Southern California Coop New Pictures

[Garrison]

Thanks for all the great ideas.

Hope you like it.

Garrison

 

[Desert Rooster]

WOW

, thats one nice lookin coop

 

[annek]

Beautiful job! Is that ceramic tile inside? My husband thought I was nuts for putting in new vinyl!

 

[Wise Woman]

Wow! That coop is gorgeous. I am hoping our new one turns out half that good. Would you mind sharing some of the details of how you built it? My husband is carpentry challenged so I have to be the brains of this whole new coop building project and I don't know what the heck I am doing either. Great job.

 

[Yay Chicks!]

Snazzy!

 

[MamaChic21]

I don't like it, I LOVE IT

. Nicely done

 

[geebs]

JEALOUS

 

[Garrison]

Thanks, when I get some more time I plan on putting together a more thoughtful page. But quickly I will share a few thoughts on design and some things I will upgrade or could have done different.

I am a General Contractor and I built this for my parents avocado farm. I have since placed a garden/large fenced in out door run next to the coop that the girls can go into and pick away between crops. All materials were from past jobs and we built it over a couple weekends.

My Goals were easy maintenance, easy maintenance & easy maintenance. The coop has double doors, one side for roost clean out and one side for nest boxes. The coop has a Vinyl tile floor for easy clean up, and can be hosed out. I used a washing machine pan I had to go under the roost, it collects about 90% of the waste, the roost is on hinges so you can prop it up and pull out the pan. Every couple weeks the grove workers spread the straw on the Avocado trees and the washing machine tray gets dumped into the compost bin for the garden. Under the straw is about 8" of washed plaster sand, so the straw is always dry. We have a huge population of coyotes so I lined the entire outside of the coop with used brick and used 1" wire netting and fastened it down with washers and screws. It doesn't get very cold so the door is always open to the secured run and the food and water is hanging from the bottom of the coop outside. We let them free range around the grove if work is being done or our dogs are with them. If the garden is not in season the dog and I herd them into the large fenced in pen were they can hang outside for the day. One thing that I am going to change is the roost in the outside run, it is hanging by chain and they don't like how it swings so don't use it. I am going to make something more rigid that can be pulled out when mucking out the run. Every step of the process I thought about how easy can it be cleaned and it seemed to work out.

My current birds are 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Golden Laced Wyandottes, 1 Plymouth Rock, 1 Buff Orpington and 1 Game Hen that one of the workers gave to us as a gift along with a game cock, we had our reservations at first but the game cock turned out to be the best rooster we have ever had beautiful, gentle with the ladies and loved people, he would actually sit in your lap and fall asleep if you let him. Unfortunately, Sancho got taken by a coyote when he was protecting the girls a couple months ago.

Thanks again for all the helpful info.

 

[kstaven]

Well thought out, looks great. What more could you ask for?

 

[krcote]

This is beautiful, nice job.