So you wanna have chickens, eh?

[irvingj]

Wife, a MO farmer's daughter and now a nurse, decided she wanted chickens. Ordered 10 hatchlings. Hatchlings arrived. Hatchlings ate and grew....

Needless to say, guess who got the job of designing & building a chicken house! Read a lot of books, looked at a LOT of photos and plans.... Decided to put it on a trailer frame so it could be moved around --with tractor, natch-- and came up with this.

It's been a REAL slow process, as I am dfinitely NOT a builder, but I'm learning! Floor is on a 2x4 frame, and is 3/4" Advantech flooring, covered with some leftover free stuff- 2 coats of laquer-based filler, 4 coats of urethane. Floor area is 4' 9" (don't ask- it was supposed to be 5' wide! ) x 6' 6". Walls also coated with 2 coats of urethane, up about 1.5 ft from floor. Used old windows left over from house replacements, cut down so side edges were flat. Trailer base was an e-bay el cheapo 40" x 48" frame, no lights or fenders installed. Found I had to extend toungue ($35 for a 6' piece of 2.5" sq tube) so I could hook it up to tractor --and still be able to turn--OOPS! --

Originally was going to be a lean-to roof, but.... Shingles were left over from house roofing job last year. Entry door was going to be a single, but wife convinced me to make it a double (good idea, I think!). Oh. And it had to be able to fit in our garage....

My only real contribution was the idea for the clean-out flap at the rear-- full-width, right down to the floor, at the rear of the "trailer." Ceiling insulation was 1/2-price damaged stryofoam from local supplier-- it's mostly there to cover the roofing nails so I/we don't rip our heads open! Behold, the "Little Red Henhouse"!

Not quite done yet, but I need to get those chickens out of their cardboard boxes soon!

If anyone has some suggestions, I'm all ears-- this is all new to me!

 

[kenstrac]

Seat belts for the chickens?

 

[keegs]

Dandy coup Irv. How's it keeping chickens? Are they work?

 

[jinman]

Very good lookin' job, Irving. You've certainly done double duty to make the floor durable. It will be hard to keep it in good shape because of the nature of the chicken poop. You may find it needs to be covered with something durable and replaceable, like a rubber pickup bed mat. You'll also need to put in some shelves as platforms for the chickens. You can make them out of a frame with chicken wire stretched on it so that poop drops to the floor. I suspect you will also want some cubby holes for nesting and laying eggs.

I'll bet when you put that coop outside, you find the chickens spend lots of time underneath to get out of the sun. It will be cooler underneath than inside during the summer. I also think you will have a hard time keeping the tires from dry rotting. Maybe you can remove them if the coop is going to be in one spot for a long time. I'm not a chicken expert, but as a kid we had chickens and these are things I remember about them. If you save the chicken poop, it is good fertilizer, but very hot with nitrogen. You need to be careful not to over-fertilize with it.

I guess there are many questions about what and where you plan to feed and water the chickens. Will your waterer be inside or outside? If you move the coop around, will you also need to build a portable pen?

I love how healthy your new chickens look. The one in the foreground in your picture looks more like a hawk because of the angle of the photo. I did a double-take when I looked at the picture because I thought for a second you had a hawk in your coop.

 

[20 20]

PETA will think your a chicken GOD

 

[2manyrocks]

Did you build the Taj Mahal for your dog, too? I've seen some portable coops, but not like this one.

 

[2manyrocks]

Did you build the Taj Mahal for your dog, too? I've seen some portable coops, but not like this one.

And foxes won't feel welcome without a dinner invitation.

 

[Tororider]

I have a piece of vinyl flooring in the bottom of my coop to make it easier to clean. You are definitely going to want a way to close it up easily every night. Looks great.

We had a thread on chickens going that had some good info in it if you are interested.

 

[ihookem]

My chickens live in the getto compared to yours. I have 48 meat birds in a 6x12 pen. They are 7 weeks old and will die Oct. 1. Two months and gone. One thing you can do withe the chicken manure is mix a bunch in a 5 gal. pail and dump in around a pine tree that isn't very green. A week later it is much darker. This is what I do with the manure with my hybrid poplars and they grow 6 feet in a year.

 

[irvingj]

Wow-- guess there are a lot of other "chicken people" out there.

Jinman-- yeah, every time I see that one I think the same thing! It's also larger than the others (as well as her "sister")- it's an Americauna, derived from an aracauna, originally from S. America. Grandson had named that one "puffcheeks" and she still has some feahers that stick out there. I think these are also the same ones that were called "chickmunks" when young-- they actually had stripes on their backs just like a chipmunk! They're also known as "Easter Egg Chickens," as their eggs are apparently blue or bluish.... don't ask, slecting breeds was wife's deal. (Hope I'm not confusing breeds here!)

What we have are a pair of hens each of: Buff Orpington, NH (of course) Red, Americauna, Silver-laced Wyandotte, and Barred Rock. Weird how the two Americaunas are so different- we're not supposed to have any roosters!

Heck of a learning experience, no matter how you look at it. Nest box is still to come; plan is that it'll hang off the "blank" (right) side, with a lift-up top for access. I'm planning to insulate that part on 5 sides. Inside henhouse will have roosting rods and hanging feeder & waterer, a couple of holes in the side to access nesting boxes.

Expense is scary- a lot more than I originally thought/intended... Then I saw what pre-built henhouses go for One that has NO paint or finish whatsoever, about 1/2 the size of mine, $1500. One about the size of mine with some paint, $2000+. I'm guessing I'll end up at around $800-$900 for mine. Made me feel better after seeing the pre-builts...

kenstrac-- look at the avatar pics-- no belts, but we got drop-down oxygen masks! "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking... our cruising altitude today will be about 2 inches......"