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

[paneubert]

Continuing my quest to use up the extra gravel, I made the path between my gates. Pavers are not dug in since I anticipate the "outside" of the path will soon be deep litter/other materials.

Debating filling in the area in front of the auto-chicken door with gravel as well. Which would make about half of this path into just a large and wide area of gravel..... Not sure what I will decide.

 

[paneubert]

Well.....better get working on the internals for the coop sometime soon. Or find myself in the situation some others do where their chicks arrive and they haven't really constructed their coop yet. Placed an order tonight for delivery in February. Wayyyyyyy more birds than I want to keep, but figure I can sell off some of them when they arrive....right? haha.

5X each of.....
GOLDEN LACED WYANDOTTE
SPECKLED SUSSEX
RHODE ISLAND RED
AMERAUCANA
CUCKOO MARANS

 

[paneubert]

Wall of text incoming!



So sore! Spent pretty much all day yesterday and all day today working on modifying the old quail aviary so that I can get the roost bars and nest boxes installed. Of course forgot to take many photos before I stuck a bunch of stuff back in there for temporary storage. I will be sure to take some when I clear it back out next time I have a free day to work on it.


What I have done over the past two days is shovel out about 6 inches deep of the "floor". This was made of about 1/3 quail poop nuggets, 1/3 woody arborist mulch, and the remaining 1/3 being about equally spread between quail food "crumbles" that had turned into dust, old Sweet PDZ granules, construction/play sand, and quail feathers. The portions of the aviary that stay dry were pretty easy, due to all the stuff being really loose and dusty. But about 6 inches wide all around the wire perimeter was another story....which I knew would be the case from prior cleanouts. The problem is that rain would drip or blow into that perimeter and turn things to a concrete consistency on the surface, and then just soggy ammonia sludge below the surface. The quail did not mind, and I made sure to shovel it out every few months. The difference between that strip and the remaining floor that stayed dry always amazed me. Would go from soggy and gross, to like shoveling a sand dune. Bone dry.


Knowing that I am converting to chickens and not quail, I knew that I needed to “waterproof” the coop better. So after I shoveled out a ton of ammonia soaked floor material (and a good layer of the bone dry as well), I went to work installing corrugated polycarbonate roofing panels on some of the walls. The type you see people use to roof back patios, etc… My floor to ceiling is about 7 feet, so clearing out some of the old flooring/poop/dirt allowed me to install 8 foot tall panels (2 feet wide) without much additional work. Just dug down into the ground a little deeper right against my existing hardware cloth walls. I used solid grey panels for one of my short sides (the one without the human door), and then continued it around so that the solid color “wall” now continues about 3 feet across the large front side. Went with solid color so that the roost area and nest area would feel more secure for the birds. This area of solid colored wall is where I will have my roost bars and nest boxes. One side of it is my house, the “back” is now covered in roofing panels, and then the third side has about 3 feet of it covered. The remaining length of the long wall is still floor to ceiling hardware cloth. That long wall is about 9 feet long, so we now are left with 6 feet of “open” hardware cloth wall.


I have constructed the roost bars, poop board, and nest boxes out of one large repurposed desk. Desk is right around 5 feet wide by 2 feet deep. Don't recall the height, but assumed to be whatever is “normal” for a desk. The roost bars and poop board will be on the top of the desk, with the nest boxes built directly underneath the desk. The nest boxe(s) will be mostly communal style. Right now I have them about 14 inches high, 5 feet wide, and about 18 inches deep. May divide the 5 foot width in half. We will see. Below the nest boxes there is still about 12-18 inches of clearance for the chickens to use if they want to scratch around on the ground. I am not sure the exact head clearance since I put the entire thing on cinder blocks to keep the desk out of any future muck. Will have to measure (and take photos) when I clear it back out for the next big weekend of building.


But you may be saying, “Paul, what did you do about the rain getting in and soaking a strip of the floor?” Glad you asked! I spent a ton of mental effort (and literal time) figuring out how to supplement and modify my current roofing so that it would provide more rain protection, but without cutting thru my existing hardware cloth walls…..


For the short wall, where the roost/nests are, I managed to angle my existing roofing panels in conjunction with the new wall panels so that any water is caught and directed down the outside of the “new” vertical wall panels. Hard to describe, but should prevent any water from coming in. If any makes it in, should run down the wall panel and not cause much problem. And I can then patch that area before the next rain. I am keeping the roost/nest table away from the wall a few inches so that nobody will get wet if I do have drips running down the inside of the walls.


