What do you wish you had known before you got your chickens

[Twinklin]

I wish I knew I'd be spending a chunk of my day today building a makeshift baby gate to keep...

THEM...



From pooping....

over THERE...



it's monsoon here and the storms the past couple weeks have shaken all the seeds from the giant palm tree onto the patio and they just can't resist so I've been spraying poop off the patio multiple times a day and the cecal poop... OMG. I know they CAN get over the gate but I'm hoping they're too lazy to actually do it. Up until the past week they've been outside all day and never left the grass once. Now it's cooler + the seeds... they're ready to explore and cause trouble.

 

[newbie32]

Haha! He wouldn't even jump on a plane, let alone go to California! But I think it's pretty easy to get secondary coops set up like that. But then again, ours aren't elevated. We have open-air coops we can walk into. The only thing I know my dad did for extra security was dig about a foot down around the edges and he laid out iron rods and concrete. That way, any little digging critters would stay out. Now, we just walk in, get our eggs, and walk out. The feed is also kept in there (in a big aluminum canister) so the rats don't get to it during the day. Our rat dogs also take care of any critters they see roaming around. It's their entertainment, haha!

Then again, we also let our birds free range all day on the 1/2 acre. I'm not sure our set up would work for everyone, but it can definitely be sized down. I'll see if I can get a picture tomorrow, when it's light out.

YES PIC PLEASE!!!!!

 

[newbie32]

HAHA

love your backyard but I see nothing that will keep those birds from jumping over that!!!!!

 

[Twinklin]

HAHA

love your backyard but I see nothing that will keep those birds from jumping over that!!!!!

Thanks yeah, my girls are pretty lazy though so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. I was able to keep them out of my vegetable garden with only a 2 ft high hardware cloth fence. I think when they see a barrier they think "yeah, she's ****** now... we should probably stop going over there"... and then they find a flower pot to dig all the dirt out of. The little gate is a temporary solution but hopefully it works until we can save a few bucks to build something more permanent.

 

[newbie32]

Thanks yeah, my girls are pretty lazy though so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. I was able to keep them out of my vegetable garden with only a 2 ft high hardware cloth fence. I think when they see a barrier they think "yeah, she's ****** now... we should probably stop going over there"... and then they find a flower pot to dig all the dirt out of. The little gate is a temporary solution but hopefully it works until we can save a few bucks to build something more permanent.

Well if they wont go over 2 feet then you got it made! Hopefully as mine grow older that will be my situation too

 

[PrimroseMom1]

You know, my Dad went crazy when he started building the coops.  He actually started building goat pens for when my brother and sister were in FFA, but then my little sister got rabbits, so he built up a rabbit hutch inside one of the goat pens.  After that, the goats and rabbits were gone and my sister got chickens for FFA.  My Dad continued building until he built his shed (which is pretty big). After he built the shed, he put up the frameword and a ceiling for the chicken coop, thinking that we'd end up keeping all the extra chickens that weren't for showing.  He expanded that thing like crazy, so now we have 1 giant coop with 6 segments that will be wired and given doors so we can separate any chickens we feel necessary.  Broody hens will have one section, ornamentals another, roosters another, laying hens another, and so on.

It's actually going pretty good right now!  My Dad actually overcompensated, haha!  I'm just waiting for the go ahead so I can start putting up wire and then he can start building the doors for the segments.  I can't wait for that to happen.  I really get tired of feeding the hens and roosters the same feed.  Time for the hens to start paying their dues and for the roosters to start getting fat enough to eat. Mhm.

Fotos,please!!!

 

[LBejaran]

YES PIC PLEASE!!!!!

Okay, here is the coop! We're still working on it, but with the rain and the summer heat, we've been putting it off. I'm thinking we'll get started again after Dad lays out the concrete in his work area. That way, he can have space to start cutting wood and wire and making doors.


This is the backyard. Pretty open, for the birds to range.

This is the shed. Not the coop, but the shed that hides the coop, hehehe...Oh, and please ignore the mess in front. Dad and I will begin welding soon, so we're going to build BBQ pits! (The sign of true Texans, they build their own pits, haha!)

Aha! Cleverly hidden behind our shed is our coop. As I move through the coop, you'll see a lot more chickens in there with me. They were following me, waiting for treats, haha!

