We began construction of our new coop yesterday!
We spent a lot of time looking at some various designs. I had already tried my hand at making a chicken tractor based on a picture I saw on the web and it actually turned out pretty well:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/655750/our-stagecoach-clone
Because of "chicken math" and my stupidity, I now have a whopping total of 19 chickens to get a home for.
Our original six, the Red Stars, are perfectly happy in their portable tractor (as long as I let them out to free range). However, we have since acquired 8 Wheaten Marans chicks and 5 Orpington chicks and the brooder isn't getting any bigger!
I kept going back to a design I saw on one of my favorite chicken books. Maybe you've seen it too! I'm sure most of you guys have read this one:
Anyway, I kind of liked the coop yard combo in that little coop on the left hand side of the cover. I imagined what the dimensions might be:
I loved how it had a covered run/yard and the same roof was utilized for the chicken house itself. I think I can do that. Seems like the design would be pretty basic. I had some old telephone poles that had been lying around for over ten years, and also some metal roofing material left over from when we built our house.
So, after a days work and a lot of trial and error, this is what we ended up with:
The telephone poles might be overdoing it a little, but after contemplating using a 2x2 frame and remembering the nice little hurricanes we get here in Florida, and since the poles were the best price (FREE!) we went for strength and stability!
I even used 2x8's on the house base and roof frame because I already had them lying around under an old storage building doing nothing.
The window is an extra old bathroom window that I've had laying around in storage since forever. I wish it wan't frosted glass.
How much would it cost to get the glass replaced with just some regular window glass if I took it in to a window/glass shop?
What we need to do is frame in the nesting boxes which will go along the back.
Also, I plan to have a raised platform (2.5 ft wide) off the ground along the back set at the same height of the floor of the hen house,
(did that make any sense?) and that will give the birds even more sq footage of covered yard space. That also means I will be extending the roof another couple of feet off the back as well.
Right now, the dimensions are about 9'x9' but with the raised platform section in the back that I plan to add we should be closer to 12x12 of yard space when we're done!
I had a very old dock/walkway laying around for about 8 years. It was part of some lumber that I took when someone was dismantaling a few docks and things but I never had a use for it. I thought it might be just what i needed to add sq footage to the coop.
Here it is attached to the back:
YAY! 3 more feet of ground space!! (just not really any rain cover on that portion since the added section is slats with spaces between them)
We added some boards along the bottom for something to attach the wire to and to maybe keep in sand if that's the direction we decide to go. I'm not dealing with level ground here, so I'm not sure if sand is going to work in a box like this.
Slowly making progress!
We got the back, sides and front up! We had a bunch of old plywood around our place stored under a few buildings, and so far our costs on wood has been almost nothing (not quite, but almost) !
We also got the door framed out today:
We hinged the bottom half of the side walls to allow access into the the hen house for cleaning or whatever;
And we even got the two eight foot long roosts set up and ready to go:
(this view is seen through the open right side door)
(laying boxes will be added later in the back wall)
See that gap in the bottom of the far side door there in the picture above? That is the opening for the clean out drawer! Both sides will have a four foot drawer that make up the bottom of the hen house.
Around the top, we dropped the walls a few inches for ventilation, and added hardware cloth. We did this on all four sides.
We are almost ready to add the sand! My teenage sons are so excited! They can't wait to put down their video games and computers and come outside in the wonderful hot humid Florida sunshine and shovel a bunch of sand into the chicken run! Every day they look out with glee upon what awaits them:
Update July 2nd
Sand!
We've got the sand unloaded and spread out and my boys enjoyed toiling in the hot Florida sun! It really wasn't that hard and didn't take that long.
Now we're ready to start hanging wire!
(I hope I won't be wishing I had painted first!
We spent a lot of time looking at some various designs. I had already tried my hand at making a chicken tractor based on a picture I saw on the web and it actually turned out pretty well:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/655750/our-stagecoach-clone
Because of "chicken math" and my stupidity, I now have a whopping total of 19 chickens to get a home for.
Our original six, the Red Stars, are perfectly happy in their portable tractor (as long as I let them out to free range). However, we have since acquired 8 Wheaten Marans chicks and 5 Orpington chicks and the brooder isn't getting any bigger!
I kept going back to a design I saw on one of my favorite chicken books. Maybe you've seen it too! I'm sure most of you guys have read this one:
Anyway, I kind of liked the coop yard combo in that little coop on the left hand side of the cover. I imagined what the dimensions might be:
I loved how it had a covered run/yard and the same roof was utilized for the chicken house itself. I think I can do that. Seems like the design would be pretty basic. I had some old telephone poles that had been lying around for over ten years, and also some metal roofing material left over from when we built our house.
So, after a days work and a lot of trial and error, this is what we ended up with:
The telephone poles might be overdoing it a little, but after contemplating using a 2x2 frame and remembering the nice little hurricanes we get here in Florida, and since the poles were the best price (FREE!) we went for strength and stability!
I even used 2x8's on the house base and roof frame because I already had them lying around under an old storage building doing nothing.
The window is an extra old bathroom window that I've had laying around in storage since forever. I wish it wan't frosted glass.
How much would it cost to get the glass replaced with just some regular window glass if I took it in to a window/glass shop?
What we need to do is frame in the nesting boxes which will go along the back.
Also, I plan to have a raised platform (2.5 ft wide) off the ground along the back set at the same height of the floor of the hen house,
(did that make any sense?) and that will give the birds even more sq footage of covered yard space. That also means I will be extending the roof another couple of feet off the back as well.
Right now, the dimensions are about 9'x9' but with the raised platform section in the back that I plan to add we should be closer to 12x12 of yard space when we're done!
Update June 20th
I had a very old dock/walkway laying around for about 8 years. It was part of some lumber that I took when someone was dismantaling a few docks and things but I never had a use for it. I thought it might be just what i needed to add sq footage to the coop.
Here it is attached to the back:
YAY! 3 more feet of ground space!! (just not really any rain cover on that portion since the added section is slats with spaces between them)
We added some boards along the bottom for something to attach the wire to and to maybe keep in sand if that's the direction we decide to go. I'm not dealing with level ground here, so I'm not sure if sand is going to work in a box like this.
Update June 29th
Slowly making progress!
We got the back, sides and front up! We had a bunch of old plywood around our place stored under a few buildings, and so far our costs on wood has been almost nothing (not quite, but almost) !
We also got the door framed out today:
We hinged the bottom half of the side walls to allow access into the the hen house for cleaning or whatever;
And we even got the two eight foot long roosts set up and ready to go:
(this view is seen through the open right side door)
(laying boxes will be added later in the back wall)
See that gap in the bottom of the far side door there in the picture above? That is the opening for the clean out drawer! Both sides will have a four foot drawer that make up the bottom of the hen house.
Around the top, we dropped the walls a few inches for ventilation, and added hardware cloth. We did this on all four sides.
We are almost ready to add the sand! My teenage sons are so excited! They can't wait to put down their video games and computers and come outside in the wonderful hot humid Florida sunshine and shovel a bunch of sand into the chicken run! Every day they look out with glee upon what awaits them:
Update July 2nd
Sand!
We've got the sand unloaded and spread out and my boys enjoyed toiling in the hot Florida sun! It really wasn't that hard and didn't take that long.
Now we're ready to start hanging wire!
(I hope I won't be wishing I had painted first!
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