kjorgey
Songster
Thank you for all the wonderful advice and encouragement regarding my pre-fab/too small coop purchase. Here is what we planned. For starters, I decreased my flock size to 4 Silver Wyandotte chicks, arriving April 24th. My son is a carpentry student. We purchased two of the identical coops. With some modifications and improvements, he is going to combine both coops so the birds will have one enclosed area, with 3 nesting boxes at the far end. Each bird will have about 3.75 sq. ft per bird inside. We are making our run from scratch, so it will be bigger and better, providing well over 10 sq. ft per bird. For ease of cleaning, only 1/2 of the run area under the coop will have access by the hens. The hens will have access to the roofed, sheltered run all day and stored in the coop at night. Water and feed will be kept outside in a sheltered area, not in the coop. As for the roof, we are leaving it as is, but will add chicken wire under it to provide extra predator protection. It will be like for Knox by the time he is done with it. With the extra pre-fab wired panels, my son is going to design me a chicken tractor, so I will have a safe place in the garden for the hens and a separate coop for an injured or sick bird. I also will let the girls free range in my fenced in garden area when I am working out there. In the end, it will all work out for the better. Nothing will be wasted and we will have a much improved version of what we started with. I am grateful for the advice and community of this group. I know I will have a ton more questions in the future.
