Hello from Allegany, Co. Maryland

Flora Vale Fowl

Chirping
7 Years
Apr 16, 2013
46
19
99
Mount Savage, MD
My Coop
My Coop
Hello All.
Our first post here.
From the far NW corner of Allegany County, in western Maryland. Located in Mount Savage, about a mile outside of town. We live on about six acres, but only about 2 is workable, the rest being hill sides and rocks. We have about 2500 sq foot of organic gardens, give or take, depending on the season. We call our land Flora Vale.

We have thought about getting chickens for some time. Gone back and forth. We are professional artists and work craft shows for a living. So traveling regularly and live in a wild area with lots of predators. Also, we, my wife and I, are both very wired for agriculture, (I grew up around a cattle farm in Texas) and worried that getting poultry would be a slippery slope for us. However, with our daughter turning ten this year, we knew it was now or never, and off we went.

We knew we would need a rock steady and heavily predator proof coop and run, close to the house. So after leveling three other areas, we settled on surrendering one of our 16'X16' garden beds to the birds. A Pallet wood coop in one corner, with the rest in a run, with lots of extra wire for safety.

We decided that with our busy schedules, we didn't want to raise our own chicks. We have a friend with chickens, who were raising a couple of leghorns to replace loses. So, we asked them to get few for us, and so there are two Leghorns and two Golden Laced Wyandottes waiting on us. We

We make our living as Professional, full time, Mask Makers. Yep, you read that right. We sell at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and various Fairy Festival here in the Mid-Atlantic States, as well as online.

You can see our art at our out of date, primary website: http://www.mythicalmasks.com
Or even better, is our Etsy Store, which is our instock items: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MythicalDesigns
Yes, with all this, we know there are Chicken Masks in our future.

So, first post. Howdy Ya'll. Here is our Coop to date. Finishing this week:
Blessings,
Shane Odom.

 
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Greetings from Kansas, Flora Vale Farm, and
welcome-byc.gif
! Great to have you with us! That was a really great intro - and that's a super looking coop! Best wishes to you and your poultry odyssey!
 
The plan is for Dirt Floors. Flag stone edging around the undersides of the walls. Like a footer. Hardware cloth buried in a trench around the outside, lapping up the sides o the coop, then stone edging against the coop. One thing we have a lot of is stone. I'll do the same with the attached run. Over the hardware cloth, will be tarpaper, because up here in the mountains...well, it's an Appalachian joke. Then siding over the tar paper. Inside. Infill the bottom six inches of the pallets with stones and gravel, to dissuade mice coming up. Stuff walls with the old Styrofoam insulation we have been hoarding. Then, panel interior in more scrap ply. Hardware cloth over vents on NW and SE walls, and over soffit vents between rafters. Diggers don't dig deep on our mountain. Below eight inches, it's packed clay and rocks, followed by worse. The softest points, will be the windows, which left hand wall in this pic and open into the run, so predator will have to go through there first, then windows.
 

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