Hello from Anderson Indiana!

[RichardR]

Hello everyone, I am a brand new forum member just dropping a few lines to introduce myself.

My name is Richard of course & I am from Anderson Indiana, I do live within the City limits & our City does have a no-livestock ordinance, so me being me & not taking "NO" as an acceptable answer I started bugging the Mayor & City Council for an exemption, heck even some of my fellow Andersonians got involved & started a petition drive on my behalf, alas though we had no success, however just the other day I was reading some mid-90's case law & came across an appellate ruling in Barnes v. City of Anderson, this particular case involved a pot-bellied pig but the courts decision basically made the distinction between commercial live-stock farming vs keeping "live-stock" animals as pets, which the court ruled the ordinance allowed, talk about persistence paying off!

Anyway so I've been trying to study up on coop designs & stuff, there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of "free" ones out on the entarwebz but I think I have a firm grasp on the basics things that need to be incorporated into a coop and I can probably design & build a coop that both I & the chickens would be happy with.

I haven't started the actual construction yet but here are a few photos of the area where I have chosen to build my coop & run, the area is heavily shaded 24/7/365 so I thought that would be a nice cool place in the summer & it'd also be somewhat sheltered in the winter, I marked out the area with landscaping timbers.

I am looking forward to getting to know all of you, hopefully I'll have more "in progress" photos to post when I get the chance to get out there and build a bit.

 

[ghillie]

 

[DebsChicks]

Welcome!

And good on you for your persistence!

 

[RichardR]

Thanks for the welcomes Ghillie & DebsChicks!

Yes the persistence will hopefully be rewarded with a nice coop filled with happy & healthy yard birds & hopefully maybe even some fresh eggs on our breakfast plates.

I think I have settled on my coop's design, it's still at the rough sketch phase but I am rather pleased with it's design, it's only 32 sq ft but then again I am only planning on housing a few standard sized hens in it so it should be plenty big enough for my needs.

 

[wolftracks]

from California

AND GOOD WORK!!!

You're going to love being owned by chickens!

 

[RichardR]

Thanks Wolftracks!

Please don't make fun of my awful artistic skills but here is the coop design I have been working on, this first one is the rough draft so not everything is to scale & there probably isn't a straight line in the whole mess, but it is the general idea of what I want to do.

And here is a more refined "blue-print" type sketch that I am going to be working from, both right & left sides are exactly the same so I didn't think I needed to draw them twice & on the front I chose to go with 2 vents instead of the 3 in my original sketch, I also changed the dimensions of the nesting box access panels (which are also the food & water access panels on the opposite side).

I am sorry for the awful quality of my drawings but hopefully a few of you folks can decipher the type of coop that I am thinking about building & maybe give me some pointers or advice or something.

 

[Chickaholic]

from Washington!! KUDOS FOR THE PERSISTENCE!! There are lots of ideas for coops on this site and really good ones too! Good luck with all of this!!! Don't give up!!

 

[RichardR]

Thanks Chickaholic! & no I definitely won't give up!

I am really pretty excited about finally being able to build a coop & keep some backyard birds, I am guessing that the Mayor & City Council are probably glad I won't be driving them "cuckoo" about allowing me to keep chickens anymore too!

Granted I am still refining my coop design but I think it'll turn out pretty decent, my main goal is keeping the chickens happy & healthy but I am also adding little innovations to help keep maintenance time spent cleaning it to a minimum, like a pull-out plastic poop board, that I can simply wash off with the hose, allow to dry and then slide back in under the perches, speaking of perches, they have been redesigned so that when I open the main rear coop access hatch they come out along with the hatch for easy cleaning, just little stuff like that will help keep down the amount of labor involved in caring for my birds.

As far as which birds I am going to keep in the coop, I am leaning towards 3-5 barred rock hens or possibly the same number of rhode island red hens, my grandfather used to keep those two and always had really good luck with his.

 

[RichardR]

I got the chance to start construction on my coop today, here is a photo update of my progress.

 

[RichardR]

Update from today.