The building of Pea Palace(Pic Heavy)

[frenchblackcopper]

After much measuring today and thinking about how bad the wind driven snow can get here in the wintertime I've decided to build a pen all along this wall.These walls are 6' high and you can see the middle horizontal wall nailer that is 3' up.I'm going to attach 4'x'8' 1/2"sheet of OSB board as the floor to this wall nailer.From left to right I have 20' of space.This above floor pen will be at least 4'x16' and maybe a full 20' length.Since it will only extend out 4' I still plan to have 2 inside pens here,it's just that the adults inside the pen will not have floor to roof flying access.I will still have 8' of pen that will go as high as the roof.It's time to move the 2012 hatch out of the 3 smaller pens I have them in now that's inside my garage.This pen will be entirely off the floor 3' and extend up to the roof and be all along this west wall.None of my peas see's dirt until their first spring here and they are all large enough now to go without heat lights except for a few late hatchers that will stay inside the garage for awhile yet.Tomorrow more progress will happen.

 

[new 2 pfowl]

Looks like you are making serious progress there, although it is still hard for me to visualize the pens when you describe them... I'll have to wait for the pictures.

As you know our gang free ranges so I'm definitely no pen expert, and I ABSOLUTELY don't mean to cause any offense by asking, but I wonder if your peas are going to have enough room in there?
Looking through past threads, I see that the recommended space ranges from 65 to 100 square feet per bird.
For example, Deerman suggested 65-85 square feet per (a 12 X 36 with 1 peacock and 4-5 hens).
Others suggest 100 square feet or more per bird (Leggs suggests 65-100 square feet per, http://www.leggspeafowl.com/pens.htm; Hopkins suggests 100-150 square feet per, http://www.hopkinslivestock.com/flight_pen_construction.htm).

Of course, it is clear that you have given your pea housing a lot of careful thought and I wonder how you determined how big to make the pens, because I see (#208) that you're allowing them 24 square feet per bird.
(After all, Thang needs plenty of room to Fly Free!!!!)

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Yes,space per bird will not be as much inside but all they will be doing is eating and drinking and staying out of the weather.Currently my Bronze has 4 birds,Opal has only 3 birds per each inside pen and they are 8'x10'. Outside breeding pens are diffrent and they have much more space per bird but for shelter and basically doing nothing for the next 3-4 months these smaller pens will be fine in my opinion.All birds penned together as breeding pairs-trios-quads,ect was together this summer.I have not yet "mixed" any new birds in with these old groups but may introduce the two opal hens in with Opie and his harem of 2 hens he has now.
Inside my Midnight and Purple pens both has roosts made that are at least 6' above ground,These pens are 10x8 and 10x6.Granted there is not a lot of excercise room but even in their outside pens they are limited.the Opals and Bronze do have access to going outside in their old breeding pens 24-7 but I find it funny that since I completed both their inside pens and kept them confined inside for 3 days,that now I very seldom see them outside and every nite they are inside on their perches.Breeding season and the males having trains 5-6' long is diffrent compared to now where they don't have 3' of tail yet.
I watched "Twist of Fate"last eve on the Weather Channel on the February 2011 snowstorm that dumped over 20"s of snow in Chicago in just a few hours and all the drifting and blowing that happened.Pea Palace sits on the far corner of my property and out here there is nothing to slow down the wind.We had horrendous drifting here from the same storm last year and was stranded for 11 days.My thoughts are the flock will be much better off in a small,totally enclosed space such as I'm constructing vs.a larger more expansive area.I know how brutally cold and how even a little amount of snowfall can add up to drifting that becomes several feet thick.

P.S.,,Thang is in the front pen,(Charcoal breeding pen this past year)not back at the palace.That pen he is in has a 12'x16' building and an outside enclosed pen 16x10.352 sq ft 100% on concrete and at present there is 21 birds in this pen.I had close to 35 birds in this pen for 1 1/2 yrs until I started building the Palace this spring with breeding pens.Yes there were dominate birds then but we never had any picking-pecking or loss of any birds with so many being confined in such a small area.Maybe it was because they all was hatched here and grew up together?

