Newbie! Coop will arrive next week!

mom3lovebugs

Hatching
Apr 2, 2016
5
1
7
Hi everyone! :)

I'm so excited! EEEEEEEK!

My Dad and Mom are hauling back a chicken coop for my family and I in a week or so. It says it can fit up to 15 chickens but we're only getting 7 hens and a rooster so I think it'll work perfectly. My husband just has to build a run which I'm hoping will be at least 15x20.

Here's a couple pics... it's from peavey mart.







We aren't getting the chicken until May sometime, I'm also debating getting 3-4 chicks (as well as the mature birds) so my kids can watch them grow. Found some easy rubbermaid brooder ideas thanks to this site.

I'm sure I'll be posting a lot as this is our first foray into having back yard chickens.

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated!

Thanks!
 
Hi AshleyConnie - finally getting around to actually building it and the run this fall. Stay tuned...
 
Update. We built our coop today. A work colleague offered us a hen, some chicks, and a rooster. Despite tons of other things going on in our lives eg Covid as health care workers, we finally got going on this.
Here are my comments to the Peavey Mart YouTube video on assembling this.
Video:

Nice coop. We bought ours in the spring of 2019 on sale.
Stored it unpacked / unassembled in a dry unheated tractor shed. Put it together today. We watched this video twice today before tackling it. Our thoughts:
1. no way it takes only 5 minutes.
2. supplied screws could be much better - they are Robertson #2 but the slot for the driver is shallow and the cordless driver will not engage well - lots of jumping. And thus very difficult for my
me or my helper/wife to drive in. Seem like cheap screws. Lots of bad words ensued.
3. We ended up using a lot of deck screws to replace the supplied screws. Some were Robertson #2 and some were those special star point screws that come with their own driver bit. I suggest using them from the start. AND we added a few more here and there for strength
4. Maybe the wood in our kit warped during storage, but getting the roof to fit was a real pain. Following instructions we built the walls first, then added the roof. But our walls were out of square just enough that the roof would not come down enough and left a big gap in several places. Big enough for rain to get in I’m guessing. So... we backed off most of the (crappy) wall screws so that everything was loosely-goosey and then got the roof on fully. With enough overlap to be satisfied it was mostly water-tight. Suggest don’t fully tighten all the screws until the end? Like IKEA.
5. The walls fit into each other - each white vertical trim piece overlaps the next side. We found two of the trim pieces had to be pulled off at top or bottom to get the next side wall to fit in. Again maybe due to longer than usual storage?

Overall, the final result is great. It took my wife and I about 2.5 hours to get this together.

Next we will line the floor with some vinyl linoleum and finish the run.

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