/free, thrifty, very inexpensive do it yourself (quick) ideas for a place to sleep/roost for them..

So..ladies and gents..PLEASE..shoot some ideas...

one idea I did find..is that htere is a camper top on the side of our town here marked "FREE"..I thought about taking that..
building it up a bit with bricks and putting the camper top on top of the brick frame..and letting the ground be the "floor"..
but thats kinda uh..trashy looking and this is something that can be seen...

WDYT?

 

[Shannon33]

Try looking on craiglist for dog houses. A lot of people sell REALLY cheap or even free if you will pick them up. I needed a separate smaller coop and we got one free. My husband made a few small alterations, spent maybe $20, we painted it, and voila. Cheap and not bad looking!

 

[perchie.girl]

How long will you need to be keeping them? If its only through the rest of the summer how about a lean-to made of PVC with a canvas roof and some poultry netting along with hardware cloth (in the predator danger zones). You don't even have to glue the joints on the PVC because once you wire tie the wire to it the joints will not separate. I built a cat cage this way once. Worked great.

I simply made rectangles and covered with wire. Then fastened the rectangles together with bungee cords. For perches you can build or use a saw horse.
Later all these items disassemble and will stack small and can be reassembled for emergency usage. Sick pen, Grow out pen, ..... The saw horse perch can be used in the main run later, too.

 

[patandchickens]

The main, and probably more expensive, thing is to fence in an adequate predatorproof area for them. Shelter is not a big deal. Between pallets and scrap plywood you might even able to knock together a little lean-to hut for them for free. But you'd want it in a large-enough fenced-enough run area, you know?

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[bryan99705]

Why can't you section off a small area inside the existing run with some chicken wire and give them a small doghouse to sleep in. If you throw in a little litter and a pile of branches to sit on, they will be fine. This will let them see the other birds without letting them get hurt till they are big enough to learn their spot in the flock

 

[Momagain1]

the run we have now, is enough for the birds we have..throw in 16 more and we'll not be fair IMO to the other birds that already live there...nor to the 16 we'd be putting in...

honestly; we already have chicken wire and at this point in time..I'm not putting more expense into hardware cloth for that run..its not happening in our budget..I KNOW chicken wire is not predator
proof but at this point in time..its what we have and we didnt expect when we made this coop/run to be given more chickens for free due to them now having another place to send them...
so we are using them for meat when they are ready...we are just making due w/what we have...

so we are just keeping them seperate from the existing flock because we arent keeping them..

HTH a li'l!