For the long 9 foot wall…..sort of a compromise was reached. First I installed a clear panel that covers the top 2 feet of the hardware cloth wall. Think horizontal. 8 feet wide by 2 feet “tall”. I angled the top couple inches “inward” so that any drips that are not caught by my old/existing roofing are now caught and directed down the outside of the clear wall panel. But you might say “Paul, you only covered the top 2 feet! Won’t the water just drip down the 2 foot clear panel and then hit the wire wall, drip down the wire, and end up soaking the interior floor just like it did before?” Well….yes….and no. I dug out an 8 inch deep by 8 inch wide trench and put cinder blocks in there, with the "open" side of each block facing up. The type of block with two square holes in it. Total dimensions of 8 by 8 by 16 for each block. I filled each block with ⅜ inch gravel, from my magical gravel pile. My hope is that any drippage from the wire wall will drain into there and down into mother earth. Avoiding “most” of the soaking of the bedding that I saw in the past. I am HOPING the chickens don't scratch out the gravel. I think it should be ok since the gravel is pretty large diameter (we aren’t talking pea gravel here), and it is contained in each cinder block’s 8 inch square hole. Time will tell.


The plan is to have the bedding about even with the top of the blocks, so I am fully aware that bedding from the coop is going to get scratched onto the top of the blocks/gravel. It will just need to be one of my daily chores to sweep it back into the dry areas of the coop, exposing the gravel/cinder blocks again and again. With such massive amounts of ventilation overall, I am not worried about some wet bedding raising the humidity in the coop. I will bet good money that I will never see a difference in humidity inside versus outside the coop. Doing the math, I have something around 30 square feet of ventilation on the long wall, and 42 square feet on the wall with the door in it. Haha.


I will leave you with one photo. This is a drop of water hanging from the framing of the coop. The sun was at the perfect place in the sky to cause the drop of water to act like a prism and spread the sunlight in a fan shape on the underside of the beam.

 

[aart]

Cool Pic!
Looking forward to seeing the others.

 

[paneubert]

Cool Pic!
Looking forward to seeing the others.

Thanks. As soon as I put all the stuff back in there for temp storage, I realized I did not take any good photos. Have some weird blurry/weird angled shots. But not worth posting.

After a nights rest, more thoughts came to me (of course). I think I am going to either find some expanding foam insulation that is UV resistant, or use some simple silicone caulk to further exclude any drips from the interface between the old roof and the new walls.

Let me tell you......building a coop under a second story deck seemed like an excellent idea years ago when I made it for the quail. Thought I was being smart by using the already present framing of the deck, which is really strong and all pressure treated lumber. Huge 8 by 12 inch beams, concrete footers already sunk into the ground, etc.. Super strong, basically already had a roof (the deck itself). But the waterproofing aspects of it are a definite negative that I did not consider at the time. No access to the "top" side of the roof since that would entail removing the actual deck boards to get to whatever I "roofed" the aviary/coop with. So all attachment and roofing needs to occur from the underside/inside of the coop. Also makes getting the rain to drain outside and away from the structure hard since I have hardware cloth walls that are attached to the insides of the deck framing. Even if I had attached the hardware cloth to the exterior of the decking, still would have water issues. So I am doing my best to manage the flow with the gravel, cinder blocks, and liberal application of roofing panels. Haha. If I were closing this coop up a lot more than I am, I would be worried about humidity and other nasties. But with the amount I plan to leave open to the outside air, I am hoping that the inside of the coop feels for the most part the same as the outside when it comes to temperature and humidity. The difference being the inside will be about 90% protected from rain, and a nice section that is mostly protected from the wind.

 

[paneubert]

Still no new photos, but found one I took of the poop pile while I was shoveling it out on New Years Eve. What I am really surprised to see (now that I am looking back thru my old photos from when I put a ton of arborist chips in there) is just how much it seems has broken down into much smaller pieces. First two photos are from when I loaded it with chips (and still had quail). Last photo is of the pile I was working on shoveling out a couple days ago.

The really woody pieces you see in the last photo are actually just the remnants of some tall wildflower stalks that we had tossed in there for the quail to dig thru. There is very little sign of the (large) arborist chips.

 

[paneubert]

Can you guess what I plan to work on next?

 

[aart]

Square the door...it'll help.
Got cable clamps too?

 

[paneubert]

Square the door...it'll help.
Got cable clamps too?

Have clamps and a clamper. This was actually to start the roof of the run. Plan to cable across the span every few feet and then zip tie some netting to it. But using it to brace the door is also a good idea! The one thing I haven't gotten yet is eye bolts. Sort of crucial to all of this. Haha.

 

[aart]

Have clamps and a clamper. This was actually to start the roof of the run. Plan to cable across the span every few feet and then zip tie some netting to it. The one thing I haven't gotten yet is eye bolts. Sort of crucial to all of this. Haha.

Crimper....clamps have bolts/nuts, better IMO cause I always had to move them.

Interesting to use cable to hold up the netting...will your framing take the tension?