Score! Lowes Playhouse Coop $80!

[CATRAY44]

Are you guys all getting them for $80.00?

 

[KellyHM]

I want one!! Calling Lowe's tomorrow...

 

[sis]

Here is my Lowes playhouse.

This is only a temp ramp to the playhouse.
I am always telling my dh that the chickens need something to play with/on, see the chicken in the wheelbarrow? This day, my husband says, I will leave the wheelbarrow here for them to play with, lets see what they do. They love it. sometimes they are inside and on both handles. can't quite get a photo of them doing that tho.....

I have 5 more playhouses comming, two for me, one each for 3 friends who want chickens. We built a frame of 2 by 4's, nailed plywood to that, vynal on top. turned it over and put a roll of insullation underneath. set this on top of cinderblocks, twohigh, then put the finished playhouse on top. playhouse weighs 150lbs so its not going anywhere. I have not figured out the roosts yet, but if I were to do a external nesting box, I would make a wooden box with a ground support. like people box in a/c units. with a flap that opens to remove eggs.

 

[1Chick Magnet]

i went to 2 stores and got no help. just, we used to have those but we sold out 6 months ago. because of this thread we called the 800 number. within 24 hours the manager from our closest store called. he took another 24 hours to locate the houses. it took less than a week to transfer them to my town. none of the employees seemed to know the houses were on clearance. i got an awful lot of gee i remember when these were 299. they ring up at 89. i got an extra 10% off because i opened a charge account. so, 3 cost me less than 1 used to! when we were loading the guys were going - boy this ought to make 3 kids really happy tomorrow.

i plan to use them for breeding pens or for when somebody needs to be alone. my main coop is 8x12. in reality these may not get assembled till next spring. we are still working on the big coop. i am closely watching what everyone is doing with theirs. but next spring i would never find such a deal. thanks all you guys for being so creative.

 

[criker99]

So I had to drive 3 hours round trip .... but my store had 4 of them at the clearance price! We've been wanting to start our backyard chicken raising and have been struggling with the housing situation.

At this price, I couldn't help but get them all. I'm trying to figure out now how to use them. I was concerned that one wouldn't be enough (it's the only shelter we'll have). Will they kind of separate themselves into the different houses (if I have them sharing a yard) or will they be upset because they can't all be together?

Any suggestions on how you would use multiple of them? For this size of a house, what would be the optimum # of hens?

Thanks!

 

[Riocotesei]

Is the 800 help number posted on this thread? I went to 3 stores in our area and they said they didn't have any....maybe if I called that number..?

 

[1Chick Magnet]

welcome cricker99. do a search on playhouse coop. you will turn up other similar playhouse coops as well as some of the belamy ones. one that i saw, the people had more than 1 house. they had a common yard with the houses in the corners. some people have multiple pics of how they converted the houses to coops. very helpful. i have bantams as well as lg breed birds. i will separate lg from small. how many birds do you want? meat-eggs-pets?

 

[1Chick Magnet]

riocotesei, the customer service desk at any lowes can do a computer search of the stores in your district. dh is in bed. he has the 800 number. i may have gotten it off the lowes internet sight. try there. let me know if you can not find it and i will get it from dh.

 

[criker99]

I've now seen quite a few of the posts ... wondering if I really need all 4 houses; I guess we'll see. We're looking for full size layers (breed yet to be determined); am in the pacific northwest.

Hubby and I are disagreeing about how much house space is needed and how much yard space is needed; and actually, how tall the fence needs to be for the yard space. And ... if we have them near the front yard (where the houses would be shown off the most) if someone will come and steal either the chickens, the eggs, or the houses themselves. Keep in mind we live in a small town, not a particularly high crime area, but he's kind of a negative nelly kind of guy.

So ... what I'm thinking about is building a platform, about 3-4' off the ground to set the houses on. Having 3 of the houses side by side (with two of them sharing a common wall, the third would have all walls in place, with a closeable chicken door between that third building and the other two so I could close that building off if I needed to sequester some birds). The people doors (front of the buildings) would be facing out. The "plain wall" would be facing the chicken yard. The floor would have two closeable doors in it with ramps that would go under the house floors (so part of the yard is covered by the houses, the rest would be open air (but covered with fencing material incase of predators) - one of those doors would be in the somewhat separate building, and one would be in the double building. We don't really have a substantially large number of predators, but I'm sure between the cats, hawks and the coyotes that might be attracted, they'll need some protection.

The yard would be 12' wide (3 buildings) and about 16' long. It would be 3-4' high (so it wouldn't cover the buildings at all, would be relatively level with the platform floor of the buildings). My thoughts are that the houses would look like town houses with garages underneath (well, not really garages, because that would be the fenced area). I hope to be able to "turn out" the hens to be loose on our 5 acre property during the day at least 5 days a week.

I'm looking for enough hens to have my family (2 adults, one teen) kept in eggs, plus enough to sell to pay for the feed and recover the startup costs within 18 months (costs expected to be no more than $750). Home-grown eggs in our area sell for $2.50-$3.50 a dozen.

I was thinking our setup would be appropriate for 15-20 hens?

 

[vfem]

Do you know since this thread was started I've called and went to 3 lowe's stores looking for this! Yes, I just built a coop, but I do have an 18 month old who would LOVE it (She really thought the coop was her's and that was so disappointing when the chickens moved in and no room for Zoe).

All these idiots tell me they have never see this thing! They didn't know what I was talking about? Come on... I know it exists and I was willing to pay for it, anything to cheer up my child. So who do I need to call to get one sent to NC.

Man I looked dumb telling them thanks for the help and then searching the stores top to bottom all by myself anyways.