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- #31
Great project! It's great when you can re-use materials, and that Ace Hardware signage fits the projectI'm envious of your automatic door... once we get further into our chicken project, I hope to talk Hubby into doing one.
I think you will like the extra storage and walk in door you built into the front of the coop. Hubby and I were going to turn our son's old playset into a coop and decided to change up and make part of an outbuilding into our coop instead. We will go into the building where there is room for feed, treats, etc, and will have another door to go into the chicken coop. I think it will be nice in the winter to step inside and gather supplies before stepping into the coop itself.
We are also going to build a roll out egg box and see how that works for us. I'm mostly concerned about frozen eggs in the winter and think it would be easy enough to put a heat pad or a light of some kind in the catch part of the tray just warm enough to keep them from freezing. I'm afraid that leaving any kind of heat in the nesting boxes will encourage a hen to go broody, which we aren't interested in because we won't have fertilized eggs anyway. We will have a bit of a walk to the coop, so I can't see myself checking too many times a day for eggs when the temps are bitter cold. Maybe a baby monitor to listen for egg songs would be a good investment ... something I've thought about anyway. I don't know how much to be concerned about frozen eggs but with some of the bitter cold temps the last couple of winters it concerns me.
I saw your list of critters and thought you must be in the same general area. Then noticed your location.. Yep. I'm in Indiana, just a state over
Good luck with your project. I'm hoping to have birds in there by Memorial day weekend.
