Painted Chix - refurbish/enlarge coops

[paintedChix]

I live in the sandhills of NC, Harnett & Moore counties. I LOVE open air coops. I have found building w/ Cattle Panel (CP) & generally hoop them as hoop coops to be relatively easy & doable at my age & condition, by myself. All of our pens, tractors & hooped coops are open to the ground. No wire between ground & chicken feets. Pens, coops & runs have DLM or natural materials that compost down & have to be regularly added to. Tractors are cleaned by moving them forwards, backwards or sideways to new grass spot.

More background - our 1st chicks were a package of mixed, straight run bantams given to us Christmas 2011. I knew very little, other than what was displayed on western movies & shows. I had actually been introduced to chickens years earlier, but was not impressed. I set up a brooder in our shop w/ a heat lamp. I didn't know about "real coops" yet, so when they outgrew the brooder, i took them up to our barn & turned them loose. They continued to grow.

While i was doing pony stuff out of state, my family bought chicks at TSC - some EEs & Production Reds. A brooder was set up in the barn. They survived to older age & were also turned loose to free range. Some of the bantams disappeared (1st I noticed were a pair of white silkies that nested under our old blue trailer). They all roosted where ever in the barn. Some silkies found the stack of un-used buckets. Eggs - always a fun search, since didn't have regular nest boxes. I opened & turned feed bags into several tarps to cover pony equipment for night soil protection while roosting. I found BYC, but at the moment don't remember when I became a member.

In 2014, I discovered CP hoop coop builds & a friend & I started one. Then our daughter & SIL helped w/ build of front with a wire door for us & a bucket for a pop door.

In October, we were notified that our leased farmette was in foreclosure & we needed to vacate. Wow, did that present interesting issues!! I don't remember how many chickens & ducks, dogs, cats, ponies & 2 horses we moved.

We had started a 2nd hoop coop, so finished it. Then on a friends property, we built a 3rd, plus 2 - 10x10 chainlink dog pens - for cats in one & ducks(?) in other.

Our new property had 4 pens. They were about 4' tall, 8x10'-ish. 1 had no top, 2 had 2x4" wire tops & 1 had a flat tin roof over the 2x4" wire roof. Across from those is a truck topper chicken coop w/ an actual run. All of this is full of thorny weeds, yard debris, leaves &/or mud.



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Um , I posted LONG before I was ready to!! Not even sure this is in right spot...

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I moved this from post -

Thread 'Stationary vs portable coop' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/stationary-vs-portable-coop.1619177/

In response to -

Post in thread 'Stationary vs portable coop' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/stationary-vs-portable-coop.1619177/post-28593510

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Mine aren't fancy. Even when I was younger, I had a hard time using saws & getting good results. Now it's 11 years after my 1st hoop coop build as a tractor in 2014. Those 3 original hooped tractors were starting to show wear & tear & will need to be refurbished as well..

And after a year of dealing w/ a broken leg that developed a full leg length blood clot in a vein, it's scary dealing w/ saws at all. Starting to deal w/ arthritis in many joints as well. BUT I can wire up a panel, move it & build a hoop coop w/ t-posts (stationary) by myself.

My plan is to refurbish & enlarge 2 stationary coops that were built in 2018 - hopefully starting in June. I had wanted to get to it sooner, but had a 2nd SX end of April, before I could start. The splint came off today, I'm in an airboot & either crutches or a cane for 4 more weeks, then as necessary.

The original 2 coops were 1 CP - approximately 8' wide by 4' deep. Previously a trio or a quad was free ranged from this coop w/ no run - until the quad was ended by coyote. The trio was in a small "run" until sold. It utilized haystring holding the panels to posts. Zipties held 2x4" wire to CP. Back wall was 2 free pallets that didn't meet in center. Until I had more wire, I used 2 ltr soda bottles as a "bottle wall". Wasn't nearly as pretty as others coops on BYC, but was functional & worked.



A 2nd one. Like you, I have chicks in brooders or small chick tractors. See how below, as this one also will be rebuilt (the wood pallets & the wood log base have disintegrated). And will get a run. Both these hooped coops are against our pasture fence at the back of our front yard (3rd pic w/ blue tarps).



