Chicken Coopery and Other Goings-On

Well, we have our chickens, and we've been working on a coop for a while now.  We're happy to announce we have finally finished!  So now, the photos!

We started with this.

This may be an actual shot of my garage.

Okay, not really, but I didn't take a true "before" shot and it sure as hell felt like this many materials by the third Lowes trip.

And this is what our original design called for:

The original design.

Unfortunately, our plans lacked key pieces of information, like the angles and measurements.  I suppose I could have done the math, but I haven't done trig in a long time, so we changed plans.  Well, it would be more accurate to say we just winged it.

 

A hen house in progress, complete with nesting boxes.

Our six chicks are getting four nesting boxes, which should be more than adequate for their laying needs.  Our original plan was to make it so we could slide out the dividers between the boxes.

A lid for the nest boxes and a perch for the sleeping.

Unfortunately, our best laid plans went awry when we realized we wanted a top on the nesting boxes, to make the chickens feel all nice and cozy (and increase egg production - I hope... I mean, that's logical, right?).

Next step was adding some doors for the nest boxes, so we can actually get at the eggs.

Nest box doors.

And then doing the rough finish of the back of the tractor.  Beneath the hen house, you can see the part of the area where the chicks can scratch and forage.  At this point, we were starting to get a little worried about the weight.  This thing's supposed to be portable, after all.  But we figured we'd just soldier on and when the time came, lift with our legs.

Back of the bus.

After finishing out the rest of the structure, we started painting.  I call it painting in three parts: one part for the coop, one for the garage floor, and one for my pants.  We went with a classic barnyard red, which looks great on the coop.  Of course, the residue on my garage floor and jeans has given both that serial killer ambiance that's just so hard to come by.  Henceforth, I will be referring to this color as "Dexter Red."

Dexter Red and some of the chicken wire in place.

That left us with two things to go - securing the coop from predators (i.e. stapling on an insane amount of chicken wire and hardware cloth) and roofing the whole contraption.  I think the weight of the staples we used exceeded that of the chicken wire.

 Top and side views.  You can also see the door up front.

At this point, we were beyond exhausted, but we wanted to get this %$#%% thing done, so we decided to power through and roof it.

Plywood and plastic... can't beat it.

And that, as they say, is that.  One chicken coop completed.  The little... ladies... can't even make use of it for several weeks yet, but I'm still glad to get it off our plate.

I was going to post about our garden stuff as well, but this has gotten long, so I'll end it hear.  Next time, I'll share some of the photos of our square foot garden and how we're trying to bird-and-deer proof it.