It takes a village to build a chicken coop, apparently. I realize that I'm rapidly approaching the limit of chicken themed blog posts for the month.....
Lucky for me May is almost over!
We've wanted to tear that shed down since we moved in, the floor is falling apart, it's open to the elements and Mike almost fell through the roof retrieving one of Garrett's balls. Originally we planned to buy a local amish built coop for the chickens but every time we thought one might work, I decided it needed to be a little bigger (room to grow of course). The price tag on coops the size I was looking for were far out of our budget and what better way to live the "recycle, reuse, reduce" mantra?
It's going to be a lot of work. Probably more work then if we were starting from scratch because we didn't really know what we were working with until we got in there. But we are getting there. The chicks are really too big to be in the tub at this point. Not to mention the entire bathroom smells like, well, it smells like there are 6 chickens living in the bathtub. So we took our to-do list and prioritize what we needed to get done before it was safe enough for them to move in.
We removed broken windows, tore out the drywall, ripped up the flooring and put corrugated metal roofing down on top of the existing roof. Garrett really got a kick out of helping with tearing the drywall down. It's not everyday you get to bang a hammer into the wall.
I helped with all of the demo but Mike's brother showed up just in time to allow me to bow out for the reconstructing piece of things. They installed plywood flooring and installed the roof. Some lovely neighbors came over Sunday morning and helped Mike build the doors and cover the window holes with hardware cloth. We installed the doors Sunday evening and the only thing left to do before the ladies move in is to seal the floor and install a few roosts. The list of things to do after they get in is long. Very, very long but consists of mostly winterizing and cosmetic things that can wait until we recover from this weekend.
I really wanted to build a coop when we decided to get chickens. But we were short on time and decided it would be better to buy one of the Amish coops. It's beautiful, but it was not cheap and we will only ever be able to house 6 chickens. Our township only allows 4 birds, so I guess we're ok unless I decide to break the rule.
ReplyDeleteWe bought sexed chickens, but I'm a little worried about one of them...I wonder how often they are wrong.
I do love the amish coops, they are so well built. Our coop is definitely not pretty but it does give us room to grow. I'd like to try meat birds next year but Mike says that's a firm no!
DeleteFrom what I've read the sexing is usually 90% accurate but the guessing game keeps things interest for sure.
Oooh, I would LOVE to do meat birds. I'm pretty sure my Hubs would be a firm no on that, too. But wouldn't it be awesome to have a couple dozen in your freezer that were raised naturally?
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