INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Too Fast]

Mother2squirrel, (ha ha), I didn't know vickichicki was a carpenter. Sure, she makes it sound easy to build something, right? Just do it!

COOP QUESTIONS

Quinstar posted: Wow, thanks for the info! I was originally thinking of making the coop 8'x5', but I guess it wouldn't hurt to add a few feet to that. Leave some room for growth! Does vertical height play into this at all? The plan was to have 2 almost full size doors open into the coop and a full size door open into the run. I want it to be a walk in run. What is a poop board that slides out? Would this work if we are planning on doing deep bedding?
We definitely thought about modifying something rather than building from scratch. The nice thing so far is that I've gotten a lot of the materials for either dirt cheap or free. We've gotten almost all the plywood/OSB that we'll need for free. I found some old cedar fence boards on craigslist to do the siding for dirt cheap. We have a couple of packs of shingles laying around that we can use for the roof. I like to think the DH and I are pretty handy. We actually made our own wood floors out of plywood in the house that we moving into.
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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]It's great to be able to walk in the coop! In the morning, mine like to fly down from the coop part to the bottom of the door to go outside (instead of walking down the steps), so I'm glad there's enough vertical room because of the walk-in area. I have a tray (instead of a flat board) that slides out. I have two cat litter boxes that fit in the tray. (I only have five hens, so a poop board might be better for bigger flocks). [/FONT]The litter boxes catch the poop from the chickens being on the perches at night. I put pine shavings in the litter boxes as well as the nesting boxes. It's good to keep the coop (boxed area) clean since that's their egg laying area. The floor of my structure is mostly dirt and a few rocks and sand. They have a dust bath area in one part. (you can look at my coop photos on my profile if you are interested).

It personally doesn't matter to me if someone builds a new coop or uses an existing structure. Since you and your DH are handy and have materials, you are a step ahead! (And leave it to vickichicki, a CARPENTER, to say, "Never be daunted by a project." hahaha Make sure to get Victoria's cell phone number!)

Yeah, Quinstar, a walk-in coop is a good idea. We can't quite walk in to ours, but we have enough access. 3 doors, plus the poop board, plus the pop-door. We are not convinced about the poop board, we may try the deep litter method. If you have the deep litter, then the poop board isn't needed. We first put in a semi-deep litter, then when we slid out the poop board, the litter stayed in the coop! So now there isn't much on the board, and the girls poop production has really gone up, and will continue to increase. And we only have 8. I do like our floor being off the ground, so when we get a lot of rain it stays dry. It also gives the chicks a place to go during the day, for quick easy shade if they don't want to go back inside.

And yeah, the vintage feel counts!

 

[Too Fast]

Very true, cluck! And I like free! Lol

I took a couple pics of definite lemon cuckoo Orps and the 2 weird barred/cuckoo chicks

And the oddballs. Appears to be a roo and pullet

Good looking chickens, Brad.

Pallets are more work if you have to take them apart. We didn't do that for most of ours. Just used them mostly complete for the structure and put the T1-11 over that. Seems very sturdy. So ours is a hybrid. It is fun to look out the window as I write this and see our chickens outside. It's 6:40am now, since we have our run enclosed I feel comfortable enough to let them come in/out of the coop as they please. Yes 8 chickens are enough for us, we originally wanted 3-4 lol.

 

[vickichicki]

COOP QUESTIONS

Quinstar posted: Wow, thanks for the info! I was originally thinking of making the coop 8'x5', but I guess it wouldn't hurt to add a few feet to that. Leave some room for growth! Does vertical height play into this at all? The plan was to have 2 almost full size doors open into the coop and a full size door open into the run. I want it to be a walk in run. What is a poop board that slides out? Would this work if we are planning on doing deep bedding?
We definitely thought about modifying something rather than building from scratch. The nice thing so far is that I've gotten a lot of the materials for either dirt cheap or free. We've gotten almost all the plywood/OSB that we'll need for free. I found some old cedar fence boards on craigslist to do the siding for dirt cheap. We have a couple of packs of shingles laying around that we can use for the roof. I like to think the DH and I are pretty handy. We actually made our own wood floors out of plywood in the house that we moving into.
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Here is a link to my 'poop board build'. Yes it is tragic looking, but I made it with stuff lying around and all built in less than an afternoon. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/752684/my-poop-board-with-pictures#post_11040849

A full height ceiling and door would be advantageous. My door is probably just a hair over 5 2'ish'. I am 5' 4". I have bonked my head on the darn frame more times than I can remember (although I may remember if I didn't do it so often huh). The ceiling in the coop slopes down however most times I am in there I am stooped down so I don't notice the height. The bigger the door, the easier it is to get things in and out of the coop. Like a wheel barrow.

 

[vickichicki]

Does it look like this?




If so, good job! It will be kinda grayish. You should notice a slight sweet sourish smell, kinda like bread dough rising. the bubbling is the fermenting working, excellent work!

I did start my ff, however it is lacking in anything. I put 1/4 of vinegar 'with mother' in it. it is not doing much of anything. It does bubble when I stir it, but I do not have the funky looking film on the top. Can not quite tell on the smell as it is outside. It just looks like dirty water, which is probably from the dust from the food. might have to throw it out and try again. Maybe The water to vinegar ratio was wrong on mine... Too much water maybe?

 

[vickichicki]

Mother2squirrel, (ha ha), I didn't know vickichicki was a carpenter. Sure, she makes it sound easy to build something, right? Just do it!

Now now, don't be hating

 

[vickichicki]

When do the roo's start trying to make noise? I am at 7-10 weeks with my chicks and still NONE of them have tried to make crowing noises. I was just wondering if I am out of the woods, or if I still need to wonder if there could be males in my flock?

I tried taking some footage of my lil rooster this morning with his attempts at crowing. Naturally as soon as I grabbed my phone, he stopped.

I do not even remember when my RIR started crowing, just happend to notice one day, oh he is crowing. The little one crowing is a first for me and makes me smile (sure that will change). He sounds like a broken alarm clock that someone has crushed the speaker in. All warbling and lacking umph.

I get off my second job at 6am, so I might catch him in the act in the morning before heading to work.

 

[vickichicki]

I was outside yesterday paintng a pergoda, look up and see this rolling in, I was thrilled. Early day for me

Fortunatly it missed us, sounds like Mother got it instead.

 

[bloonskiller911]

I did start my ff, however it is lacking in anything. I put 1/4 of vinegar 'with mother' in it. it is not doing much of anything. It does bubble when I stir it, but I do not have the funky looking film on the top. Can not quite tell on the smell as it is outside. It just looks like dirty water, which is probably from the dust from the food. might have to throw it out and try again. Maybe The water to vinegar ratio was wrong on mine... Too much water maybe?

mine looked like that once, i through in a couple of table spoons of sugar and it took off. don't know if that was right or not but my chickes love the FF. i am only fermenting cracked corn though, and some vegatable scraps when he have them. i excited for summer to see if it really cuts down on their water consumption. i've only been on the FF for a little over a week but they love it. the ladies took some time to get into it but my 7 week old chicks tore into it like no other!!!

 

[bloonskiller911]

on the topic of FF though, if you have a hard time getting it to start could you just add some dry active yeast to it??

 

[vickichicki]

I am not sure of the run down of the whole ff feed. At this point I do have technically a wasted batch of feed, so I could try adding something to it see if that works before I do finally throw it out.