New silkie mom here

[Jtaranc]

Hey all! I am a new silkie mom and I have fallen in love with the breed. We currently have 12 baby chicks about 4 weeks old and we are about to build them their own coop away from the other chickens for when they are big enough to go outside. I was wondering if anyone had any advice since we are designing from scratch on what would be helpful to them. Obviously would be predator proof (hardwire cloth) I’d love an area where moms can raise their chicks also.

Thanks! Pic for attention

 

[Debbie292d]

Hi there!

I raise and breed silkies in Wisconsin, and only silkies as I too fell in love with them years ago.

Here is our Coop forum if you're actually wanting to build a new coop and run for them.

If you're looking to do something smaller scale, we've got three growout pens plus two coops. For the growout pens, hubby makes them hutches (my name for them.) They are about the size of a large doghouse. One's a shed we found on Marketplace. We fix those up to have a chicken door, a door for us to open and get eggs or check chicks, etc. It has to be high enough to put a Cozy Coop radiant heater in the back of it too.

Then we bought 4' high black fencing from Wayfair. Silkies can't fly out of that but other breeds could. We attached 1/2" hardware cloth to the fence panels, then make them a pen from that.

Here's a picture of the one that we found on Marketplace. Hubby shingled and painted it.





Here's a dog box he remodeled and put in our parrot aviary.



And here's one he built out of a wooden appliance crate:


Inside this one, he made nest boxes as it's in a larger pen that if it's not used for chicks, I can put breeders in there.