This is the inside of our coop. As you can see, it extends past the end of the shed. We have a temporary roost up for our smaller chicks so they can hop on up. We plan on building a roost here (Dad didn't know what a roost was, so it hadn't been in the original plans. That arrow is pointing to our segment marker. Every one of those (there are 5) will be for a new segment that can be separated as needed. That's something that'll take some time, though, considering the cost of the high-quality wire we use.

The roost works!

The flock followed me in, thinking I'd be handing out food for them, haha! We're just a big mixed up family!

These are our twin broodies, with Mama the Partridge Cochin photobombing. I'm not entirely sure if I should break the broodies, though. I kinda want muscovy ducks. Decisions, decisions. Could you tell I made a few adjustments to the nesting boxes? Hehehe, I realized I forgot to clean them, haha!

And just Estella, one of our mutts, up on an old tire. Dad's gonna turn the tires we have here into elevated nests for the hens. They'll be cut and nailed onto the wall so they can hop on up and do their thing.

Well, that's it! Hope you enjoyed seeing our coop. We're been pretty lucky that nothing has come in and tried to eat away at anything. Our chickens are pretty happy with the coop as is, but I can't wait to finish it. Once this rainy weather stops, Dad and I will likely get to work again!

 

[PrimroseMom1]

I wish I had known about needing a very comfortable place to sit in the chicken yard and watch chickens. The bench has big arms and there's a side table great for coffee.

 

[newbie32]

Okay, here is the coop! We're still working on it, but with the rain and the summer heat, we've been putting it off. I'm thinking we'll get started again after Dad lays out the concrete in his work area. That way, he can have space to start cutting wood and wire and making doors.


This is the backyard. Pretty open, for the birds to range.

This is the shed. Not the coop, but the shed that hides the coop, hehehe...Oh, and please ignore the mess in front. Dad and I will begin welding soon, so we're going to build BBQ pits! (The sign of true Texans, they build their own pits, haha!)

Aha! Cleverly hidden behind our shed is our coop. As I move through the coop, you'll see a lot more chickens in there with me. They were following me, waiting for treats, haha!

This is the inside of our coop. As you can see, it extends past the end of the shed. We have a temporary roost up for our smaller chicks so they can hop on up. We plan on building a roost here (Dad didn't know what a roost was, so it hadn't been in the original plans. That arrow is pointing to our segment marker. Every one of those (there are 5) will be for a new segment that can be separated as needed. That's something that'll take some time, though, considering the cost of the high-quality wire we use.

The roost works!

The flock followed me in, thinking I'd be handing out food for them, haha! We're just a big mixed up family!

These are our twin broodies, with Mama the Partridge Cochin photobombing. I'm not entirely sure if I should break the broodies, though. I kinda want muscovy ducks. Decisions, decisions. Could you tell I made a few adjustments to the nesting boxes? Hehehe, I realized I forgot to clean them, haha!

And just Estella, one of our mutts, up on an old tire. Dad's gonna turn the tires we have here into elevated nests for the hens. They'll be cut and nailed onto the wall so they can hop on up and do their thing.

Well, that's it! Hope you enjoyed seeing our coop. We're been pretty lucky that nothing has come in and tried to eat away at anything. Our chickens are pretty happy with the coop as is, but I can't wait to finish it. Once this rainy weather stops, Dad and I will likely get to work again!

WOW this is amazing! You and your dad should be very proud. It looks 10x better and bigger than mine and mine is supposed to be finished!!!!

 

[LBejaran]

WOW this is amazing! You and your dad should be very proud. It looks 10x better and bigger than mine and mine is supposed to be finished!!!!

Thanks! Ours is so big because we used to use that area for storage (it harbored all Dad's old junk). Now that it's been fixed up like this, thinks are pretty manageable. And trust me, a coop is never truly finished. Something can always be improved on.

But to be honest, our coop is huge because Dad likes to go all out on things. That's why it is taking to long to get it finished. He'd rather have an excellent coop than one that could be better. He's a perfectionist like that. "Measure twice, cut once," he always says. I just wish this rain would stop so we could get to work. I want to learn how to weld so bad! And I want to build a small pen for my quail. They are in an old rabbit hutch we use for chicks, but I think they are getting tired of it. It's big enough, but they get bored. I want to give them a nice place alongside the main coop, but we'll see. I actually didn't photograph our other pen (we used to use it for goats, then rabbits, then the pony, and now the turkeys, chicks and quail. Not enough lighting in there to get a decent photograph. It's the first pen we built, I think. It's pretty nice, but it's also smaller.