As some of you may know, we recently made a big move from the ghetto in Sacramento to the beautiful Sierra Nevadas. Our landlord is a wonderful man who teaches woodshop at a local high school and has a full woodshop available here on the ranch. Now, for those of you familiar with my DH, Farmer Lew, you know he likes to build stuff. He's built coops for 2 other BYCers and has "consulted" many others from this forum via e-mail on design and construction & loves doing so! Well, our place has a huge balcony/deck with space underneath where Farmer Lew and the new landlord decided to build the new coop. Since it would save space in the yard for me to garden and do other things, I thought it was splendid, even though it wasn't going to quite be the coop I had in mind.
Well, they commenced to building it, and after a week of working on it, it still wasn't going to work. There would not be enough ventilation, and we just couldn't keep it dry. We had a minor rain, and it drenched the entire structure. Plus it snows here in the wintertime & it would have been nearly impossible with the way it was set up for me to get to the coop and even feed them if there was snow on the ground.
So now here we've been living here for 3-1/2 weeks and had all 7 adult chickens (6 hens & a rooster) temporarily housed in a tiny A-frame coop designed for 2 to 3 hens at most. They free range on our ample yard and up the hill all day, but at night, they all have had to be in that little coop temporarily until the Under Deck Coop was done. Since that's not going to work, I asked Farmer Lew to please see what he could find around here in materials and hook up our bebes with a nice coop.
You know, this man built us an 8x8 coop with 2 windows, a pop door for the chooks, and a people door in ONE DAY?? Still needs to be sealed, and we're going to put siding on it and paint it to match the house; but at least our birds aren't crammed into tiny quarters now. Check this out.
He cut and built that BY HIMSELF yesterday.
I love a man that can build me stuff.
Edited for typos.
Well, they commenced to building it, and after a week of working on it, it still wasn't going to work. There would not be enough ventilation, and we just couldn't keep it dry. We had a minor rain, and it drenched the entire structure. Plus it snows here in the wintertime & it would have been nearly impossible with the way it was set up for me to get to the coop and even feed them if there was snow on the ground.
So now here we've been living here for 3-1/2 weeks and had all 7 adult chickens (6 hens & a rooster) temporarily housed in a tiny A-frame coop designed for 2 to 3 hens at most. They free range on our ample yard and up the hill all day, but at night, they all have had to be in that little coop temporarily until the Under Deck Coop was done. Since that's not going to work, I asked Farmer Lew to please see what he could find around here in materials and hook up our bebes with a nice coop.
You know, this man built us an 8x8 coop with 2 windows, a pop door for the chooks, and a people door in ONE DAY?? Still needs to be sealed, and we're going to put siding on it and paint it to match the house; but at least our birds aren't crammed into tiny quarters now. Check this out.
He cut and built that BY HIMSELF yesterday.
I love a man that can build me stuff.
Edited for typos.
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