The chicken coop that almost made it...UPDATED 8/6/07

2mnypets

Crowing
17 Years
Apr 11, 2007
1,009
68
356
Saucier, Mississippi
I have to vent this morning cause it seems like my poor lil 2 month old babies will be in their brooder forever. Before I start I must say I'm not mad, just sooo disappointed at all the variables that have led up to this moment.

A month and a half ago we were at a birthday party and a very nice sized chicken coop was offered up to us free of charge. Of course we jumped on it. Our friend has a 3 ton truck and 16 ft. trailer and he offered to pull it for us.

To understand this feat you must know that our friend's cousin who ownes the coop lives a good 20 miles from here and this coop is HEAVY! It is 14 feet long, 9 feet wide, 12 feet high with a pitched roof, 47 nest boxes with the floor made of railroad ties and the 4x4's are made of oak timbers. It took 4 guys five and a half hours to roll it up onto the trailer bed. As they were starting to pull out of the yard, the back bumper was nearly pulled off and the double axel broke. We waited almost a week before the truck was usable again because we had to special order the axel and wait for it to come in.

Now our friend that is pulling this for us is also our mechanic and our daughters' best friends' dad. He will tell you he is the worst procrastonator in the world. We waited almost a month for him to get the truck to his cousin's house in the first place to load the coop on the trailer. Every day my husband called just before he left work to come home to see if "today" was the day. It made for a long month.

Yesterday our friend called to say he was getting in the truck to come over and we reminded him that he had an eye doctor's appt. He had forgotten. He called after the appt. and said he wouldn't be able to do it because the doctor had dilated his eyes. He said he would leave at 7am this morning to bring it over.

I just got off the phone with him and you won't believe what happened. He got to his other house that they are re-doing and the coop had collapsed. It was leaning like the 4x4's on one side had been shaken loose from the floor and had completely fallen on itself. So they are at this very moment attempting to collect what wood and nesting boxes are salvagable and load them on the trailer to bring out here.

Mind you that I'm very grateful that it wasn't at my house when it decided to collapse. It could have taken out my other coop not to mention all my chickens. Things happen for a reason, I just know that the brooder we made within the other chicken coop has been outgrown. So if my hubby and I aren't on at all this weekend in the forum, y'all know why.....we're building another chicken coop out of spare parts.
 
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Oh, I'm so sorry.
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I know how disappointed you must be. But like you said, thank God it didn't happen with it full of chickens. :aww

Hopefully there is still enough there that y'all can still get a nice coop out of the free material.
 
That stinks.
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Do you have a garage or somewhere you could make a temporary coop for them until you can build one?
 
Oh no! So much frustration for you! But at least your chicks are safe.

This might be a long shot, but you could post on your local freecycle board to see if anyone has a utility/storage shed they no longer are using. I was surprised to see one listed on one of my local boards recently so you never know ...

Hope it all works out for you and your chicks.
 
Actually our friend tore the thing down and salvaged what he could and we all spent the evening making trips to Lowe's and building a new coop with what he was able to save. Still money out of pocket that we didn't anticipate but what do you do? They need out of the brooder due to their size and we didn't build anything cause we were getting this big coop. Guess that will teach us.
 
Well that would have been great if I had had the money. Been extremely sick and in the hospital with Salmonella Poisoning in my blood which required a lot of cash flow for my medications. Hence no chicken coop. That's why our friend was helping us out. Not to mention, my DH has been putting in a lot of overtime to compensate for me being off work while recuperating and paying bills still on one income instead of two. We've just not had time or the funds to build one at the moment. We will just make due with what we've got.
 

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