My NEW Breeding Pens

[fireguy56]

Wow! Gonna be a whole lot of breeding going on there. Looks awesome. Great use of materials. Keep pics coming.
Erik

 

[SteveBaz]

Are you going into the chicken selling business? Are you selling specific breeds? Or is this entirely hobbies

bc of the expensive breeding cages, right?

 

[DMRippy]

Quote:
You mean INexpensive breeding cages don't you. HUMMMMM.... gonna sell hatching eggs, chicks and pullets. Some is just for my hobby fun and eating eggs.

 

[ki4got]

I like the pens Donna... working on building a larger coop/pen for everyone so i have a place to put the chickies when they are ready to go outside (soon, i've got more hatching next week under broody momma, and more yet due in 2 weeks.)

crossing fingers we'll have another swap here next saturday (week from tomorrow) as i've got a broody i want gone, as well as her 2 sisters (the 3 stooges). i'm keeping one of my bantam brahmas but i'm just not thrilled with them. sticking with the cochins and a few assorted favorites from the first bunch, plus the chicks that are going on 3 weeks old... oh and of course the dorkings. 8)

so i'll have 3 groups. free range, penned, and babies...

thinking i'll leave the bantam roos and a few of the bantam hens free ranged, put the dorkings and rest of the hens in the big coop/pen, that leaves the small coop/pen for babies... works for me. 8)

edit: also meant to say, thanks for the ideas on your breeding pens. I'm hoping to do something similar down the road, but we need to knock down a dead pine first or else it'd be likely to fall on my coop... not good then. are you planning on bantams or LF in these pens?

 

[DMRippy]

Quote:
The only bantams I have are the D'Uccle and they are just for fun. LF all the baby!!!!

 

[Arielle]

Donna-- great read. THanks for the link.

GREAT JOB!!!! I forgot about Habitiat having recycling stuff. Is there a specific web site to find local recycling stuff??

We should all pester Steve Baz into sharing those great smiles. Very snazzie!

 

[NewHopePoultry]

Looks amazing!

 

[DMRippy]

Hubby and 3 yr old are really sick so we have had a delay.

Next week we will finish. We did paint the recycled roofing to put over the run and bought some 2 x 4 welded wire for the top, got the gutters. So now we have added another $150-200. I can't remember. We have built a couple of temp pens in the shop for the babies growing up to quickly for our time frame.

More to come I promise!

Thanks for all the compliments.... Just need to finish it so I can put it to good use!

 

[DMRippy]

I am back!!! Finally!! Between the baby, hubby and me all getting sick and the holidays and the weather... maybe we are back on track. It is raining here so yesterday we got to work outside with help and today we worked inside. Tomorrow we may get to work both inside and out, we will just have to see.

Yesterday we did some tedious things.

I had built in vents to the front of the coops and we covered that with hardware cloth and I also added some "flashing" to help keep the wind from blowing rain in. We just used some Attic Foil we have left over. (we also filled the holes along the front with scrap wood.

Then we added some of the metal roofing we bought over the runs, mostly for shade and to help keep the wind, rain, snow from blowing in the coop. We painted the big pieces and we will paint the scraps we had to use.

I also forgot to tell you, I think, we added some chicken wire around the outside runs I got for free from FreeCycle. She got out of chickens and had all kinds of great stuff to get rid of, calcium, feeders, and a plywood box that is now my hatcher

Since it was free and rusty, we used the whole 4ft, 2ft in the run and 2ft of rust on the outside... I don't know if you can really see it in the pic. I will toss some gravel on the inside to cover it, may not do anything outside unless I trip over it too much...

I tried to get my son to crawl under the coops to add the dividers between the runs, but he was opposed to crawling around in a 2 ft tall area

so he suggested a panel, so that is what we made today. I cut them a little shorter to make it easier to put under the runs. Got the gray plastic netting on clearance at Lowes too

$9 or 11 can't remember. I needed it for another project so this did not use much. They are 23 1/2 inches tall and 36 inches wide. We made 9 of these.

We also made the doors for the runs. We took the old free fencing and unscrewed it and cut each board to length. We then took 5 boards, about 28 inches worth, and screwed them together with another board top middle and bottom middle. We made 10 doors. Might go get more hinges tomorrow.

NOW.... I NEED YOUR HELP! Anybody have some good cheap lock ideas we can use to lock the front gates and the coop doors??? I have used the piece of wood that holds the door shut, but I don't think that is very predator proof, even though I have a hard time getting it right some times.

I think we have every predator that is normal, coons, possums, dogs, coyotes. We scored two free electric fences from the lady with chickens too, so we will get that running soon but I still want good locks just in case. I don't want the kind that lock behind you, I read about someone locking their self in the coop for hours. I don't have time for that

 

[DMRippy]

We added the divider walls under the coops, put up the gutters on the back, added some more roosts poles. Fixed the outside wall, we forgot to add the chicken wire and it was really unlevel ground so fixed that too. Then in that valley the sun started going behind a hill and it got too cold.... going to be 25 tonight here. Then it was time to button up all the birds for the cold night.

Anybody with ideas on locks? PLEASE?!?!?!