Conversion of "3 sides totally open" aviary to a "good for chickens" coop.

[paneubert]

Get out the garden hose and find out now?

Last time I tried to leak test it (after I first installed the wind break and modified the final runoff location a couple weeks back), I dumped a gallon of water from a bucket pretty fast and only directed between 1 or 2 of the deck boards. It overwhelmed the channel in the roofing panel it hit and when I went down to check it out for leaks I had water running off all sort of crazy places that it never would naturally. Haha! So if I try for the garden hose method, I will need to remember to set it to "shower" or "mist" or some other broad spray setting so the "rain" doesn't flood one tiny part of the roof. Get a better and more realistic flow rate and pattern.

Stay tuned. I am the only adult in the house right now, so unless I can train the 3 or 6 year old to spray in the right places while I go down to observe, this will need to wait until the wife is home and willing!

 

[paneubert]

Here are the first stages of my 20 gallon waste free feeder. Using four 4 inch 90 degree elbows. Say that 10 times fast.

Drilled half inch hole with drill bit, then used jig saw to widen holes to 4 inches.

As you can see, the holes were not perfectly round! Haha. But that is ok. All the tubes took a little bit of squeezing to get in, so nothing is super loose. Just larger versus smaller gaps in certain spots.

Gaps are not an issue because.....drum roll...I used expanding foam insulation instead of the classically recommended caulk or silicone. Check out this beauty. Haha.

The random stuff in there is to hold the tubes in the correct position off the floor of the tub until the foam hardens. As anyone knows who uses the cans of foam, you can't really save any leftovers unless you want to use some solvents to clean out the tube before it sets up. So I just used all the extra from the can to link all the tubes together within the tub. I figure this will give it some stability inside and not allow any of the tubes to move much due to being linked to the one next to it. Since it is all inside the tub, I am not worried about it degrading due to UV exposure or anything.

After it is all cured overnight, I will trim or sand down all the foam on the outside so that it is flush with the tub. Or at least flat and less attractive for pecking. Will the chickens peck at it? Maybe? Time will tell. Maybe I will end up coating the foam with a layer of tape or something that the chickens don't have an interest in pecking. It is paintable. We will see.

Also pondering creating a false wall inside the tub so that there is not feed sitting and getting old/stale on the "far" side where there are no feeding tubes. Feels like it would be a waste of the tub shape, but I plan to have this feeder along a wall, so it does not make sense to have feeder tubes all the way around the tub.

More photos to come tomorrow when I trim it and make it pretty. Then probably a 12 week wait until the chickens are big enough to even use this thing! Haha!

 

[paneubert]

Trimed off the extra foam from the outside of the bin with a fine tooth saw so that is is pretty much flush with the shape of the bin. Used a sanding block to get it pretty uniform as well. The foam still holds the tubes in place with very little flex/wiggle. But it still looked a little rough to me. Also looked pretty "peckable" even when sanded back to be flush. So I pulled out my trusty Silicone Gasket/Adhesive tube and decided this would be the final use.

Food grade, flexible, adheres to most things, and a wide working temperature range.

Since I was trying to use up the remainder of the tube, I slathered it on thick and then ran the bead around the ring with my gloved finger to ensure it was making good contact with both the yellow drum and the white PVC.

Then went in with a wet paper towel and cleaned it up a bit so it looks a bit nicer.

That last photo was about mid-cleaning. Will post a final final shot once it cures.

 

[paneubert]

Ohhh, forgot to post the interior photo. This is what it expanded to overnight. Not much bigger than right after I sprayed it originally. Debating maybe sanding or cutting the interior down a bit. Just to get it using right angles and flat surfaces instead of the fluffy clouds. But then again, this is inside, so it doesn't need to look pretty. I figure as long as I make sure food doesn't get caught up on top it doesn't really matter what I do on the interior.

 

[paneubert]

100% survival upon arrival. Packing slip says they gave me an extra female Speckled Sussex as well as my "exotic" free chick for ordering 25 regular chicks. Can you tell which is probably the "exotic"? I sure can! Hahaha. One blinding yellow/white chick in the mix.

And within 2 minutes of them being in the brooder, they all found the heat plate on their own.

Still hearing a lot of chirping, but I think they are settling in. Already seeing them zooming around and pecking at the food and water. The Green Grow-Gel is also popular.

 

[aart]

Do they all fit under the plate?
How big is it?

Why do your pics take so long to load(hi res setting?)...way longer than most others?

 

[paneubert]

Do they all fit under the plate?
How big is it?

Why do your pics take so long to load(hi res setting?)...way longer than most others?

I don't know about the photo question. Could be due to size? If you click on the small version of the photo in the post, is the result a massive photo that you have to scroll around to see all parts of? If so, probably due to my phone taking large photos and then the image host I use providing the full size image when I post it. I use Imgur.com

For the heat plate, it is 16 by 16. They do all fit (as of now.....). About to start contacting all my buyers from Facebook to let them know they can come get their chicks today or this weekend. I am off work today due to the chicks, so it is now or having to wait till the weekend. By the time I am down to my final count (I assume end of this weekend), should be only 8 or 9 under the plate.

I wonder if anyone has ever paid attention to the final gender balance they obtained when the hatchery gives you an "extra" chicks of a variety you order..... I like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am suspicious that the "extra" Sussex is a boy. Haha. I am sure if I asked, they would say they had extra girls hatch and did not have enough orders to stick them all in, so they spread them out to those who did order Sussex this week. The irony is that my buyers from Facebook want all the OTHER breeds. I actually had to turn some folks away. But I do have one woman who basically said "give me whatever you got extra of".

 

[paneubert]

Update:

25 chicks have eaten what the packaging claims is sufficient to supply 100 chicks. The Green Gro-Gel stuff. At least I know they are going to be hydrated.....

This stuff: https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/gro_gel_plus.html

 

[aart]

Packing peanuts are almost always males.

 

[paneubert]

Packing peanuts are almost always males.

Yeah.....I'm not blind to "how the sausage is made" in hatcheries. So would not be shocked at all if it was pulled from the male bin.

But what makes this a little more of a grey area versus the normal "packing peanut" situation is that the packing slip calls it out as a "Speckled Sussex Free Extra Pullet" and seems to use the same product ID as the pullets I got. It is on it's own line as a separate item though. I am half believing it is sexed as a pullet due to the same item number, but the separate line item versus just increasing my quantity from 5 to 6 seems a little odd. Keeping things accurate on the packing slip, but still odd.