post your chicken coop pictures here!

[gpeters3]

Yep, sometimes it's tough. At 72 I can't do a lot of my own hammering anymore and I used to do it all! Your family interrupts your progress. For me, it's the chickens that keep interrupting - especially when I work outdoors - they seem to think they're helping when they sit on my shovel while digging

I used to enjoy ranging them but im not going to all this trouble to feed hawks and stray dogs. When i was younger i kept the stray animal problem strictly under control but developed a conscience and no longer own any guns. If i choose to range them again i will buy a franchi 20 ga magnum and stand guard. It is legal to kill any animal that threatens or attacks people or animals on your property. I have no love for predators wild or otherwise.

It used to be very rural here but city slickers have moved in in droves and some think shooting all maner of guns with families very close together is ok. Its scary for me because i learned from experience that most people with guns dont respect their full potential to cause harm. I enjoyed hand loading and black powder and studied ballistics so have an acute respect for their potential. All the shooting around here is unnerving to say the least. If i choose to get one for predators it would be a moderate size shotgun and would be used with utmost caution. Probably wont, my new run should be sufficient.

 

[Sylvester017]

Yep, no chicken truly WANTS you to touch, pet, or pick them up but some will become more tolerant of human touch than others.


Quote:
Originally Posted by MeepBeep


I fully beg to differ, I have a few chickens that beg me to touch them and pick them up... Every day they run over to me and follow me around the coop like a lost kitten or puppy until I pick them up or pet them... If I get down on the ground they will hop in my arms or lap so they can be held...

That's why, if you'll notice, I said "some will become more tolerant of human touch than others." I have pesty chickens that get in my way too when I walk outside and some will follow while others try to jump up on me. They didn't ALL start that way as youngsters but seem to develop that friendliness as time goes by. Now my Leghorns and Marans would follow around the yard regally but never got that extreme pestiness or desire for human touch that some of our other breeds have. Usually food/treats is what they are hoping for each time we go out the door and that's been their greatest motivation for being pesty, outgoing, curious, or unafraid. If you want to develop friendly chickens then have treats every time you go out to see them. On the other hand that will create another problem of having chickens underfoot every step you try to take. It's all I can do to keep my balance every time I take steps. I have to put up rabbit fencing to keep them out from digging with me when I'm tilling the garden beds -- they're afraid they'll miss some juicy bugs I might dig up. There's something to be said about having TOO friendly birds LOL!

 

[MeepBeep]

That's why, if you'll notice, I said "some will become more tolerant of human touch than others."

My reply was to your entire sentence, not just the 2nd half taken out of context from the first half...

Yep, no chicken truly WANTS you to touch, pet, or pick them up but some will become more tolerant of human touch than others.

Most importantly the "no chicken truly wants" as I would not say that is true, from every indication some of mine do in fact want and desire to held and touched, from where I stand it's not a matter of them tolerating being touched or held those particular chickens desire it... At the end of the day all my chickens will tollerate being touched and held as will my peafowl and guinea fowl to a much less extent, but to suggest that none actually desire being touched and held and are only tolerating it is IMO false, unless your definition of 'tollerate' is entirely different then mine... Also it's not just a matter of them begging for treats, as they act entirely different when they want or expect treats then when they want to simply be held or touched, I can easily tell the difference...

 

[Sylvester017]

I'm love my EEs they are my best layers and very calm quiet my rooster though loves to crow in the morning my americauna mix those are the noisy loud ones and plus I don't have any neighbors for them to complain and plus i haVe two other neighbors with chickens and I hate it when they sqauck in the coop like that it seems to Eco and then it is so loud I can't stand it I can't even be in there for a few minutes and my head starts to hurt because of that and if they see u in the morning when u are scooping poo they run in the door jump up on ur back scratch u jump up at the windows and they have the sand all flag over there poo so then it takes longer to scoop up but I bought them from a lady who said they were springs hatch and didn't need anymore so I bought them off of her and u should of seen how long it took her to catch them they were so jumpy u couldn't even get 6 feet to them and there absolute bonkers and they were confined up in a run for us to come get them and heck it took over half an hour just to catch four birds in probably a 10 by 4 run

I didn't get my Blue Wheaten Ameraucana until she was almost 3 months and she was a free-range wild chick before she got shipped to me having escaped a hawk and a dog attack while she was a chick. So she was quite a jumpy wary juvenile when I got her -- she's extremey alert as an adult now. Her sister died in a couple weeks after I received them so all I had was the one lone Ameraucana quarantined in the house. Having her indoors for several weeks she became increasingly friendlier and let us pet her, hold her, pick her up and she loved to carry on conversations with us. We would talk to her and she would answer back. She became very house-tamed but once we introduced her to the outside flock she turned into a klutzy spooky kooky jittery jumpy wary wild child again. She didn't like being around other chickens and quickly became bottom of the pecking order -- I think that comes from Ameraucanas generally avoiding conflict by nature -- if there's a choice they'd rather flee than fight. I wish her sister had survived so the two gentles could hang out together. She still doesn't like other chickens but she does allows us humans to hand-feed her, pet her, pick her up, and hold her but I don't think her wary jittery nature will ever cease.

