So, when I had chickens before I kept them all in the big barn with little predator problems. I'm a little bit paranoid now after seeing an owl in my yard in the middle of the night for about an hour. To make sure my chicks this spring are going to be safe, I'm redoing a small portion of our barn into a fort knox coop and run. Anyways, I'm in the process of cleaning out this nasty old goat feeder where my parents left a bunch of old barn stuff. I've gotten the first layer of stuff off, and I'm pretty sure there's a huge nest of mice in it! YUCK! When I first cleaned out the whole barn (for the chickens I had before) I found a trash can with like twenty mice at least in it and it was not pleasant. I'm going to get the whole thing really cleaned out so that I can try to keep mice out once it's finished. Right now I'm giving my mousers an hour or so to catch whatever's in the feeder.
On a sidenote, my plans look like they're going to work. The area I'm turning into the coop used to have pigeons in it, and the rest of the area was just a storagey area. I'm going to turn the pigeon loft into a roost and towards the back of it I'll keep their food and water (I'll have water outside as well. The storage area is going to be where the brooder is (I've raised chicks in their in a brooder before about four times). I'm also going to have a few metal trash cans for food, scratch, and anything else mice might get into. The floor of the entire area is going to be concrete. I'm going to add a wire cloth roof over the whole little coop area. The outside will have a run that'll be about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. I'm going to split it in half and half the closest half to the coop be roofed with predator proof wire (the whole run will be predator proof), and half of that area will have a metal roof for when it rains. That half will be for when I'm not home. The whole run will be bordered with concrete and around the concrete I'll put old concrete blocks I have from my dad (he's a concrete mason so he has tons of concrete block scraps). Hopefully I can get all this done by the time sprint rolls around!
I'm going to get four wyandottes, all different colors. I'm hoping I get one rooster, but if not I might add one.
On a sidenote, my plans look like they're going to work. The area I'm turning into the coop used to have pigeons in it, and the rest of the area was just a storagey area. I'm going to turn the pigeon loft into a roost and towards the back of it I'll keep their food and water (I'll have water outside as well. The storage area is going to be where the brooder is (I've raised chicks in their in a brooder before about four times). I'm also going to have a few metal trash cans for food, scratch, and anything else mice might get into. The floor of the entire area is going to be concrete. I'm going to add a wire cloth roof over the whole little coop area. The outside will have a run that'll be about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. I'm going to split it in half and half the closest half to the coop be roofed with predator proof wire (the whole run will be predator proof), and half of that area will have a metal roof for when it rains. That half will be for when I'm not home. The whole run will be bordered with concrete and around the concrete I'll put old concrete blocks I have from my dad (he's a concrete mason so he has tons of concrete block scraps). Hopefully I can get all this done by the time sprint rolls around!
I'm going to get four wyandottes, all different colors. I'm hoping I get one rooster, but if not I might add one.
