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I'm glad to hear that you're happy with the babies. My first three came from McMurray via the local garden center and they're great, even though one was a rooster. I met my son-in-law's family for the first time at my daughter's wedding a month ago and learned that McMurray was started by a relative of theirs. Small world!
I've been building a coop off an on all summer myself, but have been SO busy with other things that the progress has been painfully slow. When I finally had two weeks to work on it, it was too hot, as you well know! So now I'm back at school (elementary teacher), and the weather is beautiful. Figures, I guess.
[URL]https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/93521_coop_aug_10.jpg[/URL] Click the thumbnail for a bigger picture, I hope.
My coop backs up to my deck, with an egg door that is accessed from the deck. The coop's not very big because I'm working around re-used, leftover, craigslist, and garage/estate sale materials as much as possible. The skylight was how I solved the problem of only having 5 roofing panels when I needed 6 (a craigslist item). The enclosed part is 3' x 5', and the screen porch is 3' x 3'. The movable roost ("chicken bleachers") is in the screen porch, because that's where they all want to roost right now. The "coop deck" is to make it easier for me to reach inside and to give me a dry place to stand when I'm working with the chickens or the coop. I'm planning to fence the bottom of the coop and the area under the deck so they'll have a safe run when I don't want to let them out in the yard. I'll be using serious fencing for that, as I have raccoon trouble, too. Just this morning I found the lids off my metal feed buckets, unripe grapes littering the sidewalk, and seed packets I had forgotten about torn up and partially eaten. So... feed buckets come indoors until I get the storage box built, seed packets get put away, and I'm thinking all sorts of evil thoughts about raccoons and my grapes. I've been reading and trying to follow everyone's advice about critter-proofing the coop itself, so I hope it's secure enough. I wonder what's legal in the city limits when it comes to problem wildlife??
Your coop is really cute! I think that was really creative to put in a 'skylight' when you were running out of material. Looks like you meant to do that! Anyway, good job! Good luck with being back to school/work! Our school starts on Monday, and we had a "meet the teachers" tonight that was pretty fun. I have another meet the teachers at the preschool tomorrow morning. I take the little ones to a preschool downtown Wichita at a church.
