post your chicken coop pictures here!

[Sylvester017]

I used contiguous earlier

when I was comparing finland I think.

OK Thx!

 

[Sylvester017]

Nice big doors at cleanup time! Very convenient and not a lot of bending over!

 

[Sylvester017]

Thanks.. those fixtures have been Iaying around in our she'd since I can remember. Finally a good use for them. Wish my father was still around to see.

Awww - I wish he could've seen them too!

 

[Sylvester017]

A fox (or other predators) will attempt to dig under fencing or even boards at the base of a fence, but if your ladies are locked inside a "building" (with a floor of some sort I hope) you shouldn't have to fear a digger... Even if they did attempt to dig under the coop, they would still have to get through floor boards to get into the coop. I expect you'd notice the excavation before the culprit would have a chance to finish that attempt. Just as an aside, foxes, coyotes (and neighbor's loose dogs/cats) also "hunt" during daylight hours, especially when hungry or feeding pups/kits. It's always a risk we take when free ranging our birds, unless you're right there with them the entire time they're out.

Had a White Leghorn once who chased out stray cats from the yard. She's gone now but our new Ameraucana has taken over the cat duty. Funniest thing to watch. However a dog would be a different story on free-ranging birds. We have made two separate gates to enter our backyard so that if one is broken down by a canine it would take a second gate crashing attempt for any stray dogs to get into our yard. Our single gate was broken down by 2 stray neighborhood dogs about 3 years ago so we rebuilt plus added a second gate for good measure. Hate irresponsible dog owners. If a stray chicken gets into your yard the worst is that it's annoying, but if a dog breaks into your yard he becomes a predator! Years ago a neighbor's dog broke the fence between our two properties and had us trapped in our own house unable to go into our backyard until the neighbors came home from work. The fence needed fixing from their side for months but they ignored being responsible pet owners - just lucky our toddler wasn't in the yard with us when the dog crashed in on us.

 

[Sylvester017]

There is no floor to the coop. I just out down weed block and shavings. The attached run is just grass. I think I'll attach hardware cloth as a flooring and cover it will soil. The chicken area is next to the house so I have good visibility. Of course there is still some risk to them being out. Their area is surrounded by privacy fence and they have plenty of shrub cover.

Chickens like to take dust baths and scratch and dig to China and the wire under the pen will interfere with that. Would it not be better to put a paver stone walkway around the pen or heavy cinderblock border around it? My backyard free-range girls have a backyard popup canopy, roosting pole on cinder blocks, a doghouse, several low lean-to shelters scattered about and rose bushes and potted plants to snooze/hide under from our resident Cooper's Hawk that visits regularly at least once a week. The hawk will not go after hiding chickens. They prefer swooping down on easy prey in an open area which is why easy chicks and ducklings are their favourite prey. Adult chickens are too savvy to stay in the open and have excellent aerial vision to alert them. It just takes us to provide plenty of plants and shelter everywhere the chickens free-range. Yes, there's always risk in free-range which is why we are so paranoid to keep adding shelters for the ranging girls. They use everything we set out for them. Nothing fancy at first but as time goes on we try to spruce it up as our budget allows. When the canopy top wears out we just get cheaper tarps to ball-tie to the frame and it looks almost as good as the more expensive replacement tops. We buried the canopy frame a foot into the soil so the canopy doesn't parasail away in the winds.

 

[sunnysideup2]

I think I will lay 16 x 16" pavers around the coop. Their area is quite safe, but it would only take one hungry critter to ruin everything. They have quite a bit of cover when they free range.

 

[bruceha2000]

Blah, don't you just hate it when your attempt at humor is answered with a well researched, informed and fact filled reply...

Yeah, we've had some unusual weather, had almost two weeks of +25C in May, and right now it's +21C, but it's cloudy and we've had a few showers so it's not that bad. Not that I find +21C to be bad otherwise either, but I'm glad we seldom go past +30C. We did have some +2 weather in between the heat waves, so it's been interesting to dress accordingly.

