Getting an old tortoise shed for our coop!

[mamarose]

We have friends who are selling their house and leaving the country, and so they're having to give away their pet giant tortoise. He had his own shed attached to the house, and they are offering it to us to convert to a chicken coop.... if we are able to move it! It's 6' x 10', raised off the ground by about a foot on concrete blocks, and about 4' - 5' tall with a shed roof. We have 10 chicks, and the possibility of 2 - 4 more. This should be plenty of space.

It's airtight, because the tortoise needed to be kept warm, so we'll need to add lots of ventilation. And obviously, we'll need to add nesting boxes and roosts. But that's IT! Aside from moving it, of course.

I'm very excited. It's not exactly what we were *planning* to build -- we wanted one we could walk into (and my DH is 6'5"), and we were going to just do a dirt floor, but still. Even if we end up building something new next year or the year after, at least we'll be doing it with the benefit of some experience with chickens, and we'll have more time to think about it without the deadline of chicks outgrowing the brooder.

Now, we just have to rent a trailer and figure out how to move the darn thing onto and off it......

 

[MotherJean]

Hello Neighbor! I'm in Anacortes. Congrats on your wonderful find. Moving it will be a bit of a challenge. Instead of renting a flatbed trailer and enlisting the help of a half dozen big burly longshoremen, I wonder if a towing company would be willing to move it for you? Those new tow trucks are flatbeds that tip down to the ground and literally drag the car up onto it. That shed certainly wouldn't be as heavy as a car. Getting it off the truck may require using some sort of rollers - like long pieces of pipe. That's how the pyramid builders moved those heavy slabs of stone. The low-tech, low cost way, of course, is to dismantle, move, and reassemble. Just a couple of thoughts....