Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[LeslieDJoyce]

LOL. That cull cage doesn't look bad at all. Spacious and they can see out of it. You might make one for you chosen breeder birds. I would hate to have you kicking yourself because you lost your breeder birds.

I know, right.

I love that cage. It's 25' long, so it's bigger than most people's coops. I can lift the plastic for better views and air flow in nice weather.

Back-up Breeder Male (the one I'm thinking of putting in with the laying flock) is in a coop all by himself, with a decent private pasture. Breeders (breeding females and the sire male) are in a separate coop with private pasture. I think my coops are pretty nice. We built those before I figured out the Modular Cattle Panel, Chicken Wire & T-post coop thing, which is a super fast, easy, and inexpensive way to build a coop. Especially if you have a source for the greenhouse plastic. And if you had a lot of predator pressure you could wrap the cattle panels in hardware cloth instead of chicken wire.

 

[finnfur]

I think my most secure enclosure (from larger predators) is probably the Cull Cage.

No pasture.

Thats the maximum security lockdown > death row

Quote "I just hate having birds locked up in little cages (though the cockerel colony setup is VERY spacious for just one bird), which is why I'm a not a show bird person. Yet."

Yep but I have that deep feeling your headed that way- Show time

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Thats the maximum security lockdown > death row 

Quote "[COLOR=333333]I just hate having birds locked up in little cages (though the cockerel colony setup is VERY spacious for just one bird), which is why I'm a not a show bird person. Yet."[/COLOR]
[COLOR=333333]   [/COLOR]
[COLOR=333333]Yep but I have that deep feeling your headed that way- Show time [/COLOR]

I am going to a youth poultry "thing" this weekend. It's not a show, but it might break the seal.

I'm donating a young trio to the fundraiser part of the youth poultry thing, though the cockerel I had chosen for the trio is the otherwise great bird that developed Turkey Tail, and now I'm having to take a much smaller and less-nice male, but with less fatal flaws, so I'm sad. I'm hoping the kid who gets the trio will stay in touch so we can help with better birds when they're available.

Culling that one Turkey Tail bird was so hard for me! Ugh. He really was nice except for that tail. On the bright side, I ate him for lunch today and he was delicious.

 

[3riverschick]

Every coyote deserves a bullet of its own.
Preferably thru the heart.
Best,
Karen

 

[Wisher1000]

Quote:
I need more details on the "Modular Cattle Panel, Chicken Wire & T-post coop thing" and also some pics. If you don't want to get off topic on this thread, I would love to have you come over to The Old Folks Home and tell us all about it there. I need to put up some cheap, temporary coops for grow out and I need it quick. This may be just what I need.

 

[finnfur]

I need more details on the "Modular Cattle Panel, Chicken Wire & T-post coop thing" and also some pics. If you don't want to get off topic on this thread, I would love to have you come over to The Old Folks Home and tell us all about it there. I need to put up some cheap, temporary coops for grow out and I need it quick. This may be just what I need.

I think she has some pics on her coop section on profile page - I also remember some on the Dels from kathy thread.
Its a very inexpensive a secure setup- semi portable too

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I think she has some pics on her coop section on profile page - I also remember some on the Dels from kathy thread.
Its a very inexpensive a secure setup- semi portable too

My regular coops are available to look at at the "my coop" link by my name. But I have done some special writeups of the hoop coop thing. If only I could remember where!

There is a special kind of jack you can use to pull T-Posts out of the ground and it works slick. Otherwise you have to dig.

We also built a version of a hoop coop with large PVC pipes for the skids. That idea we stole from another BYCer. It was more of a pain to build, and we didn't solve some of the design challenges very well. Right now it is serving as a shelter for our ducks, who pretty much only ever go in there to eat, and they will sometimes drop an egg or two into the nesting boxes, but not usually. Usually they lay in the mud by their kiddie pool.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I need more details on the "Modular Cattle Panel, Chicken Wire & T-post coop thing" and also some pics. If you don't want to get off topic on this thread, I would love to have you come over to The Old Folks Home and tell us all about it there. I need to put up some cheap, temporary coops for grow out and I need it quick. This may be just what I need.

Hey! I found it!!!!! Finnfur was right, it was in the thread I started about building the main coops. I'd forgotten I added it there. It's probably the best writeup I've done about the system, which I stole from another BYCer. And I believe if you click that little arrow thingy at the top of the quote below, you can go straight to that post.

Here are some photos of the Modular T-Post Hoop Coop construction.

We wanted a spacious cage we could use for short-term housing of specific birds. We affectionately call this coop "The Cull Cage." It would work equally well to house meat birds or a breeding colony. It sits in the regular free-range forage area here. This is where we put birds we don't want to have sleeping with the laying flock or free-ranging with them during the day (like hormonal cockerels, or breeding birds).