Sorry, I will refrain in the future

Yeah, I've got a positive image of California. We're planning on taking a couple weeks of driving around there at some point, probably starting from SF. I'd like to drive around Napa, and I've heard good things about Yosemite. Probably not a good idea to plan for a lot more, since I'm guessing I could easily spend even a few months just exploring those areas.

It's funny how hard it is to imagine traffic in places as populated as California. I've always considered our 'traffic jams' annoying, and then it just means that a 20 mile trip takes about 20min longer. And that's in the most densely populated area of our country. I went to Beijing last year, and boy was that an eye-opener. Really redefined my idea of grid-lock traffic.

Napa is nice, make sure you see the Redwoods, impressive trees. If you don't have time to make it north to Redwood National Park (325 miles, 523 km from S.F.) go to Muir Woods in Mill Valley. It is just a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

For a reasonable scenic drive, take Hwy 1 (Pacific Coast Highway, or to Californian's "the PCH") from San Francisco south to Santa Cruz.

YEARS ago back in the 60's, when I was a kid, you could drive to Yosemite, find a site in one of the campgrounds then go back to the entrance of that campground daily to pay the fee. Back then Mirror Lake was a lake (hence the name) now it is a meadow (naturally filled in over time) and dry lake bed most of the year. You can see the change in these 2 pictures. Note that the rock in the March 2010 picture isn't even visible in the 1864 picture.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_and_Reflections_by_Charles_L_Weed,_1864.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-Yosemite_national_park_mirror_lake_2010u.JPG

Now you need reservations for half of the campgrounds during the summer, maybe even a year in advance, and in the others it is "catch as catch can, better get there before noon to have any hope of finding one". Might be worth checking with the park to see if there are days where more people leave and finding a site is easier . Campgrounds (1,504 total sites, with a maximum of 9,372 campers)

You probably won't be camping so ~ 1,400 rooms. The park had nearly 4 million visitors in 2012 according to their website. I don't know how many were day visitors (I assume not that many given it isn't close to ANY city, 35 to 40 miles from the small towns that are closest) but figure at least 80% (likely 90%) are there between Memorial Day (last Monday in May) and Labor Day (1st Monday in September), approximately 90 to 100 days, do the math. 4 to 5 hour drive from S.F. don't figure to do it as a day trip.

If you do not have time of year restrictions, most schools start around Labor Day and end after Memorial Day. Go during that period and you will find the National Parks MUCH less populated. I moved some furniture from So. Cal to Vermont the week after Labor Day, stopped to see Zion and Bryce (Utah), a couple hours each, didn't have a lot of time unfortunately and I can NOT imagine seeing either in the "school is out" summer season. If you can, hit Yosemite the week after Labor Day, even Tuesday after Labor day, the "long weekend" people will be back home or the week before Memorial Day or the week of Memorial Day (after Monday) probably through the second week of June. The weather will still be OK, the water falls impressive in May and early June, nearly nonexistent in summer and fall.

Well LA area is the worst but here I commute 50 miles(80km) each way and spend between 3 and 4 hours on the road each day. I take a lot of surface roads and avoid most of the major Freeway jams and I leave very early before traffic gets too heavy. There are a lot of people I know who do similar or worse. I once had to commute 76 miles each way. The primary reason for this is that we live where we could afford to buy a home but the higher paying jobs are located closer to the bay. Im fortunate to be able to work from home at least once a week so it helps with the sanity.

Makes me ill just thinking about it!

I made this tiny brooder/coop out of two desk I bought for $5 and $15

NICE. Cheap and VERY little work.

Hello everyone! These are great coops.
I'd love to hear some advice on coop winterization. I live in SW Ontario in the snow belt & we get some cold high winds and a crapload of snow.
Just got my first flock of 6 Salmon Faverolles (hoping for more hens than roos...). While they are still in the brooder, I'm putting some finishing touches on the coop plans;
we're converting one of the barn's horse stalls (10x10) into a critter proof inside coop. There will be an off ground door cut out from the barn's side to access a west-ish facing outdoor pen. (Would have loved to do south facing, but it wouldn't work out with our barn placement.) At least the outdoor coop will face the back of the house where we can easily watch them!

