Recycled Chickens: Let's share what we do to save money and build with recycled materials

[Marty1876]

Since my last post, I've utilized a few more handy recyclables.

Old trash cans, the big kind put by the street, are very handy laying/nesting sites for larger birds, and chickens in a pen for the summer as well. It can also be usefull (weighted down inside) in very windy places for food in outdoor pens.

My mom recently screwed old walmart storage boxes to her henhouse walls for additional nesting boxes. The hens are loving them! She recomend putting them low enough so that you can reach in to the bottem well.

Used hog panels-the extra stiff sturdy variety, work great for outdoor pens than can be moved with two peole. Forget dragging them around alone. Just trim a wing, to keep the chickens in. Works good for ducks, too!

What are you recycling for your birds?

 

[CrazyPetunias]

When I first brought the baby chicks home, we used an old dryer drum for the brooder. A heat lamp and the reflective sides helped keep the area warm and toasty for the girls. We also use an old ladder for a roost and repurposed some metal sheeting from an old shed to cover the run.

 

[CrazyPetunias]

In our coop, we lay the ladder sideways on top of cinder blocks. that way you have 2 long roosts side by side with walking sticks in between. Decided not to lean it up against the wall because it may slide/shift.

 

[kimmerjo]

Love!!!

 

[Stetson]

We made our brooder entirely out of wood scraps we had on hand, including some channeled for sliding doors. The only thing we bought were two plexiglass panels to use as sliding doors.

We are building our coop using an old metal ikea bunk bed frame, which we will wall in using pallet wood we pick up for free in the industrial district I work in.

Our first chicken tractor is going to be framed using the top half of a frame for a mini-greenhouse that failed as a green house, but will work great as a garden bed run for the chickens once we put hardware cloth that we already had on hand for other projects on it as walls. We will be building the little chicken house for it out of wood scraps. I've always got my eye on allies for pallets and scrap wood!

We made a dust box out of scrap wood, and use a plastic jug from coconut oil to keep a manageable amount of feed with the brooder. The brooder is in our bedroom, so a 25lb bag of chick feed is a bit excessive. We use an old dish detergent (thoroughly rinsed to remove any detergent residue or smell, of course) bucket to hold extra pine shavings in the bedroom as well.

 

[FuzzyButtz]

Our first coop was built on a total of $50 or less. THe only thing we bought were screws and Plywood. Everything else is made out of Pallets or wood from Pallets.

 

[kimmerjo]

I haven't spent a dime on our coop...yet... hoping to recycle EVERYTHING. I'm getting an old refrigerator to use for feed storage, my coop is only an 8x8 got that free from my sister- inlaw. I am also disassembling an old metal kid swing to close in as a storage shed! I have pallets as fencing still want to use a wire fence inside of the pallets... It's going to be hard to find that free. Any ideas?

 

[goinoffthegrid]

We built almost our entire coop of recycled pallets and wood. The only thing we paid for with our coop was the chicken wire to go around it. I also have to compost pile in there for them to dig through.

 

[goinoffthegrid]

Sometimes fencing places in your area will give away the old stuff so they do not have to pay the disposal fee. Also, they may keep a list of people who are looking for that kind of stuff. I know a friend of ours who owns a fencing company does that.

 

[adgcountrygirl]

Our coop was started from an 8x12 permanent dog kennel that was 5.5 feet tall.

The longest roost is a PVC pipe I found in the backyard. It was the only thing that was as long as I wanted it to be. It was also fairly wide and too slick for the girls to stay on. I got twigs from the yard and used duct tape to keep the twigs in place along the top of the PVC. I roughed up the ends and wedged them in place across a corner in the coop. A rope runs through it and is tied to the top of the coop on both sides for added support. One of the shorter roosts is an old wooden rake handle.

The nest boxes are cat litter boxes with lids. One of them had been used as a litter box, but I had used liners and I sanitized it several times to be sure it was safe. The other one had been used for the cat to have kittens in. (The others I bought because the hens liked them so much and I needed more for the hens that were lower ranking.) I also have a rabbit hutch and no longer have a rabbit. I use it for a Broody Box when I have a hen sitting on eggs, a brooder when I have chicks that are big enough for the coop but still small enough to be picked on by older hens, a quarantine when I have a bird that is injured but not sick, and the rest of the time it is not being used for either of those reasons it is extra nesting space.

I found some old chains from a swing set that I used to hang the feed buckets from... (before that I was using extra rope from a project I have no memory of.) I have D-ring clips for easy removal of the feed buckets so I can refill them. I also have a bucket that I can fill with feed and bring to the coop to fill them if I don't want to remove them, and 2 extra feeder scoops that hang in the coop so that I never leave the scoops in one place or another and have to hunt for it. All scoops stay where they are used! (The hanging basket pulleys that are seen in the coop picture did not work as well as I had hoped which is why I switched to the swing set chains. I will try to post a picture of them next time I update my coop page.)

You can check out my coop from my profile page.