Chicken cote (update in post#12 of thread).

[geebs]

Yashar.... Thanks for the visual aids... This is fantastic... Question: How do you deal with heat.... In the summer I would worry that the house would serve as a "green house"? How do you deal with the heat and ventilation??? (and still protect them etc)

 

[Yashar]

Quote:
Since this one was has a plexiglass roof we put openings on each of the peaks and made sure to have it in a partially shaded area. In one of the pictures above you'll notice that the entire bottom half is chicken wire. 100% airflow. And they only roost up top when it has cooled down in the evening. In retrospect I think translucent fibreglass roofing would be a whole lot cheaper and do the job. And the sides of the peak would also be wood.
This "solar cote" as we call it now, will serve a good purpose in the warmer month but it is too difficult to winterise practically.

We wanted it to be well ventilated and what we came up with in our learning process was the red breeder cote below. We have since installed removable panels on it. So if you can picture an 8x8 or 10x10 (but not as tall), that is what we want to market to the locals around here. And as far as ventilation in the "new and improved" version, I think a flip down door (with chicken wire) similar the one below would be fine as long as the lower half of the cote has good airflow.

 

[Medicine Man]

Yashar, what about the peeps? Do you have separate brooders for peeps or just raise them inside the cote which is to become their home?

I'm just a little surpirsed that those Americanas feel secure under the transparent roof, like they know that it's safe whereas I would have expect them to be insecure with it, not realizing that it's safe.

 

[knjinnm]

Quote:
I agree, cotes were usually stone structures which gave wild pigeons/doves a place to breed and come and go to feed on local farmers fields. It allowed the cote owner to harvest squabs when available with very little work. The cotes I've seen in England were round, tall with a lot of cubby holes for the birds to nest. Droppings accumulated in the center where they turned to compost.
Joe

 

[welsummer4]

Quote:
I agree, cotes were usually stone structures which gave wild pigeons/doves a place to breed and come and go to feed on local farmers fields. It allowed the cote owner to harvest squabs when available with very little work. The cotes I've seen in England were round, tall with a lot of cubby holes for the birds to nest. Droppings accumulated in the center where they turned to compost.
Joe

After reading Yashar's last post, it dawned on me that he may be using the term "cote" to differentiate his own coop design from the typical backyard/barnyard coop when marketing it "to the locals." I think Patandchickens already pointed this out, but I wasn't smart enough to connect her comment to my own question.

I went back and re-read the threads by Resolution where I'd first seen mention of chicken cotes (the threads that led me to post the original question of this thread) and realized that what I originally took to be an actual, established type of chicken dwelling was in fact, as Patandchickens noted, a buzz-term for a marketing scheme. Not that there's anything wrong with producing a unique product and marketing it, I just feel a little naive for failing to realize that this is what was going on. (Apologies to patandchickens if I'm misrepresenting her.)

Finally (and I'm prepared to be completely lambasted for what im about to say) I suspect "locals" might be shorthand for "upper middle-class New Englanders who want to ride the backyard chicken trend and are willing to lay down extra cash to say their chickens live in a cote, rather than a common coop."

I will admit it's a well thought-out, and interesting design, though.

 

[Medicine Man]

nevrmind, its not worth it. enjoy your chickens.

 

[Yashar]

Quote:
There is no marketing scheme going on here. You have not nor would you have fallen prey to some "strategy" for us to get your business. And the "locals" won't ether. My reference to marketing to the "locals" is based on the fact that every time someone comes for a visit, they ask if we would build a "coop" for them. What we build won't be any more expensive than what a coop could cost (bar the difference in quality of construction).

 

[Medicine Man]

Thanks for taking the time to showcase som of your work, Yashar. Im sorry that somebody would start a thread to request this informacion and then go on and disrespect your work like such. This peeple don't understand the higher level of stewardship enough to respect it.

 

[Resolution]

Disinhibited

There’s been some discussion here at the BYCF about how a Chicken Cote might be distinguished from the familiar Chicken Coop and both from the Hens’ Hause.

Naturally, this is a matter of some conjecture.

A dovecote is designed and thus suitable for doves and pigeons. The ergonomics of the species in question is applied in its design. That said, people have forgotten where their eggs come from. Not today in your backyard but rather in the history of our precious cargo pet. A chicken, after all, is a product of its environment.

An analogy that presents itself is the pig sty. Are pigs naturally filthy creatures? Has the pig earned its reputation as a filthy creature or is the filth of the pig's enclosure of poorly thought out human design? We have to ask these questions when we realise the impact that common food-borne ailments passing through our food chain - what impact it has the economy and health of our communities. This becomes all the more important as a sustainable local food movement requires steady momentum to establish itself in perpetuity. Powerful multinational corporations provide the mammoth percentage of our egg and meat supplies. They alone are taken to task about food borne disease. They can afford dumping eight billion eggs into the garbage over a salmonella scare. A local community egg collective cannot.
USDA butchers comply to specific standards and local farmers abide by these standards so that they can earn an income with the harvest of their hard born labour.
The analogy of the pig sty stands because we know that chickens are not filthy and yet have the reputation for being so because of what amounts to a traditional standard of sanitation that is possibly not of this age. We cannot afford to maintain our flocks if the farming mentality is not sustainable. We are all shepherds of the same flock when it comes to ethics and sanitation. We trade and sell our stock within a close community. We sell our eggs in the free market. One dozen of eggs with salmonella affect an entire communities sales of locally grown eggs. Cote and Coop /Shack and Shanty Adobe and Wicker/Palm Frond and Reed - different cultures build different kinds of chicken shelters and they've been going back to the drawing board and refining and improving these shelters ever since. Agriculture is naturally a progressive movement. One progresses in its bounty. As the old adage give advice: One reaps what one sows.

A digression:
So much is taken for granted in this rapid paced day of age; People don’t tend to have much memory for the history of “things”. We get into a familiar routine guided down the road by well-worn memory treads, unawares of events and sometimes, even the paths of others that transect our own. Each of us is prejudiced to our own sets of speculations and biased opinions, which frequently masquerade as facts. Every precursory glance is more assured than the one that careens into our own subjective.

An ancient adage carved into cartouche of a supporting pillar within the Temple of Amen in Karnak reads:

Routine and prejudice distort vision. Each man thinks his own horizon is the limit of the world.


We take so many things for granted until the moment we arrive at the sight of a chicken travesty- scattered feathers and a few grisly body parts- or no sign of any chook left at all. Raccoons and owls, neighbors’ dogs and clever foxes have been rejoicing all along at our misfortunes- ‘casing’ our routines- studying our limited perspectives for that opportunity to strike with impunity while we the steward of the flock is most vulnerable- when away on a trip or fast asleep-

Another issue many have endured is an infectious disease outbreak. Disease and infection are dreadful opportunists lurking everywhere sight unseen and so on and so forth. We inadvertently create them by following a status quo that has had its prime and is over. We know by the truths substantiated with science just what infectious disease exist, where they came from and how to get rid of them. We know bacterias exist and we understand how and where they are perpetuated.
This was simply not always the case.

Some of us have had our birds suffer or die of exposure to extreme temperatures and even starvation when we’ve been obliged to leave on an extended trip and left our wards in the hands of others.

No one intends for these unfortunate events. No one wants for a tragedy. Regardless, we all learn from mistakes. In the collective history, every human that had some abiding affection for chickens, one innovation followed by another marks the progression of beneficial acts- of proactive measures and cautionary actions.

More a bit later.

 

[Resolution]

Sparing the thread...

I'll not clog up, hijack or attempt to subjugate this one.