How rookies became farmers

[slingshotandLAR]

Hello everyone I wanted to say thank you and share our journey to raise chickens. After reading everything we could find we set out to build our coop, after drawing plans we started.

After framing on day one we had a shell....

After the nesting box configuration we closed in the coop area, which had a heat lamp on a 24 hour timer, window and fully calked

Then came the roof which is metal

After staining we adder the siding and fencing which is heavy duty dog caging for predator proofing, we added rocks from around our property to prevent anything from digging in.

Also we added a fold down clean out door on the back

Final detentions 4x10x8h

We saved a ton of money building it ourselves. I'm a welder fabricator and my buddy is a roofer total cost $636.00 by just asking around we were able to get all the roofing, siding, and most of the fencing for free they were left overs people were going to take to the dump. Total hours were around 50.

My wife loves it and so do the chickens


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[TXchickmum]

-really nice coop!!!

 

[MoonShadows]

Really nice job! It looks very professional.

How many chickens do you plan on putting in it? You have 8 nesting boxes. That's enough for upwards of 40 chickens! You only need 1 box per 4-5 chickens. I have 4 boxes for 12 hens (room for expansion) and the 12 only use 2 of the boxes for laying eggs.

 

[aart]

Nice Job!!
Pics of the inside?

Agrees, you don't need that many nests,
your 4' x 4' coop is really only big enough for 4 birds,
you could use the nests on the gable end for feed/water stations freeing up some floor space in the coop.

 

[slingshotandLAR]

We have ten hens in there now

I know now I have too many boxes... Everything I read said 1 box per 3 birds max lol they lay all their eggs in 2 boxes.

I will get some pis of the inside it has 3 roosts running cross wise, also the chickens spend only the night in the coop the rest of the time they free range. It's plenty big enough in there for them.


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[slingshotandLAR]

The food and water are outside the nest house they hang on either side of the walk ramp on bicycle hooks


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[aart]

Free ranging and food/water in the run is great for space making!

.......until you get a long stretch of really bad weather(not sure of your location) or until the predators find you and they need to be confined to keep them alive.

Best of Luck......it's a beautiful coop/run!

 

[slingshotandLAR]

Pic of the inside.....
The tiles are peel and stick linoleum they clean up super easy

I also have a heated waterer for the winter time and actually we have a lot of predators but the haven't bothered the chickens.


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