Diary of my North Texas Chicken Adventure....Guidance and input welcome!

[ellie32526]

Thanks TXChicmum! I'd love to see pics of your setup. I thought about buying a shed from home depot but that wouldn't help me keep busy until I can actually have chics so I am going to try to stick build.

Question for anyone. I know the coop should be predator proof, does the run need to be as tight? Meaning does the wire need to be buried to prevent digging, etc? I see tractors often and I'm thinking that those can't be that tight so that maybe if the coop itself is tight the run can be less so?

I would say it depends on what is your situation. Are you at home during the day or gone? Do you have neighborhood dogs to protect your hens from? Are you near a highway, that might present a hazard if your hens got out? I guess what I'm saying is perform a threat assessment of sorts. Everyone will be different because of where we live presents different dangers. My yard has plastic bird netting over top because I work during the day and I left my chicks in the hen house yard while they were still small. I didn't want my mom to have to worry about hawks swooping down and flying off with my chicks when they were outside in the yard. The plastic won't last a long time but my hens are big enough now that I am not as worried about hawks. My house has a pop door and a drawbridge type ramp that folds up at night. So nothing can get into my pop door. All my windows have hardware cloth over them. We did put concrete around the fence and buried it about 6 inches under ground, just to deter my own dogs from digging under the fence. There is also concrete about 6 inches deep along the 6 foot wooden privacy fence that runs along the outer edge of the yard to deter neighborhood dogs. They could still get in if they are determined enough. Hope that helps. My pics are on my profile page. You can look if you are interested. I don't have a pic of the ramp yet.

 

[dpenning]

I would say it depends on what is your situation. Are you at home during the day or gone? Do you have neighborhood dogs to protect your hens from? Are you near a highway, that might present a hazard if your hens got out? I guess what I'm saying is perform a threat assessment of sorts. Everyone will be different because of where we live presents different dangers. My yard has plastic bird netting over top because I work during the day and I left my chicks in the hen house yard while they were still small. I didn't want my mom to have to worry about hawks swooping down and flying off with my chicks when they were outside in the yard. The plastic won't last a long time but my hens are big enough now that I am not as worried about hawks. My house has a pop door and a drawbridge type ramp that folds up at night. So nothing can get into my pop door. All my windows have hardware cloth over them. We did put concrete around the fence and buried it about 6 inches under ground, just to deter my own dogs from digging under the fence. There is also concrete about 6 inches deep along the 6 foot wooden privacy fence that runs along the outer edge of the yard to deter neighborhood dogs. They could still get in if they are determined enough. Hope that helps. My pics are on my profile page. You can look if you are interested. I don't have a pic of the ramp yet.

Nice setup! I like your barrel waterer, does it capture enough rain or do you fill it?

 

[ellie32526]

Nice setup! I like your barrel waterer, does it capture enough rain or do you fill it?

I fill it when it gets low with the water hose. I thought about capturing rain water but I would also be letting in other bacteria so I decided to just use my tap water and add ACV and garlic.

 

[dpenning]

Ok, I've decided I'm going to order a 10 x 12 portable building as my base building for my coop and I've decided on the location. The nice thing about the portable building is they are good solid construction so they can be moved later if we want to re-locate the chickens after we build our house and if I build out the inside right using vinyl and PDZ (think that is what the letters were) on the poop board if I decide chicken keeping isn't for me we can always use the building for storage later.

Now I have to research the best base for the run and decide exactly how I want to build it out. I would like to do the prep for the foundation all at once. I'm thinking of having a load of gravel delivered to be the base under the portable building, they use cinder blocks to level it and recommend the gravel base. I think it makes sense to use that as the foundation in the run as well then put wood chips on top.

Going to go research that part now.


Pics to follow.

 

[dpenning]

This will be the view from our front porch, so we will be seeing the side of the coop with a window. It will do a nice job of blocking the neighbors.

It is hard to see but there are pink flags on the fence to show the corners and there is a tape measure going around the tall steak and a smaller tent stake on the back side to show the outline. The side will be the 10 foot, the front will be 12.

