Coop Reconstruction All suggestions and help welcome (IMAGE HEAVY)

[bairo]

Sounds like either you have planned for it or it has been said. My biggest worry would be mold, but it looks as if you are ripping all the water damaged stuff and old insulation out. My only other thought is using sand floor in such a cold climate. Sand is a really nice coop floor in warmer weather but is a super conductor of cold.

 

[bobbi-j]

Wow! You do have a job ahead of you - what a great find! Ditto on keeping the nest boxes. I suppose mold could be a problem, but I would bet that any potential chicken germs have died a long time ago. I agree that you need to think of ventilation. I would try to have the windows so you could open or even possibly remove them during the spring, summer and fall months so your chickens can have plenty of fresh air when they're inside roosting at night. You can cover the openings with hardware cloth. I would also suggest that you don't really need any insulation. If your chickens are in a draft-free coop, they'll be fine in the winter. For one thing, rodents can live in your insulated walls. A friend of mine had an old trailer house (insulated) as her chicken coop and a mink ended up living between the inside and outside walls and killed several of her chickens before she figured it out. Just my 2 cents' worth. Enjoyr your new project!

 

[ontimeborzoi]

What a great find...a lot of work, a lot of potential!
One thought....you don't really need to build a wall to divide it...this is one of the few places you can actually use chicken wire! LOL Cheap, makes a great divider. And if you were to build panels with chicken wire, you could reconfigure the inside of the coop with minimal labor, should your needs change.
Just a thought....

 

[Sweetened]

beach livin' :

$50,000

, i cant believe it. You cant buy a 1/2acre here for that.

$400.00 per acre in this part of the prairies. You have to compete with GMO canola mind you, which is the only thing that really agitates me.​

 

[Sweetened]

Quote:
Thanks Wildside! Ventilation is something i was reading about this weekend! Now the test is designing it. I'll have to keep in mind the winters and the winds out here, but I have made this a major factor in my plan. I will be adding it to my list! Thanks for mentioning this and for your hints.

The nest boxes thing is interesting. I've got several books on chickens and each one says a slightly different thing ranging from 1 nest per 4 hens to 4 nests per hen! Oi! Jury is out it seems! I will make space considerations and go from there.

 

[Ole rooster]

The very first thing I would do is put on a new roof. What ever it took. That will give you a dry, pretty large place to work.

The nest boxes look in good shape. I would take those outside on a dry season clean um real well and spray with a Clorox/water mixture and let it dry and fumigate itself. Then you know you are starting your time with the boxes with clean and sanitary ones.

Everything else is just do what you have or want to do. But first get yourself a dry place to work. You really are lucky to have such a place to work with. But it's all messed up being stuck in Canada.

And what's a GMO canola. Is that something Canadian?

 

[Sweetened]

Quote:
New Roof is a huge priority! I'm trying to source off pieces of shingles from someone I know who works at a building supply place. We're seeing what I can come up with on the cheap there.

GMO = Genetically Modified Organism. Over 80% of all Canola crops in the US and Canada are GMO

 

[Fenika]

The concrete section might have been a feed area for cattle. Hard to say though...

And I agree with Ole about cleaning and spraying. You can wear a respirator mask and sand them down too, so nothing hides in the cracks. Or maybe disassemble, knock out the walls between every pair of boxes, then reassemble. A little extra work, but you have the wood all cut and ready to reassemble. You can replace the nest-floor boards if they are really nasty and clean the rest. If you knock out the walls (with or without disassembling) between two nests, you'll have a long box with two openings, which your hens should love. Many like to nest together, and they can always run for it if a bully shows up at one entrance window.

 

[Fenika]

Did anyone mention the floor? I would dig it out as much as possible, then fill it in with something clean, and sand on top. Even if you are going to bed with something. You don't want them scratching down to the old layer and kicking up molds or nasties, some of which live for yearrrrrs. You can disinfect wood, but not a ton of dirt.

The stuff you dig up can go for compost away from the animals. With heat and time, bacteria and such die...

 

[Sweetened]

Floor is on my list! I will be doing a deep litter method -- was going to use sand but it was suggested in a prior post that sand is not good for cold weather regions, so I'm reconsidering what to use there.