The CP will be spread to 10' wide by adding a 2' tall base on both sides. 2 hooped CPs will make it 10' w x 8' deep. The front, instead of framing w/ wood, will be a dog kennel front wired w/ 1/2"x1/2" HWC & wired to sides & top of CP . To be perfectly honest, I haven't fully decided how I'm doing the back wall yet - even w/ 2 yrs of thinking & planning... i want a "wall" w/ a walk through gate or door. Will use a chainlink dog kennel w/ gate until the run is completely done (again, didnt have a run before). Or may do a matching backwall from the welded dog kennel & gate (a lot more expensive since was purchased for front only). I don't want wood other than the roosts. We'll see.

ETA - More info & more pictures.

 

[paintedChix]

More about CP.

My family was introduced to CP (cattle panel or combo panel) in the 70s. When we purchased our property in Parker, CO, the first panels were already in use on the barn's stud pen in 1977. They were 52" tall (now they are 50" tall) & the same 16' length. It set in a wood frame about 1-1/2' above the ground in our 64' long stud pen (4 panels).

Later, as we built pens, we often used CP. But I wouldn't use it for many other uses for 10 years.

After my stint in the Army, marrying my hubs & having 3 daughters, I got back into "horses" in 1995. I started w/ Shetland ponies, while staying w/ my parents in MT - hubs @ Ft Bragg & was at a military school. We bought CP every payday & put up soooo much CP as solid fencing ( a lot of the 19 acres was fenced & cross fenced in CP). They were attached to t-posts. Soo rocky to try to dig post holes.

When I returned to NC 2 yrs later, a lot of my panels came w/ me - becoming pens for our ponies on a leased 3 acre pasture fenced in 12 gauge hi-tensile wire fence (that was my intro to hi-tensile fencing vs barbed or twisted "smooth" wire).

Fencing in Shelby, MT.



Same fencing in Parkton, NC (same pony sized @ 13.3 hh, horse mare).



1st 40' round pen on leased "farmette" - Lillington, NC. Most, if not all, of these panels are still from MT. Shield was Sioux's last 1/2 Shetland foal.



Other uses -




I will be using for trellis-s this year, well, now it might be next year... I don't have pics of a panel turned into a spiked harrow, that two of our ponies pulled to break up manure piles in paddocks/pastures

I will be purchasing horse panels later this summer. It will be cut to cover garden beds that are about 3' wide by 13'-ish long. That way, keep dogs out of garden beds while building it up w/ layers of compost. Also, will keep juvenile chickens in the beds to "work". The horse panels are 2x2" squares & wont need to be wired over (i hope).

This bed used panels from a broken dog kennel our vet clinic was going to throw out.

 

[paintedChix]

For the fronts of both coops I'm refurbishing, I will be using these kennel gates.



Since the gate is on the left, the 5' panel will be attached to the left of that. It puts the gate right of center, but far enough from arched sides as to open & allow walking in.



They will need to be wired in 1/2" HWC. I will need to put a "block" around the gate. The block will be on the inside, allowing the gate to open to outside. Possibly I have white PVC but haven't yet checked to see if it's a good size. If I don't have black paint, I will purchase it. That way it matches the black panels. If the PVC doesn't work, I have a few options, though they will still need to be purchased.

Here's a photo I pulled from Pinterest, but I didn't put on photo who it belongs to. They only did a partial wrap around the gate & didn't wire or block the horizontal opening at the top. It looks like they did a wrap w/ wire around the corners instead of blocking it.

 

[ChaosMom]

For the fronts of both coops I'm refurbishing, I will be using these kennel gates.

View attachment 4122010

Since the gate is on the left, the 5' panel will be attached to the left of that. It puts the gate right of center, but far enough from arched sides as to open & allow walking in.

View attachment 4122017

They will need to be wired in 1/2" HWC. I will need to put a "block" around the gate. The block will be on the inside, allowing the gate to open to outside. Possibly I have white PVC but haven't yet checked to see if it's a good size. If I don't have black paint, I will purchase it. That way it matches the black panels. If the PVC doesn't work, I have a few options, though they will still need to be purchased.

Here's a photo I pulled from Pinterest, but I didn't put on photo who it belongs to. They only did a partial wrap around the gate & didn't wire or block the horizontal opening at the top. It looks like they did a wrap w/ wire around the corners instead of blocking it.

View attachment 4122024

Yikes, I’m trying to imagine looking out the kitchen window to see a hawk perched on the Pinterest half-door, looking at the snackies.

Edit: oh sorry, looking more closely, I see that they did mount the upper gate, but didn’t reinforce it. More coffee!

 

[paintedChix]

I've never actually seen hawks land or snatched anything, but I've sure seen the results! We have quite a few around. The aerial acrobatics are something to see...