My Egg House. Reuse Project(s)

[Lazy Farmer]

The new egg factory.

This was a greenhouse aging & falling apart across the street on our neighbor's property. The poor fellow was struggling with cancer and my loving husband would go over once a week to mow, weed and clear branches for the retired couple for free, just being good neighbors. Before Mike left us, he came out one day and offered the old greenhouse to my hub. Mike passed away shorty after.

My never resting Husband stripped it apart, dragged over the pieces and rebuilt it on our property. It had a flat roof prior so my hub built rafters and trusses and got the new roof peaked for better drainage.

A bunch of the studs had to be replaced. He beefed it up a lot better than the original but basically the same size but did not put back on the huge doors that were on both ends

Those nesting boxes (milk crates) are temporary until the wall unit is completed. I am not allowed to take pics of the nesting box unit until its done. He is a perfectionist and he most likely rip it all down for minor improvements anyway.
All material is purchased from chicken and egg sales so we are slowly finishing it. Bit by bit.
The ends at the top are old Cyprus privacy fence boards, hub reuses everything!

Hubby is going to route out a plaque and place it up top on the cedar slats when it is done and dedicate the structure in mikes name.
Thank you mike.

He made my ladies an easy open hatch on the far end of the house to let them range at free will. Used some sheet metal for the hatch door operated with a homemade crank left over from the pasture hotwire project, slipped over a pc of rebar. Ran a clothesline rope with pulleys to the door down yonder.

​

He doesn't throw things away. He horders and gets ideas how to use pcs of his trash pile he calls useful items!
I crank the door open at 6am and lower it by 8pm or so.​

The run is constructed from a 150' roll of red brand welded wire fencing. The entire roll connected to our existing property line fence. Giving tons of elbow room for the ladies.

I have planted some trees for shade but they grow slow. So we are working on other measures of a carport type area off of the house side or end.
We started building this at the beginning of the pig market bottom dropping out so we have a pvc roof for now. Actually the second one. We have been saving for the metal roofing material and almost there. Egg and chick sales trickle in funds compared to our pigs back in the day anyway.

I will update the thread with more photos as it progresses. And the funds are provided of course!
Thanks for letting me share our little project.
Until then.. Toot-a-loo my fellow peeps!
FC

 

[21hens-incharge]

Excellent use of a nice gift from Mike.

 

[Lazy Farmer]

The new egg factory.
View attachment 1100135
This was a greenhouse aging & falling apart across the street on our neighbor's property. The poor fellow was struggling with cancer and my loving husband would go over once a week to mow, weed and clear branches for the retired couple for free, just being good neighbors. Before Mike left us, he came out one day and offered the old greenhouse to my hub. Mike passed away shorty after.

My never resting Husband stripped it apart, dragged over the pieces and rebuilt it on our property. It had a flat roof prior so my hub built rafters and trusses and got the new roof peaked for better drainage.
View attachment 1100128
A bunch of the studs had to be replaced. He beefed it up a lot better than the original but basically the same size but did not put back on the huge doors that were on both ends
View attachment 1100130
Those nesting boxes (milk crates) are temporary until the wall unit is completed. I am not allowed to take pics of the nesting box unit until its done. He is a perfectionist and he most likely rip it all down for minor improvements anyway.
All material is purchased from chicken and egg sales so we are slowly finishing it. Bit by bit.
The ends at the top are old Cyprus privacy fence boards, hub reuses everything!
View attachment 1100124
Hubby is going to route out a plaque and place it up top on the cedar slats when it is done and dedicate the structure in mikes name.
Thank you mike.

He made my ladies an easy open hatch on the far end of the house to let them range at free will. Used some sheet metal for the hatch door operated with a homemade crank left over from the pasture hotwire project, slipped over a pc of rebar. Ran a clothesline rope with pulleys to the door down yonder.

View attachment 1100133
View attachment 1100131 View attachment 1100132​

He doesn't throw things away. He horders and gets ideas how to use pcs of his trash pile he calls useful items!
I crank the door open at 6am and lower it by 8pm or so.​

The run is constructed from a 150' roll of red brand welded wire fencing. The entire roll connected to our existing property line fence. Giving tons of elbow room for the ladies.
View attachment 1100140
I have planted some trees for shade but they grow slow. So we are working on other measures of a carport type area off of the house side or end.
We started building this at the beginning of the pig market bottom dropping out so we have a pvc roof for now. Actually the second one. We have been saving for the metal roofing material and almost there. Egg and chick sales trickle in funds compared to our pigs back in the day anyway.

I will update the thread with more photos as it progresses. And the funds are provided of course!
Thanks for letting me share our little project.
Until then.. Toot-a-loo my fellow peeps!
FC

Update:
All the ladies needed lots of perch room. After all, there is a bunch of them! It is our egg house and we have a lot of egg orders to fill.
Hub installed stadium style seating perches.

They are anchored crossways and are 10 feet long, the width of the house. That equals 40 linear feet of perch.

The birdies hop to the bottom perch, then to the next, then up and up to the top one like a staircase.
They feel more secure in high places so at night when they bunker down, the top perch maxes out and the next one just below is filled with the lower girls in the pecking order of course.

We caught a raccoon in a live trap recently inside the run so we had to send a message to all the wild critters in the area, since we are rural there are tons of them.

We installed a electric hot wire system above the entire 150' fence and behind the house as well. It isn't pretty looking but injured or worse chickens are an uglier site to see.

2 hot wires and an extra ground wire in case the varmints are good acrobatics. The chickens really don't fly up there anyway. The lighter birds like the leghorns get their wings clipped periodically. I really don't like the "prison look" the hot wire gives so I am trying to talk my husband into lowering onto the sides where it can blend into the wire fencing. But until then, at least predators have an obstacle to deal with.

The only good thing about our record rainfall is the Sun is not making my run into a frying pan! I have planted trees like this cumquat (Japanese plumb)

But it will be forever until it provides any shade. But when it matures, it will drop it's fruit for my babies to enjoy a little healthy snack here and there.

So my rocket scientist husband came up with an idea again.. Go figure! hehe..
One of our good neighbors up the road just had his roof on his house replaced with heavy duty metal roofing. He and his wife are super people. Mr Bill gave my hub the left over material.

It is not enough to put on our egg house roof but my husband brain stormed a plan to create wall panels that hinge up in the summer as a Sun shade like a carport. And hinge down and close up the house in the winter! It gets so hot in the summer here in Florida so I like the open air setup the house has right now. But the cold winter wind is what I worry about. He has so much on his honey do list presently, so I am sure that idea is on the back burner. He is working on goat and pig projects today. The rain has shifted priorities in that direction.
Thanks for reading!
More updates soon!
FC