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Some progress was made today although not as much as I'd have hoped for.My building challenge at this time is to make above floor pens for my 2012 hatched peas that are quickly outgrowing their pens inside the garage.Plus doing chores with three seperate pens eats up a lot of time especially with the time change.
New2,perhaps these pictures will help visualize what I'm adding now.A lot of vertical space is wasted in this building.So I'm trying to utilize some of that space more productively.Before I could really begin today I had to close up the roof rafter gap and then add osb to make a solid wall alongside the purple's inside pen.It's a pain doing things by yourself and a step ladder comes in handy when trying to get boards level.Here you can see I have put osb along the top rafter gap,and added the OSB along the south wall.The bottom or floor of this pen is 1/2" OSB that I will cover with a roll of asphalt tar paper,then bed heavy with wood shavings.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Here is another view without the step ladder being used as a prop anymore.You can see that underneath this pen floor there is still plenty of room for adult peas to go in and out once the west edition is completed.Of course an entry door will be cut thru the sheet metal wall when the time comes.This is just one eight foot long piece of osb and I plan to make this pen at least 16' long,possibly 20' long which would take it all the way to the existing corn crib wall.It only extends 4' away from the wall and the adult pens I plan to make will be 12' long.Granted the back part of these adult pens will only be 3' tall but I will put their roosts on the high side so they have room for flying up and off of them.Notice the purple peas on their high roost in the far left hand corner?

 

[kuntrygirl]

Looking great!!!!

 

[Haunted55]

Here is another view without the step ladder being used as a prop anymore.You can see that underneath this pen floor there is still plenty of room for adult peas to go in and out once the west edition is completed.Of course an entry door will be cut thru the sheet metal wall when the time comes.This is just one eight foot long piece of osb and I plan to make this pen at least 16' long,possibly 20' long which would take it all the way to the existing corn crib wall.It only extends 4' away from the wall and the adult pens I plan to make will be 12' long.Granted the back part of these adult pens will only be 3' tall but I will put their roosts on the high side so they have room for flying up and off of them.Notice the purple peas on their high roost in the far left hand corner?

This is a great idea FBC. Are each of the pens going to have the same kind of set up or are all hatches going into this one?

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Been busy this week with work and supposed to be in the 60's for temps here this weekend,so the push to get thIs done is lessening somewhat now.But I'm sure the weather will get frigid again so I still must get this done.Haunted,this above ground pen will probably be the full remaining wall length of 20'.I'm considering making "drop down walls" or partitions as I have done with a brooder box used when peas are a few weeks old.I made walls that are hinged on the top so the wall can be raised up and tied giving the chance to have several smaller pens,or a fewer number of larger sized pens.My entire hatching methodology must change for the spring of 2013 and so must my space to house and move more peachicks as they grow.The three seperate groups I have from this summers 2012 hatch will probably have the entire 20'x4' pen to move around in.I will put all of them in this pen and let them decide who's top pea.If I made 3 flip up walls I could have 5 seperate pens to use next summer as peas hatch weekly in this above ground pen.It takes some time to make these walls and attach them plus I must then have an access door to get into each pen for feed and water.Everytime I take time to complete something like this more ideas comes to mind for future growth,and if I had any sense whatsoever I would stop with the number of peas I have now.

 

[Haunted55]

Really good idea. I may just have to borrow this idea, lol.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Today I got a few more hours in and some progress was made.I now have the entire floor of the raised pen completed.I finally was able to put the last sheet of metal on the west wall.I've now decided to make a false ceiling on this pen,instead of the pens uppermost-highest point being the rafters.This pen will be 4ft wide,19' long,and 3' high.Because of the pitch in the roof,since my pens will now have a false ceiling only 3' high,it will give me maybe a foot of above pen clearance next to the wall,and possibly 1 1/2' of clearance on the front side.I've decided to do this for the simple fact of adding heat lights.I have not yet decided on how many individual pens I will make in this somewhat long pen.I could have 5 pens each being about 4'x3.8' or 3 pens 4'x6.3'
I've replaced too many heat bulbs already because of the peas shenanigans.They try flying,chasing each other ect. and the bulb gets the filament broken long before the bulb actually would quit from hours of usage.I've since solved that issue by taking scrap 2"x4" welded wire and making a guard that I attached to the heat light housing-shroud that they come with.The flimsy 2 piece wire that makes an "x" under the bulb does not stand up to pea play,but my homemade wire guard does work great.With a false ceiling in place I will precut holes to house the heat lights so they are above,or even with this lowered false ceiling,hopefully eliminating a bulb getting broken by peas constantly bumping-knocking it around.Also by making the ceiling level,instead of using the existing rafters with pitch on them,it will be much faster to make pen division walls that are hinged.These petition walls now must be hinged on the side as with a regular door and won't swing up,since they would block the heat lites now once installed in he ceiling.As New2 pointed out earlier it maybe hard to visualize this without pictures so tomorrow after I go get 2 more pieces of OSB,,10 more 2"X4"s and 5 bags of shavings and hinges I will get pics.I also plan to make a hinged board that is 12"s tall all along the front of the entire l9' of length of this pen,for easy cleanout.There will be 1 layer of asphalt tar paper covering the osb floor to prevent poop-rot.