 

[bruceha2000]

Yep, sometimes it's tough. At 72 I can't do a lot of my own hammering anymore and I used to do it all! Your family interrupts your progress. For me, it's the chickens that keep interrupting - especially when I work outdoors - they seem to think they're helping when they sit on my shovel while digging

I don't have it THAT bad. They don't get on the shovel but they sure like to get into the hole I'm digging and look for treats. Can't exactly shove it back in when the girls are "helping".

But once she resumes laying for 4 or 5 months out of the year she squawks bloody murder! All hens have an egg song but she sounds like someone is cutting her throat and she gets all the other hens screeching. I wish she'd do her hollering inside the coop where at least some of her noise can be absorbed. It's embarrassing having the backyard neighbor look over the fence to see what's wrong with her. My friend said her EE hens were so noisy her neighbor complained to the city and her flock got shut down. I'll be avoiding Amers/EEs in future flock additions because I don't live in a rural area where it would be more tolerated to have noisy cluckers.

My obnoxiously loud ones are the 2 Faverolles. They will squawk their heads off for no reason. One starts, then the other then everyone has to join in. And they have pretty harsh voices. I don't know how many of the others are saying what *I* am saying: "SHUT UP!".

 

[urbanabanana]

This is our chicken coop. I stripped the typical "Barn Style" storage shed on a concrete slab down to the studs. I framed in windows, framed in a regular walk-thru door on the front. Added a front porch and run on the back. Insulated the walls and roof. My mother-in-law painted the inside. Oh! And I gave them their own black picket fence. It's nothing fancy, but it's functional and fun. I hope you enjoy it!

That might be one of the nicest chicken coops I've ever seen!!

 

[koopmaster]

Here are some pics of our "work in pregress" we are new to raising chickens. This coop is going to be tractor like and our birds will be SEMI free range.

The coop is still in the building stages!!! As you can see.

All this lumber was left over otherwise scrap from my place of empoyment. The floor was the base of a shipping crate, the size of my coop is the size of what I had laying around! Nesting boxes will go along the one side where the long openings are and a big door on the end with no sheeting now

 

[Beekissed]

This is not exactly a coop, but it's the spare pen for breeding, brooding, lounging in the winter months for dog and chickens, etc. The doors were either free or $5 from the habitat store, the frame up lumber was free from the trash in town and from lumber my brother took out of bunkbeds he no longer wanted, some of the lumber has been ours for 50 yrs and recycled here. The screws were all reclaimed from the lumber we took out of the trash and reused here. The lattice is new, though, as the old lattice on this pen was 20 yrs old and rather weak. The roosts are my sawhorses. The door on the left is a sliding door, while the door on the right is a metal door, so it opens on hinges. Both will be removed this summer to be used for dehydrating veggies, then covered in plastic for the winter to be the tops to cold frames, then back to their original purpose come breeding/brooding time in the spring.

 

[Red Banks]

This is not exactly a coop, but it's the spare pen for breeding, brooding, lounging in the winter months for dog and chickens, etc. The doors were either free or $5 from the habitat store, the frame up lumber was free from the trash in town and from lumber my brother took out of bunkbeds he no longer wanted, some of the lumber has been ours for 50 yrs and recycled here. The screws were all reclaimed from the lumber we took out of the trash and reused here. The lattice is new, though, as the old lattice on this pen was 20 yrs old and rather weak. The roosts are my sawhorses. The door on the left is a sliding door, while the door on the right is a metal door, so it opens on hinges. Both will be removed this summer to be used for dehydrating veggies, then covered in plastic for the winter to be the tops to cold frames, then back to their original purpose come breeding/brooding time in the spring.

Where I come from this is a coop. Looks good!

 

[Melissa77]

WOW Amazing photos!! Here is one (yes one lol we now have 4) of ours! Totally pallet wood except some plywood for the walls.

Head over to Let's Chat Chicken and post your photos to their image gallery to share also , they are holding a contest in May!