My coop is also a repurposed horse stall. Works great! Only need to hardware cloth over the upper wall sections and replace the half height horse door with a full height door (unless you have a fancy horse barn with full height horse doors, unlike mine

). If your stalls have 2x4 welded wire on the upper half of the walls, leave it and put the 1/2" hardware cloth over it.

I left the horse mats in and use the deep litter method so I put a piece of 2x6 across the opening for the people door so it doesn't get dragged out. Should have made it a drop in, rather than screw in for when *I* want to remove the litter though.

Easy to make the roost, just get a 10' 2x4. From my experience, make brackets on the walls to hold the ends of the roost board. Then you can take it out easily if you want to do work in the coop and you can flip it upside down for 'cleaning'. Probably need a leg or angle brace half way. I don't know if you have a 6 bird zoning restriction but if not, plan for that "chicken math" thing and put in 2 parallel roosts 18" apart and 12" from the wall because: If your Favs turn out like mine, you might as well build a broody box, it can sit on the roosts. It has to be off the ground to have any chance of working.

What they NEED is:
- Ventilation with NO draft through the coop. This should not be a problem since your coop is in a barn. My barn is quite old and it can get a bit drafty so I have heavy 6 mil CLEAR plastic between the wood wall and 1' from the ceiling (conveniently the 3' width of the plastic) on the side walls in the winter and the people door is totally covered. The wall openings on either side of the people door are just wire, no plastic. Plenty of ventilation.
- They to NOT need heat in the coop. I have 2 Favs which you would expect to be able to handle cold weather but even the clearly "warm weather" breed Cubalayas do fine.

There is no floor to the coop. I just out down weed block and shavings. The attached run is just grass. I think I'll attach hardware cloth as a flooring and cover it will soil. The chicken area is next to the house so I have good visibility. Of course there is still some risk to them being out. Their area is surrounded by privacy fence and they have plenty of shrub cover.

I put 1/2" hardware cloth over the dirt floor in my coop (poultry stapled to the walls about 6" up after we saw an ermine (cute little harbingers of chicken death!) in the yard. They wouldn't have had to work too hard to follow the vole tunnels into the coop. The voles aren't predators but they don't dig starting at the coop wall either.

Chickens like to take dust baths and scratch and dig to China and the wire under the pen will interfere with that. Would it not be better to put a paver stone walkway around the pen or heavy cinderblock border around it? My backyard free-range girls have a backyard popup canopy, roosting pole on cinder blocks, a doghouse, several low lean-to shelters scattered about and rose bushes and potted plants to snooze/hide under from our resident Cooper's Hawk that visits regularly at least once a week. The hawk will not go after hiding chickens. They prefer swooping down on easy prey in an open area which is why easy chicks and ducklings are their favourite prey. Adult chickens are too savvy to stay in the open and have excellent aerial vision to alert them. It just takes us to provide plenty of plants and shelter everywhere the chickens free-range. Yes, there's always risk in free-range which is why we are so paranoid to keep adding shelters for the ranging girls. They use everything we set out for them. Nothing fancy at first but as time goes on we try to spruce it up as our budget allows. When the canopy top wears out we just get cheaper tarps to ball-tie to the frame and it looks almost as good as the more expensive replacement tops. We buried the canopy frame a foot into the soil so the canopy doesn't parasail away in the winds.

I think the run should be left with a dirt floor but the coop needs to be more predator proof. I'm sure paving stones would help deter dogs and coons, but not weasels. Relatively cheap insurance in my estimation

Bruce

 

[sunnysideup2]

I'm off to buy some pavers. At this point my only hope is that they lay golden eggs. I do have rabbits on my front lawn most nights. I see them as the canaries in the coal mine.

 

[caychris]

I'm off to buy some pavers. At this point my only hope is that they lay golden eggs. I do have rabbits on my front lawn most nights. I see them as the canaries in the coal mine.

Probably a good analogy. If you stop seeing them then you most likely have a pedrator that has moved in near by.

 

[TherryChicken]

Us? Nope, right now we only have the panels up. Not all of them have wire on them. We only have weekends to work on it. This weekened were taking a brake.