I welcome suggestions if anyone sees places to improve my plans.
When I had birds before (ducks geese chickens guineas and peacocks) they occupied a corner of my barn and annoyed me with their choice of roosts and bathroom areas. I had a coop stall of sorts sometimes but mostly they hung wherever. This was messy to say the least. So this time around I decided to have a better system and add in free ranging as safety allows. Predators here vary greatly from year to year so flexibility is great.
There's an old 10 x 20 shed, just a roof really, on the side of my barn that was approaching collapse, so what a great time to fix the structural issues there and remodel! I decided that it would be great to restrict myself to building with only supplies I have on hand wherever possible.
This has been fun to design around odds and ends from my horse barn loft. The fruits of many years of pack ratting have gotten just a bit out of hand so this was perfect.
I'll have to buy some hardware I think and did buy chicken wire and hardware cloth. Oooh and an electric staple gun, no regrets there, great wrist saver while tightening fence!
Here's a pic of the brooder box rough in, showing the grate on top for heat lamps to sit on if I use them. I'll add hc to those so shavings can't get into the hot zone, as well as a hinged access door so chickens can't get into that shelf with the lights. Then will be a poop shelf, 40 inches high, with sheet metal bottom(fireproof) and shallow trays on top. You can see the opening to pull the trays out to clean them to the exterior, awaiting a hinged door still. Two rows of roosts will go above(about 18 linear feet of them) possibly staggered in height. There will be movable dividers in the brooder box and at least 2 doors, still finishing the planning for that. Haven't finished deciding where to put the nest boxes yet.
So far I'm leaning towards keeping the dirt floor with deep litter.
Here's an early shot of the covered run. I'm considering a roll up tarp system to block blowing snow on the wind side. I'm working on the run a bit while thinking but finishing that brooder box asap is my priority. These guys are getting big and must move soon! They'll likely move out tomorrow night, Sunday at the latest.
When I had birds before (ducks geese chickens guineas and peacocks) they occupied a corner of my barn and annoyed me with their choice of roosts and bathroom areas. I had a coop stall of sorts sometimes but mostly they hung wherever. This was messy to say the least. So this time around I decided to have a better system and add in free ranging as safety allows. Predators here vary greatly from year to year so flexibility is great.
There's an old 10 x 20 shed, just a roof really, on the side of my barn that was approaching collapse, so what a great time to fix the structural issues there and remodel! I decided that it would be great to restrict myself to building with only supplies I have on hand wherever possible.
This has been fun to design around odds and ends from my horse barn loft. The fruits of many years of pack ratting have gotten just a bit out of hand so this was perfect.
I'll have to buy some hardware I think and did buy chicken wire and hardware cloth. Oooh and an electric staple gun, no regrets there, great wrist saver while tightening fence!
Here's a pic of the brooder box rough in, showing the grate on top for heat lamps to sit on if I use them. I'll add hc to those so shavings can't get into the hot zone, as well as a hinged access door so chickens can't get into that shelf with the lights. Then will be a poop shelf, 40 inches high, with sheet metal bottom(fireproof) and shallow trays on top. You can see the opening to pull the trays out to clean them to the exterior, awaiting a hinged door still. Two rows of roosts will go above(about 18 linear feet of them) possibly staggered in height. There will be movable dividers in the brooder box and at least 2 doors, still finishing the planning for that. Haven't finished deciding where to put the nest boxes yet.
So far I'm leaning towards keeping the dirt floor with deep litter.
Here's an early shot of the covered run. I'm considering a roll up tarp system to block blowing snow on the wind side. I'm working on the run a bit while thinking but finishing that brooder box asap is my priority. These guys are getting big and must move soon! They'll likely move out tomorrow night, Sunday at the latest.
