post your chicken coop pictures here!

[Leigti]

There's very little dust with the powdered.  So you use the granules as litter and scoop it? 

Yes

 

[MeepBeep]

but the prior night it had likely come through a tunnel the @#$% woodchucks keep making into the barn alley. 

Dealing with that same problem this year, a pair of woodchucks decided to make their home under the part of the barn that is poured concrete this spring after I spent all early spring evicting a skunk family... Next thing you know the woodchucks are going around the entire perimeter of the barn digging tunnels into the barn as well as digging more tunnels inside the barn to access their new home #$%#$@%... I trapped and removed all 5 of their babies but the adults are avoiding the traps, so i need to set up some snares or Conibear traps at the tunnel openings... In a turn of irony during the woodchucks excavation under the slab they uncovered an old rusted Conibear trap, so clearly the previous owner had the same problem at one time..

 

[Leigti]

Not everyone can afford to make or buy enough welded wire to make a sufficient run. Or a nice coop. I did the best I could. Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread.
Thanks to those who posted supportively. I appreciate the warning but the way it was stated made me feel foolish for being proud of my crappy coop.

I think you did fine, especially with just two days warning and not much money. The coop I had for the first couple years was certainly nothing great to look at, and it wasn't all that secure either. If you have more chicken wire just put more of it around it. Another layer never hurts anything until you can get some other stuff. Craigslist, garage sales, there's lots of places to get good stuff that can make a great coop. I was very lucky because I had a friend who is a good builder and knew how to build a chicken coop. If I didn't have that then I was going to build a hoop coop. Look those up on here, you can make them relatively cheaply and easily.
Don't get discouraged.

 

[zndzant]

Here is my coop and run. It's still a work in progress, but the chick's can live in it while we put the finishing touches on it. Currently working on putting a top on the run. It will be covered in 1/2" hardware cloth ad are the sides. And I will be attaching 2' of 1/2" hardware cloth skirting along the bottom to discourage digging predators. Coop size is 4'x8' and run size is 16' square. I have 9 chick's that are about 10 weeks old. So far they are loving their big yard, and put themselves in the Coop at dark to sleep. I just have to go out and close up.

 

[Chicken Egg 17]

Wow I really like that good job

 

[bruceha2000]

Quote:
Oh, that is too funny, and sad. GOOD LUCK! You might want to try the dry ice suggestion for dealing with woodchucks that was posted over on the "Fighting raccoons" thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1116381/fighting-raccoons

In short, toss some dry ice in the tunnels then cover them over. The CO2 is more dense that "regular" air and sinks to the bottom, hopefully suffocating or driving the vermin out of the tunnels. They ALWAYS have many entrances to their "lair".

Quote:
I agree! If I were to build a standalone coop it would be either a Woods style (open front, more work and money but very permanent) or a hoop coop (much cheaper but you need to replace the tarp covering every so often. How often depends on what you buy and the climate it has to live in). You do need to cover the hoop coops with hardware cloth up the first couple of feet (and buried out a couple for digging predators) to keep coons from reaching in and snagging a bird lying against the wall. And coons don't need a very big hole to get in so the rest of the hoop should be covered with 2x4 welded wire fencing.

 

[mossyroo]

Not everyone can afford to make or buy enough welded wire to make a sufficient run. Or a nice coop. I did the best I could. Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread.
Thanks to those who posted supportively. I appreciate the warning but the way it was stated made me feel foolish for being proud of my crappy coop.

No, I have a crappy coop. A low electric wire will do a lot to protect from predators. A charger could cost as much as the extra hardware cloth though unless you can pick something up fro CL or Ebay.

 

[Latestarter]

Not everyone can afford to make or buy enough welded wire to make a sufficient run. Or a nice coop. I did the best I could. Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread.
Thanks to those who posted supportively. I appreciate the warning but the way it was stated made me feel foolish for being proud of my crappy coop.

Really sorry you got your feelings hurt. Nobody here would intentionally try to do that. Some of us have a rather "direct" way of passing information that can put other folks "off". No harm intended though, just trying to get the word out. When I look at some of the chicken mansions on here I'm a bit embarrassed at mine, though some feel mine are chicken mansions

At the same time there are coops here that have been thrown together with whatever the owners had available. Some have coops that basically cost them nothing to make. The bottom line is the chickens don't care. As long as they have a place they can get out of the wet and wind, scratch around for bugs and stuff as well as dust bathe, get up off the ground to roost, get fed daily, and a place to nest and lay eggs, they're pretty much in chicken heaven. You do what you can and try to protect them as best you can. As time passes you'll upgrade the protection as you can, and mean time hope the worst doesn't happen. Even with fort knox coops, people STILL lose birds to predation. It happens, and will continue to. We just do the best we can to avoid it.

 

[michellerpike]

 

[Gundawg]

zndzant
That is a really nice setup I like the elevated coup for easy access.

I worked on my coop again yesterday I dug 8 - 24" deep footings by hand for the run area and poured 13 bags of concrete I am tired and sore today so I am taking the Mrs to a movie today. I have an auger for my tractor but it is 12" diameter and it would have used a lot more concrete plus the roots in the area would have caused the holes to be even bigger using an auger so I did it by hand. I will take more pictures when there is something more to see than 8 footings with metal brackets sticking out. I was going to just concrete in the posts but I already had the posts from some stuff I got cheap off CL and they are 8' long some of them would have been very shallow to be long enough and the metal post brackets were cheaper than buying longer posts.

Mike