View from what the front of the coop will be. I can build a run off to the left under the tree and I can also put a pop door in the back to allow the girls to "free range" in the fenced back yard when we are out there to supervise.



And finally, this is the shed I have decided on. It will take them two weeks to build to my specs so that will give me a couple of weekends to get the base built and figure out the runs.



In addition to the two windows on the front I am going to have windows put on the ends as this is Texas and the prevailing winds will be from out of the south which would be that left side.

It has 8' ceilings so I'm thinking of having the two end windows put as high up as possible and mounted horizontally so it can be out of the way of the roost and nest boxes. I'm also debating the double door. One door would be 36" and enough to get a wheel barrow through so It might give me more wall space. Anyone have any thoughts on any of those options?

 

[ellie32526]

I fill it when it gets low with the water hose. I thought about capturing rain water but I would also be letting in other bacteria so I decided to just use my tap water and add ACV and garlic.

I wanted to let you know I stopped using the rain barrel during the summer because we adde some PVC pipes and nipples to the barrel system, but when it was hot my chickens didn't want anything to do with the water in the nipples and the PVC. Maybe it got too hot, maybe they just couldn't get enough water out of them, so the barrel and nipples are just sitting there not being used now. I have added extra one gallon waterers. I freeze small containers of water and add one to each one gallon waterer every morning. The water stays cool most of the day. I'm going to go back to using my barrel for rain water collection and watering my garden.

 

[dpenning]

Thanks for the update! I've been thinking about gutters on the shed when I get it just to keep the water out of the run so I may try it anyway but it is good to know to keep an eye out for that problem.

I've actually decided to go big so I e-mailed my specs to the shed manufacturer for a 10 x 14 and i'm going to leave the windows on the ends at normal height. I searched on the forum and found some girls liked sitting in front of the windows and I should have enough roost space so they can choose to or not. Also went with the double doors. I can always leave one closed and locked. Go Friday to sign the papers and leave a deposit, then 2 weeks later I should have a base coop to start building out.

Also ordered an ADOR automatic door. Starting to get excited.

 

[dpenning]

I read online about long wait times for the Ador automatic door but I guess I didn't look at the dates on the posts. I ordered the door a week or so ago and it arrived today! Of course I still have 2-3 weeks to wait for the shed that is going to become the coop… I started out looking at 10 x 12, then figured 10 x 14 was only a little bit more, but when I was at the dealer they only had 10 x 16 on the lot to look at…. I couldn't visualize the smaller shed…. so ordered 10 x 16. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it! Of course I only want about 6-8 hens initially but I've read so much about chicken math...

 

[dpenning]

Location has been decided and I've spent months looking at everyone's coop builds that are awesome but I had to admit to myself that I had neither the time nor skills to build from scratch so I ordered my shed last week. I started looking at something like an 8 x 10, then found 10 x 12 seemed to be a standard size, but then when I started looking at the incremental cost for just a few more feet I wound up going with a 10 x 16. I figure even though I only want a few hens (6-8) to start with I don't want to have to make another purchase when chicken math kicks in so I'll start just using a section as a coop and the rest as brooder and storage.

The shed was ordered last week and they said it would take 2-3 weeks to be delivered. Today we had a load of gravel delivered and we built our pad. The shed is a portable building so it is built on a very solid foundation on skids so this is just really to keep it out of the dirt.

The pad is a little oversize but in this location I can put runs to the left right or back depending on how I configure the coop space inside.

Next steps, wait for the shed, buy the blackjack for the whole floor, pull down all the extra wood that is in our attic. The previous owner had furniture crates up there that I'm going to use to build the nest boxes and there is quite a bit of 1 x 2's that I can use to frame the coop in. Now to sit, wait and design the interior.

 

[ellie32526]

You may not be interested but I wanted to share this great idea that I saw somewhere on this site I think. The coop was in the middle and there was a yard all the way around the coop with one yard extending from each side. There were gates to each yard so the keeper could open the desired gate and rotate the hens to different yards. The lady had a garden in one yard each year, then after harvest she let the chickens in there. I don't know if my description makes sense, but it was pretty cool. The chickens fertilized the garden each year. I wish I had thought of that before I set mine up.