I've always wanted chickens. I enjoyed helping care for the flock at the one stable I boarded my horse at when I was younger and a small flock my uncle had on his hobby farm.
Finally being in a place to have my own little flock, I started researching and got 7 day old chicks this past May. (One turned out to be a cockerel and had to be rehomed as I can't have roosters here). They were brooded in my basement and as they started getting bigger, I put together a temporary grow out coop, knowing I'd need to build something permanent.
Our house is circled on the side and rear by a steep embankment that limits the usable space on our lot. So pretty much the only room I could use was behind our house. My parents own the lot to the other side of us and originally didn't have a problem with me putting a coop there, so plans were to build the coop on our lot and the run going over to their lot.
First step was to clear space. Some junk, tree stumps and a half dead tree needed to go. I got the stumps ground down first, then started relocating scrap and other junk.
Next the tree trimmers had to come. It took a while to arrange that because only one local company that we've used before has the equipment to handle taking down the trees we wanted gone. Not much room to maneuver between the house and the embankment. Two trees needed to be cut down to clear to make room for the chicken coop and two trees plus a limb off off a massive oak that were hanging over our house's roof (if we were having them out we were getting everything done in one shot). Between their busy schedule and crazy weather making the ground too soft for them to work at our house and giving them more work at other places....most of the summer went by...
This was also about when Dad started to push back on building on my parent's lot too. Since my brother had two storage sheds already there, I guess he felt like us kids were starting to take up too much space. We were also already so far behind schedule, I mostly scrapped the plans to build everything from scratch. I found a company that builds storage sheds that had a coop package they could add to a storage shed. The price was not much more than it would cost to build on our own plus they were running a free delivery special and I hoped it would help us catch back up. I knew we would have to add tweaks like more ventilation and a better roost, but that would be easily doable. So I put in an order for a shoop!
This leaning tree and the pine tree still needed to go to make room for the coop. Finally the tree trimmer company had time for us and the ground was dry enough to support their crane:
They got everything we needed cut down and left us a nice big pile of oak chips for the future chicken run.
The next step was to level where the coop and run were supposed to go. Luckily my retired contractor father still has his bulldozer and was eventually convinced to fire it up and use it. We had to get a couple triaxle loads of fill to make enough flat ground for a usable location for the coop and run. It would have been back breaking to try to do it by shovel, muscle and sweat. The slogan, "Nothing Runs Like a Deere" is pretty apt, my dad bought that bulldozer brand new in 1975. It only blew two ancient hydraulic lines to the backhoe that were pretty easy to fix according to Dad, once he was able to figure out which ones blew and which to replace. But that still set us behind another two weeks.
Finally the spot was leveled. After a slight delay from the shed company (we were at the very limit of their delivery range, so they tried to make the delivery to us as efficient for them as possible since we weren't contributing anything to their gas bill) the shoop finally landed!
To be continued....
Finally being in a place to have my own little flock, I started researching and got 7 day old chicks this past May. (One turned out to be a cockerel and had to be rehomed as I can't have roosters here). They were brooded in my basement and as they started getting bigger, I put together a temporary grow out coop, knowing I'd need to build something permanent.
Our house is circled on the side and rear by a steep embankment that limits the usable space on our lot. So pretty much the only room I could use was behind our house. My parents own the lot to the other side of us and originally didn't have a problem with me putting a coop there, so plans were to build the coop on our lot and the run going over to their lot.
First step was to clear space. Some junk, tree stumps and a half dead tree needed to go. I got the stumps ground down first, then started relocating scrap and other junk.
Next the tree trimmers had to come. It took a while to arrange that because only one local company that we've used before has the equipment to handle taking down the trees we wanted gone. Not much room to maneuver between the house and the embankment. Two trees needed to be cut down to clear to make room for the chicken coop and two trees plus a limb off off a massive oak that were hanging over our house's roof (if we were having them out we were getting everything done in one shot). Between their busy schedule and crazy weather making the ground too soft for them to work at our house and giving them more work at other places....most of the summer went by...
This was also about when Dad started to push back on building on my parent's lot too. Since my brother had two storage sheds already there, I guess he felt like us kids were starting to take up too much space. We were also already so far behind schedule, I mostly scrapped the plans to build everything from scratch. I found a company that builds storage sheds that had a coop package they could add to a storage shed. The price was not much more than it would cost to build on our own plus they were running a free delivery special and I hoped it would help us catch back up. I knew we would have to add tweaks like more ventilation and a better roost, but that would be easily doable. So I put in an order for a shoop!
This leaning tree and the pine tree still needed to go to make room for the coop. Finally the tree trimmer company had time for us and the ground was dry enough to support their crane:
They got everything we needed cut down and left us a nice big pile of oak chips for the future chicken run.
The next step was to level where the coop and run were supposed to go. Luckily my retired contractor father still has his bulldozer and was eventually convinced to fire it up and use it. We had to get a couple triaxle loads of fill to make enough flat ground for a usable location for the coop and run. It would have been back breaking to try to do it by shovel, muscle and sweat. The slogan, "Nothing Runs Like a Deere" is pretty apt, my dad bought that bulldozer brand new in 1975. It only blew two ancient hydraulic lines to the backhoe that were pretty easy to fix according to Dad, once he was able to figure out which ones blew and which to replace. But that still set us behind another two weeks.
Finally the spot was leveled. After a slight delay from the shed company (we were at the very limit of their delivery range, so they tried to make the delivery to us as efficient for them as possible since we weren't contributing anything to their gas bill) the shoop finally landed!
To be continued....
