finally finished the shanty

[sangel4you]

nice pages! Lol I had to laugh when u said ur DH was "this close to eating them all" because my DH had been saying that multiple times a day EVERYday we worked on the coop. Everytime we got stuck he's say "I know what we can do...eat 'em! Then we have the problem solved!" LMAO. And now we just added a separation last night for a new roo...ha ha and of course it started again...

 

[fiberart57]

I'm using this thread to tell my coop story so thanks for listening or reading. I planned on getting three chickens, all grown up, so I built a really cute, and I mean cute, little coop using cedar planks and caulk and furring strips. Total floor area is a little over 12 square feet, perfectly adequate for three chickens.
Well, there were no adult chickens available so after researching what was needed to raise chicks I went to our local ranch supply store and talked to the "animal welfare" expert about chickens. It was recommended that I get twice as many as I want because about half of them die. I should mention that they receive 500 - 36 hour old chicks twice a week during chick season so it made sense to me. After hesitating I bought five (5). Okay, thinks I - I'll just gut through the deaths. Then my neighbor, another chicken minded individual who has lost the number of the person he ordered six from and is a week overdue to pick them up decides to get six. So now there are 11 in a box in the front room. That was eight weeks ago and there are still 11 chicks (that's right - zero mortality) and the woman my neighbor ordered from found him and he has five three month old chicks - for a grand total of 16. He's convinced me to take in a couple of his and we're about to separate the flock just waiting for the little ones to get a little bigger.

The very long winded point of this is that my ultra - cute and effective little coop which would have been fine for three birds is woefully inadequate for seven besides being made out of cedar which I understand is a no - no. All eleven live in it at night despite being in a backyard in a closed run and when I let them out in the morning it's a stampede and they do laps around the run.

So now I have to build yet another coop, which makes me tired just thinking about it so I hope that I can do a quality job.
Thanks.
Mary

 

[cmom]

Nice coop. Chicken are addictive!!!