Done for now: The Forever Coop (Updated 6/5, page 3)

[joebryant]

FANTASTIC! Great planning on many points too.

 

[booger]

Thanks, all.

I rent hubby and his skills out by the hour. Unless it's raining and he's stuck in the house annoying me -- then I pay you to get him out from underfoot.

 

[booger]

A flowerbed in front, into which we dump the old/fouled water. It's just been filled, transplanted, bulbed, and seeded here. We'll perfect and enlarge it after all of the construction is complete.

The small, first part of the run is done. It's only 10' x 10' but it's only the beginning. This small part is the only portion that will be roofed, providing a fresh-air place to hang out in the worst of weather. In the belowe pic, you can see the top portion of the buried I-beam (to prevent digging under).

Here, you can see the framework poles that are welded to the buried I-beam as well as the roof for support. On the far corner, the poles are closer together. That is where the next section of run will start, eventually encircling the kitchen garden.

The completed run is covered in sheet metal along the bottom and chicken wire along the top. Eventually, we'll likely splurge for welded wire but, for now, chicken wire was already on hand, no money out of pocket. Dogs are our main daytime threat, with the nastier things not coming around until nighttime when the birds are shut up tight in the coop.

Just after cutting open the big bird door, they began venturing out, loving the new area to explore. (No, the fan is not staying. That was there to blow away the mosquitoes while I sat "supervising" with the baby.)

 

[booger]

A roost perched above a vinyl-covered droppings board. It does a great job of keeping the litter that much cleaner and it's super easy to scrape clean with a plastic spackle knife. We still need to finish tacking down the edges with trim in this pic.

An external gate into the small, covered run, making it much easier to dump in garden weeds and house slop. This will also be the gate into the larger "garden moat" run once it's completed.

The summer screen door for the birds, large enough to add some more great ventilation and cool, shaded breezes as the heat ramps up. We'll have a solid cover for it before it gets cold.

Open:

And closed:

And that's about it for a few months. There is still plenty to do to it but we have a million other things going on at the moment so further coop & run progress will be slow for a while. I love the way it's turned out. With temps recently up to 100 degrees, it was still deliciously cool in the coop, thanks to insulation, ventilation, and positioning to catch cool, shaded breezes.

Back later with more pics and details when they happen...

 

[annek]

Great job, thanks so much for the posts. Hot weather coops present a whole different set of problems, thanks for your solution!