Chicken Ark on Forsham Design

[blooo]

chickenbike, do you put the food and waterer inside the coop? if you do, what kind of feeder and waterer do you use?

 

[chickenbike]

I'll try and sort out some photos. I learned that you need a photobucket acct to add photos. sorry I won't be able to post one. Basically, we cut the plexiglass in a triangle, set it against an inside wood trim, then used slightly wider wood on the outside (3 pieces) to frame it in.

Down below in the run area, I have a wall-mounted feeder on one end (where we kept it solid for just such a purpose), plus a hanging 1 gallon drinker.

In the roost area, I do have a 1 litre drinker and one of the small mason jar chick feeders. I will keep the 1 litre drinker in the roost area for them at all times as I don't like the idea of depriving them access to water during the night.

Currently, they are now 8 weeks old and I will take out the feeder from the roost area once they are older.

 

[Kareng]

Here is a pic of our first tractor. We built it to keep the chickens in the garden rows when they were teenagers. It housed about 10 small pulletts.
It took a weekend and about $300 to build. It is pretty heavy with the asphalt shingles, but we lag bolted 8" wheels to a 4X4 post, then we just lift and kick the wheels under to move it.
We based it on another chicken tractor design, but just winged it as we went along. I think the one we copied was built with smaller lumber, that would have made it lighter too.
It has a ramp and nesting area in the covered end. They really like it and we built a mini one for the smaller chicks to be outside within the chicken run but protected from the big chickens.

 

[chickenfanatic]

nice work hope it serves u well

 

[nissa_loves_cats]

I'm planning to build a similar ark. I found plans at http://www.organicgardening.com/pdf/coop_plans.pdf and I really like the plan, hope to use it for a small breeding group of chickens.

I'm looking at the pictures of arks in this thread and it gives me ideas on how to modify the plans in various ways to suit my plans. For example the version at organicgardening.com doesn't have roosts but I saw a pic with a central roost in the upper story.

I'm building it out of scrap wood I have around the place from old projects. I'm trying to make it lighter that the versions with a lot of heavy wood on it so I can move it by myself.

I know this is an old thread but I hope that other people will be inspired by all the great info in it.

BTW, my current coops are made out of old chain link dog runs with old plastic calf hutches in them. They are at best semi-portable. I am going to be modifying the calf hutches to put in roosts and am considering whether to put permanent nest boxes in them. Anyone else converting a calf hutch for chickens? Will post pictures as soon as I take some.