The Army moved us a couple hundred miles from one city to another and instead of selling our chickens, we brought them with us. The house we moved into needed a lot of work so focusing on the house, I just released my chickens into our new barn and told them to "have at it". They had the run of the place and did me a favor of at least laying their eggs in the milk crates we positioned throughout the barn. They ended up roosting wherever they could find a spot which included my tractor and our side by side (4x4) and up in the rafters (9' high). I felt bad as I wanted them to have a nice place, but that wasn't happening until now (2 years later).
We wanted to give our old hens a new home and increase the size of our flock, but I about choked when I saw the price of a 10x20 on-site building, so we decided to partition our barn. We were hesitant to partition our 30x50 barn because it sits up on a higher elevation than our house and we're not getting any younger
. But, the cost of a new building is too much
. To help make it a little easier on us, I'm going to eventually make some terraced steps from our house up to the barn where the chickens will live.
I've enclosed some pictures of our progress thus far. I started on this last Thursday.
Here's a shot of our barn up on the hill.
The coop inside will be 20x10 with the ceiling going up to 12'. I added some 4x4s and tied them into the existing 2x6 rafters. I also built them a 2x4 roost.
Here's a picture of my beautiful wife about to nail up a 2x6. Once we had a nail in it to hold it up, I came back and added two lag screws in each end of the 2x6.
On Saturday we got hit by a significant amount of rain in Middle Tennessee; Here's just a little glimpse of the rain coming down on Saturday. The sound was especially deafening inside our metal barn
You can see it's a lot darker in this shot and there's water seeping into my coop
. I've got a solution to this problem, but it will have to wait til we get a break in the rain. In this picture my son is grinding off some screws which penetrated the opposite side of the boards. We also added some 2x4s at about a 45 degree angle to provide support to the chicken wire. I wanted to be sure to have this support so the chicken wire wouldn't be easy to bend or stretch when little kids come by to see the chickens.
In this picture you can see we just added the frame of our 5' door. This will be the only access to our coop.
My youngest daughter swam up our hill
to see what was going on; she ended up digging me a small trench to help route the water out of the barn--she's a sweetie!
Well, it's late Saturday and here's where we stand currently. My son is going to start adding the chicken wire while I'm at work and I'll assist when I get back around 1700.
We will get this all chicken wired, Lord willing, by Monday night. Depending how much my son gets finished. I've decided I'm going to partition off this coop with one side for my older flock and the other side for the younger flock I now have cramped up in my garage. Once they've had a few weeks to hear, see and smell each other I'll take out the wall and commence with the socializing!
I'll add more photos soon.
Thanks to you all for your great ideas! I'm going to begin collecting the water that comes off my barn and fill up an old water tank I have; I'll then use this to gravity feed water via some PVC pipe using the Farmtek nipples to dispense water for the chickens. I LOVE this idea I obtained from BYC contributors.
TTYL
CJ
We wanted to give our old hens a new home and increase the size of our flock, but I about choked when I saw the price of a 10x20 on-site building, so we decided to partition our barn. We were hesitant to partition our 30x50 barn because it sits up on a higher elevation than our house and we're not getting any younger
I've enclosed some pictures of our progress thus far. I started on this last Thursday.
Here's a shot of our barn up on the hill.
The coop inside will be 20x10 with the ceiling going up to 12'. I added some 4x4s and tied them into the existing 2x6 rafters. I also built them a 2x4 roost.
Here's a picture of my beautiful wife about to nail up a 2x6. Once we had a nail in it to hold it up, I came back and added two lag screws in each end of the 2x6.
On Saturday we got hit by a significant amount of rain in Middle Tennessee; Here's just a little glimpse of the rain coming down on Saturday. The sound was especially deafening inside our metal barn
You can see it's a lot darker in this shot and there's water seeping into my coop
In this picture you can see we just added the frame of our 5' door. This will be the only access to our coop.
My youngest daughter swam up our hill
Well, it's late Saturday and here's where we stand currently. My son is going to start adding the chicken wire while I'm at work and I'll assist when I get back around 1700.
We will get this all chicken wired, Lord willing, by Monday night. Depending how much my son gets finished. I've decided I'm going to partition off this coop with one side for my older flock and the other side for the younger flock I now have cramped up in my garage. Once they've had a few weeks to hear, see and smell each other I'll take out the wall and commence with the socializing!
I'll add more photos soon.
Thanks to you all for your great ideas! I'm going to begin collecting the water that comes off my barn and fill up an old water tank I have; I'll then use this to gravity feed water via some PVC pipe using the Farmtek nipples to dispense water for the chickens. I LOVE this idea I obtained from BYC contributors.
TTYL
CJ
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