Skacha23
In the Brooder
If you had a chicken house that already had drywall for the interior walls, what would you do?
Background: A year and a half ago I bought a house. One of the big draws for me was that my century home came with a century barn even though it's now in the city. I've been super happy with my Omlet eglu cube. It was great when I rented a house in grizzly (and black bear, and wolf, and coyote, and...) country that didn't have a fenced yard. And I loved that I could load it right in the moving truck and we were set to go as soon as I moved in to my house. The girls are getting older though. We live in WY where we see -20F at least once every winter. I also adopted a 5th chicken last winter that was picked up by animal control from a local park. She is the bottom of the pecking order and still chooses to stay in the condo I built when I was integrating her into the flock instead of with the other 4 (they can mostly be peaceful during supervised yard time).
And so I keep looking at the old barn. My barn has 2 almost rooms in addition to the larger space I can fit my car in. I assume these were stalls and/or a tack room at some point. Both have drywall on the walls. The smaller area that I am considering most for a chicken area did not have drywall when I first viewed the house. The inspector said that the company that flipped the house couldn't just leave a gaping hole in the ceiling to the hay loft. For some reason they decided to drywall in the whole space, not just the ceiling hole. So I know that area has the original wood studs and boards just under the drywall. My thought is to add some studs to the open side of this area and block with hardware cloth. Then cut a pop door in the side of the barn. I also plan to add a lean-to greenhouse as the run so that the girls are the most spoiled chickens in WY next winter. I will keep the eglu as I like to rotate the girls around the yard in the summer to give them variety and to take care of the weeds. And of course, they pick on each other less when they have new things to scratch every few days.
I just can't decide what to do about the walls with drywall. If I do cover them if it needs to be all the way to the ceiling or just a few feet above chicken on a roost height.
Moisture/condensation is not a concern since one whole wall will be hardware cloth open to the rest of the barn. Also Wyoming is VERY dry. We're at 5,000 feet above sea level and native plants include yucca and prickly pear cactus.
Background: A year and a half ago I bought a house. One of the big draws for me was that my century home came with a century barn even though it's now in the city. I've been super happy with my Omlet eglu cube. It was great when I rented a house in grizzly (and black bear, and wolf, and coyote, and...) country that didn't have a fenced yard. And I loved that I could load it right in the moving truck and we were set to go as soon as I moved in to my house. The girls are getting older though. We live in WY where we see -20F at least once every winter. I also adopted a 5th chicken last winter that was picked up by animal control from a local park. She is the bottom of the pecking order and still chooses to stay in the condo I built when I was integrating her into the flock instead of with the other 4 (they can mostly be peaceful during supervised yard time).
And so I keep looking at the old barn. My barn has 2 almost rooms in addition to the larger space I can fit my car in. I assume these were stalls and/or a tack room at some point. Both have drywall on the walls. The smaller area that I am considering most for a chicken area did not have drywall when I first viewed the house. The inspector said that the company that flipped the house couldn't just leave a gaping hole in the ceiling to the hay loft. For some reason they decided to drywall in the whole space, not just the ceiling hole. So I know that area has the original wood studs and boards just under the drywall. My thought is to add some studs to the open side of this area and block with hardware cloth. Then cut a pop door in the side of the barn. I also plan to add a lean-to greenhouse as the run so that the girls are the most spoiled chickens in WY next winter. I will keep the eglu as I like to rotate the girls around the yard in the summer to give them variety and to take care of the weeds. And of course, they pick on each other less when they have new things to scratch every few days.
I just can't decide what to do about the walls with drywall. If I do cover them if it needs to be all the way to the ceiling or just a few feet above chicken on a roost height.
Moisture/condensation is not a concern since one whole wall will be hardware cloth open to the rest of the barn. Also Wyoming is VERY dry. We're at 5,000 feet above sea level and native plants include yucca and prickly pear cactus.