My idea was to get the wire "mods" ready to go so that when I had "man hands" around to pound stakes and stuff it would go faster. So I attached the chicken wire to the cattle panels in advance. We used the 1" chicken wire, and if we feel we need more security we could always string some 1/2" hardware cloth around the bottom of the coop. But for our purposes so far, the 1" chicken wire is fine.

It took us a try to figure out the 5' chicken wire works better than the 4'. Cattle Panels are 50" wide, which is just enough over 4' to make stretching the 4' wire to fit a pain. We cut the lengths of wire a little long to wrap it around the ends a foot or so.

There is a tool that make attaching the chicken wire to the cattle panel a bit simpler ... a "wire twister," available online. You also need the wires to go with it. However, a person could just use zip ties, or could hand-thread the wire to "sew" it together.



Those three photos show the wire ties, the twisting tool, and the tool actually twisting the wire (Dad's man hands).



These next two photos show the placement of the T-Posts ... you want the cattle panels snug against the T. You'll close the tiny gap later with more ties.






Here is a photo when we were almost done placing the cattle panels ...



I think it is a good idea to secure each new panel to the previous one as you go.


The next part was putting the door on. We just did one door, at the top end. We used bolt cutters to cut the cattle panel open along one edge so there were "prongs" sticking out, then bent the prongs around a section of cattle panel to act as hinges. We lift the door slightly to clear the ground, and swing it open. The door is quite large, but it is very light, so lifting it with one hand is easy.




The other end was just enclosed with regular wire fencing we had laying around, but you could use 1/2 of a cattle panel for the each end (depending on your door arrangement). We also made sure to wrap the ends with chicken wire.

AND ... this part is SUPER important though I have no photos to show ... we added a little chicken wire "skirt" around the entire coop. This means there is a foot or so of chicken wire on the ground all the way around the perimeter of the coop, and wrapped a bit up the sides. The wire quickly gets buried a bit in the ground, and we made sure to secure it to the side of the coop for good measure. This prevents predators from digging under the sides of the coop. It also prevents the birds inside from digging under ...

For the rest of summer & fall we just used a small tarp over one end of the coop. The coop sits under a huge tree, so this was great for shade and some protection from wind & rain. This way the birds get plenty of fresh air and sunshine and we didn't feel so guilty about keeping them confined. It was just temporary.





When we started getting some serious weather, we wrapped the coop in greenhouse plastic. This stuff is great ... it comes in various widths and lengths. We chose the 20' wide roll, so we'd have a little extra to weight down along the sides. We love the greenhouse plastic because it allows plenty of light into the coop. However, there are also companies that make tarps specifically for this type of structure. The greenhouse plastic is "permanent." It will eventually wear out, but we don't remove it for different seasons.

We just poked the t-posts through the plastic, and this will allow us to roll up the sides on warm days like we do for our main coops. We secured the plastic by stringing twine over the top. We tied the twine to the t-posts. I'm happy to report this has held up beautifully even during some seriously windy weather. I suppose if you were super concerned about rain or snow melt leaking in through the holes we poked through the plastic, then you could patch them with some Gorilla Tape or something.





We didn't put plastic on the North end of the coop. This allows for plenty of ventilation (there is a lot to be said for "open air" coops, and no they aren't "drafty" if only one side is open, and yes they can work in seriously cold areas). The roosts are up at the South end, so the birds can be cozy up there even on the windiest nights. For us, the North end gets the least "bad" weather ... and it is also the downhill side of the coop which works well for any run-off. Everyone has a different set of variables to work with on this.



(two of those roosts are dumb in every way, ignore them ... the double roost at the top is okay)

We put the bedding right on the bare dirt and use the "deep litter" method. We like to use a combination of found stuff (leaves, pine needles) and store-bought shavings.


We've been housing some spare cockerels in this coop for a while, which we processed this week, so had an Open House. This is part of the Free Range Flock taking a tour ...




You can see, the birds think this coop is grand.

 

[Ifish]

Anyone have a source of quality Houdans? Wife would like some white egg layers so I immediately thought about some leghorns, but I like the look of the houdans and so does my daughter. Could turn into a breeding/show thing as well. To start though, would like some quality built egg layers.

 

[3riverschick]

Anyone have a source of quality Houdans? Wife would like some white egg layers so I immediately thought about some leghorns, but I like the look of the houdans and so does my daughter. Could turn into a breeding/show thing as well. To start though, would like some quality built egg layers.

Well if I wanted to know, I would ask Walt Leonard. ( BYC : fowlman01 .)He used to show them in the early years.
He is Chairman of the APA Standards Committee. Here's his website:
http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=poultry;id=184;url=http://www.rosecomb.com/fowlman/index2.html
Best Regards,
Karen