I am happy to have this time. We need to strngthen our relatioship.
Consolidated Kansas
- Thread starter ChooksChick
- Start date
Michelleml, you have a great start there - I would have loved to have something like that on our property when we bought it. My coop is 10x14 so almost the same size. I put a dividing wall in it to make a coop of 10x10 and a feed room that is 4x10. I can't tell you how much I love that feed room. Being able to have all of my feed and supplies in one place and located conveniently to the coop is such a blessing - I used to have supplies stashed all over the place, wherever I could fit them in. My dividing wall has a door so I can go from the coop to the feed room and back without having to go outside. The bottom half of the wall is solid and the top half is chicken wire. I have had 50 birds in the coop and they didn't seem crowded. Of course during the day there aren't ever many in there as they are out in the chicken yard, so it is only at night they are all in there.
Checoukan - that barn is going to be so great - can't wait to see more progress pics.
Trish, for the inside walls on my coop, I used OSB that was $6.50 a sheet. I couldn't find it anywhere in the store and finally had to ask an associate and he showed me where they keep it in a stack out the front of the store. If I am understanding what you want to use it for, that would also work for you and is even half what you had priced out, and a quarter of what your DH paid!
Checoukan - that barn is going to be so great - can't wait to see more progress pics.
Trish, for the inside walls on my coop, I used OSB that was $6.50 a sheet. I couldn't find it anywhere in the store and finally had to ask an associate and he showed me where they keep it in a stack out the front of the store. If I am understanding what you want to use it for, that would also work for you and is even half what you had priced out, and a quarter of what your DH paid!
HEChicken, yes it would have been even cheaper, but we're dealing with a small town lumber yard & I don't know if they even have OSB let alone how much it is. My DH found this lumber yard in Ark City where he has been going due to our truck being so old & not wanting to drive up to Derby all the time for wood. If I had been with him, which I will be next time I might have checked out what else they had, but as I said I wasn't along. He went down there for a hair cut & then went to pick up my wood. They don't have as much of a selection at this place as they do at somewhere like Lowe's, but it's only 10 miles away vs 35 to Lowe's.
Hechicken- that would be a real good idea about the feed room i wanted something like that but wasn't sure how to go about it. do you mind sharing pictures of the feed room when you have chance i would greatly appreciate it. how big is your chicken yard?. the floor in there is concert
I don't have any recent pics of the feed room itself, but I'll put in some pics of the dividing wall leading into it. There is an external door to the feed room, and when I come in, there is a set of shelves immediately on my left. These are the big, rugged, plastic - designed-to-be-used-in-a-workshop type of shelves. They have proved invaluable for holding all the small items - chick feeders and waterers when not in use, a bag of DE, a bag of Oyster shell, VetRx etc. Then I have 3 steel garbage bins lined up on the wall. These are for layer feed, grower feed and whole corn (I throw a cupful under the roosts every other day to encourage them to turn over the bedding). That's about it. It does get amazingly dusty in there due to only being a half wall, but I would still do it that way again, as I like to be able to look through and see what they're up to. When I first moved here, I used to open the external door and let birds follow me into the feed room while I doled out feed. Well, you can guess what happened - I wound up with POOP in my feed room. So we made a new rule: no birds in the feed room.
Here is a pic as I was in the process of building. I had the OSB on the bottom and the door but had not yet put in the chicken wire at the top. You can see the external door leading out of the feed room as well.
Just realized I forgot to answer about the chicken yard. It is 240x60. I don't call it a "pen" because there is no way to really enclose it. It has 5' fence all the way around of 2x4 welded wire, but nothing over the top. I came from a situation where they were able to free-range my whole backyard and I didn't like the idea of penning them into a small run, but my family didn't like the full free-range as they used to come up on our back deck and poop on it. So this was the compromise - a space large enough for them to not run out of grass and for it to feel like free-range, but keep them contained to one area of the property. Here is a pic taken from the end of the yard, looking back at the coop. This was after we had set the first post so the fence itself is not in yet:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/jerusalem-artichokes-zm0z10zhir.aspx
HEChicken ~ planting the J Artichokes. Hopefully that link will give some information. This amazing computer I have wouldn't open the link.
You eat the bulb which looks somewhat like a lumpy potato. They have thinner skins and are crisp and mild. They can be used in many different ways both raw and cooked. Very mild and good. (Geese LOVE the plants when they start coming up in the spring)
The bulbs are harvested in the fall after a good frost and can be left in the ground to be dug through the winter when the ground is not frozen or dug and stored for the winter.
They grew and produced the first summer I planted some. It was that first extra hot summer a couple of years ago when everything else I planted died.
HEChicken ~ planting the J Artichokes. Hopefully that link will give some information. This amazing computer I have wouldn't open the link.
You eat the bulb which looks somewhat like a lumpy potato. They have thinner skins and are crisp and mild. They can be used in many different ways both raw and cooked. Very mild and good. (Geese LOVE the plants when they start coming up in the spring)
The bulbs are harvested in the fall after a good frost and can be left in the ground to be dug through the winter when the ground is not frozen or dug and stored for the winter.
They grew and produced the first summer I planted some. It was that first extra hot summer a couple of years ago when everything else I planted died.
I took an unplanned road trip yesterday and came home with this little jewel. A 9 week old sheltie, she found the geese to be intimidating. Some respect can be a good thing.
Cute little sheltie Chickies
I got a call from Ideal this morning. My bantam special ships today and should be here by fri
Time to really get cracking on this brooder.
I got a call from Ideal this morning. My bantam special ships today and should be here by fri
Time to really get cracking on this brooder.
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