Coop Project: Maken the Plunge & Getting Chickens

[Rock Home Isle]

GOTTA agree with ya on this! Been sitting here reading your thread and enjoying it to the hilt! I have laughed and grinned and just love your coop! I am new to chickens myself. Never raised them before now. I have Rhode Island Reds, 15 of those and 23 Black Australorps and Sex links. They're straight runs so some of those will not be kept (UNLESS I can't give em up) ;-) Get attached to my critters I raise. Mine are almost a couple months old now. The RIR's are 2 weeks older than the Australorps and sex links. Anyway enjoying this thread and just had to comment on this one!

Thank you for this....I would like to read about your birds and what experiences you've had with them. Shoot me a link, or better yet...post a link to this thread.

Of all the posts in this thread, this one seems to resonate with most poultry people. It is very opinionated and...well it does promote my views.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Here's an iPhone shot of the new girls exploring the yard a week ago or so. They stick together in a pretty tight little group. If they get separated, they will make noise until they are back together and all is well.

Silly birds....

 

[Buffy33]

I have really enjoyed reading your posts. I'm going to get some chickens next year and you have given me a few ideas. I feel for your loss and sorry you had to give up your ducks and Pecker as animals can become family.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

I have had my coop and run for a bit over a year now. Its been a fun year and I have enjoyed some success with my coop design and my husbandry methods.

The coop is definitely large enough for my small flock of 4 birds. I believe that with the footage of floor space coupled with the deep litter system that I run, I could probably have 12 birds in the coop. With the increased numbers of birds, I would have to work the litter in the coop more often and I'd have to cycle litter out twice a year instead of once. But the coop could definitely accommodate 3 times the birds that are in it presently. I run 3 to 4 inches of wood shavings in the run, with no noticeable odors from the flock...that was a very real concern, as the coop and run are directly beneath the deck of my house.



I clean out my coop once a year. It takes 3 wheel barrow loads to empty out 3/4 of the litter volume. Then I remix thoroughly the new litter as it is dumped into the coop. The coop cleans very nicely and it is not a chore to clean with a long handled rake, a flat nosed shovel and wheel barrow. I can have the whole chore completed in 35 minutes start to finish; faster if the wood shavings are already in the yard ready to go and I don't have to look for them in the garage.

I take the old litter and dump into the garden. The girls quickly go to work on it. This year it took a small group of 4 chickens just 4 days to incorporate the entire pile of material into the ground and promote decomposition. Six pullets and two ducklings can move around a lot of leaf material...I saw that first hand last year. But four full grown chickens can move a lot of organic material and do double duty by covering it with earth, its impressive to see. Had I been thinking I would have taken before and after photos...I'll make a note to do that in the future and post the results...I was surprised and impressed.

After all that coop litter went into the garden I felt that I would not have to fertilize my garden for the first time ever. As proof, my plants are growing strong and healthy. I didn't even rototill the garden this year, the ground had been heavily worked by the chickens already, so there was no need.



I did have to string a 2x4 welded wire fence 3 ft tall to keep the girls out of the garden. But that effort was minimal and the pay off was well worth the effort. This year was more an experiment for the garden, so with the anticipation of possible failure I didn't take the extra effort to plant a very nice varied garden like I have in the past. Now I wish that I had...my few plants look great and nothing is showing signs of burning due to the rich nitrogen load from the coop litter. I would have hated to have put a huge effort into the garden just to see all my plants die and whither away. So this was the experimental year...plants present and doing fine. I'll post updated photos for comparison in a day or two.

The yard has definitely suffered from the presence of the poultry. During the winter months this small group of birds will give certain areas of the yard more attention than other parts. This becomes quite visible in the spring when large bald areas became evident. I care about my yard and I like to see a nice field of green when I sit on my deck, sip an ice tea and enjoy a fine dinner with my wife while I watch the flock go about their business in the yard below. So in response to the denuding of certain portions of the yard, I locked the girls up for a week, laid down a nice layer of Pro Planting Mix and reseeded a few areas of the yard.

This effort has been met with mixed reviews. Some areas look great and are coming in fine to wonderful. Other areas the destruction to my precious sward is even more evident. I posted a few images of the reseeded areas...updates will be forth coming soon.

For the hard hit areas, I do have a plan that I need to put in place soon...it will make my wife happy and be pleasing to the eye. All in all I really can't complain, I still have a nice looking yard. The grass is very deep green, I put down a good dose of Revive (Solid Bag Form) this spring which is made from poultry products with additives to help break up the soil colloid and aid in watering. This has paid off noticeably and the droppings from the birds are doing the rest.

I have said this before, I know I'll say it again, "It's great having chickens again." The project has been fun. The flock is happy & healthy; and I have obtained a few replacement birds for the flock, 3 to be exact.

Knock on wood...it looks good.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

I have really enjoyed reading your posts. I'm going to get some chickens next year and you have given me a few ideas. I feel for your loss and sorry you had to give up your ducks and Pecker as animals can become family.

Thank you for your post. It is indeed nice to hear that people are reading the thread and enjoying the content. More importantly I hope that there is good usable information that others can use with their own home flocks. My family kept chickens and ducks when I was growing up, my wife's family did the same. We both enjoy having a small flock of chickens running around the yard.

I would like to hear how your flock does once you get started. Start a thread about your flock and post a link, I'd like to follow along as you embark on your poultry journey.

 

[Buffy33]

I will but it probably will be next year now

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Here's a photo set to compare the reseeding project.



Here is the same location 14 days later. The grass was coming in nice and even until the chickens decided to do some scratching on the area in the foreground...so I raked it out smooth and I'll have to either lay sod or reseed.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

The garden area is a real surprise...I was more expecting the ground to be to hot after I dumped almost a year's worth of coop litter onto the ground and let the chickens incorporate it into the soil.



Without additional fertilizer...only a shot of chicken manure and composted wood shavings...I was pleasantly surprised by some pretty decent results in 18 days. Two of the plants already have little green tomatoes, several of the bell peppers have blooms and its not even July yet.



I would like to make it clear that normally my garden does NOT look this way. I did not put a lot of effort into the plantings for the simple reason that I had LOW expectations of my results. In hind site...I wish that I had done my usual sets...I'm really going to miss my eggplants this fall.

 

[itstrist]

I know this thread is pretty old, but I read it all. I loved your story. I was just wondering if you could post the dimensions of your run and how much would and welded wire you used and the height of it! thanks so much

 

[Rock Home Isle]

The run measure 9' x 12'...the welded wire is 2" x 4" and is 5 ' high.

The platform that the coop was built on was, I believe 4' x 6' marine plywood.

I hope that helps. Sorry I did not get back to you sooner.