Progress finally! The chickens might actually have a new coop someday...

[aart]

@aart Huh???? I was quoting and answering HER question not asking one myself. Or am I misunderstanding you? I know I havent been around in a while but I think I did the whole "quote" thing correctly, maybe not.

Oh, NM, sorry.... it didn't show as a quote in your post, so I thought it was yourquestion.

 

[fightingbunny]

I do not have a specific build thread, just a few here and there as I posted various things.

I love my new coop!!!! I actually sometimes just hang out in there with the chickens. my 5 year old went into it and said she loves hanging with the chickens now because they are all so happy Everything is exactly like I wanted it to be. I can reach everything in the coop, I can stand up and move about the run easily, I can clean the coop very quickly, there is no poop smell from the run and the coop itself is immaculate! They don't poop hardly ever in there except on the roost bar and the pdz poop tray makes cleaning that up a non-gross fast task. I have one chicken that sleeps in a nest box now (never did that before), so I have to clean that one poop up every day. As she hasn't laid an egg in over two months, it is a bit ironic.

As for the roof pitch, I did add a few inches to the front to try to maintain the pitch ratio that the Garden Coop plans had, but I didn't get it exactly. Tomorrow morning I will go out and measure to try to get the actual ratio. I think any lean to style shed roof is going to have snow issues though right? Visually it looks like a lot of the roofs I see in coop pictures.

I am still not sure why the hinges ended up the way they did. Maybe I did not align the hinge part of the hinge correctly? I was wondering, does it go on the actual crack or slightly to the side? Regardless, after a month or so, the doors all seem to have settled down and are sitting okay. The only exception is the left egg door and I think I just messed up when attaching the hinges there. I was trying to hold up the door while attaching the hinges and it just skewed a little. I need octopus arms! I should have taken the time to rig up a support or...something.

I am only getting 1 egg a day from my 6 hens. 2 are still too young, and I guess 3 are still molting? I know it was a bad idea to move them during their molt, so hopefully I didn't set them all back months by changing coops. I added 20% protein feather fixer to their feed as that is supposed to help. The Dominique did the naked/diseased looking chicken thing and she is still growing back in, so maybe it just takes forever. The welsummer and barred rock just look mangy and keep dropping feathers. The buff orpington doesn't seem to have lost a feather, looks great, no yellow feathers in the coop anywhere, and goes in and lays an egg a day! I think she might be swapping with the barred rock some days, as I see both of them in the nest boxes at various times. Without a camera, I am not sure who is laying the light brown eggs that I get.

I still have things I never got around to finishing, like the last two windows, the apron on one side, locking down the hardware cloth better (we ran out of screws/washers), trimming the roof overhang on the back, adding more leaves, attaching a leaf grill to stick kale in, attach the one missing bolt, etc etc. I switched my energy into conquering the inside of my house instead of garden/chickens. Telling the 5 year old that Santa won't bring more presents without reducing toys caused an avalanche effect of tidying/cleaning. The alternative was random stuff going into trash cans or getting stuffed under the couches.

Jenn

 

[fightingbunny]

Oh, the wheelbarrow dustbath is working great! I see clouds of dust coming up from it in the mornings and the level of dirt has dropped a lot. There are no dig spots anywhere else so they must just be doing it all in the wheelbarrow.

 

[Soon2BChixMom]

Did you buy plans for this build? I see you mentioned the Garden coop plans.
I love your coop. It looks like a great place for chickens!

My girls’ dust bath is not as big as yours, but I know they use it as I see the dust from it all over the edge of their run. I think it just takes one of them to use it to get the jist of it.

 

[fightingbunny]

I did base my coop on the Garden Coop, but much to my husband's horror, I decided to change stuff the entire way through the build. We decided we could handle doing the build because we had such great detailed instructions. Once I changed everything, we had to figure everything out which added a lot of stress. I am glad we did, as I got exactly what I wanted. However, it added months to the timeline and lots of work.

The Garden coop has a coop part that is 5' deep by 3' wide and the run underneath/to the side is 5' deep by 9' wide. I want to be able to have 8 chickens and have plenty of room, so I had to enlarge it. I went with a coop that is 8' deep by 4' wide and a run that is 8' deep by 15' wide. With their plans it is much easier to make wider than it is deeper. You can just add segments to make a longer run which gives you the wider part. To make it deeper, you have to add more supports and change a lot of the framing. We had some mis-measures a few times because we had to actually plan all the framing ourselves. If you go with the default sizes and just add segments, you can totally just follow the instructions.

I also am on a hill and didn't want to terraform too much, so we did this funky step to the run where parts are different heights. This was much more confusing to build but not much harder, if that makes any sense. My husband swears this was a terrible thing and didn't add anything other than complexity. I think it was a good idea and worth the cursing.

I also changed the walls and openings from the defaults in the plan. With a coop that is 3' deep, you can reach in from one door quite easily (default plan). I found that 4' deep was too far for my arms and I didn't want to crawl in. So we added a bazillion doors. I also wanted windows....add more cursing and having to learn framing/edging/trim work.

 

[Soon2BChixMom]

@fightingbunny Thanks for the review of the plans. Sounds like a good set for us if we stick to the original designs. Whenever we are working on projects lots of cursing involved too! Not to mention the dogs running away into another room.