Lessons in How Not to Build A Chicken Coop

This spring, as we worked on "yet another chicken coop," I commented to Brian that we build chicken coops a lot. Maybe even every year. So that got me to thinking about how many different coops we have built, which lead me to dub the latest coop, 6.0. I think we have built at least 6. So take a walk down memory lane with me...well it won't really be memories for you, but humor me. Here are some pictures and descriptions of what we've tried and what we've learned. Who knows, maybe this will save some poor soul from making some of the same mistakes we have!

We have lived here since December of 2005 and got our first chickens the spring of 2006. We built our first chicken coop memorial day weekend, 2006.

A pole shed with framed in floor and slanted roof.

Board and batten siding.

Complete with an exercise yard and a pulley operated chicken door that allowed us to keep the chickens safely inside at night.

Our first batch of chicks arrived in early June.

View of the nest boxes from the inside.

Nest boxes from the outside, where we could simply raise this lid and gather eggs without going in the coop.

It was a good coop design and is still standing, but it is empty now. We started our first 25 layer chicks, Buff Orpingtons, in this coop, but it was designed for 6 to 8 adult chickens. We had purchased a straight run of chicks planning to butcher all the roosters and keep a handful of hens. And we did, but we have never had fewer than 15 chickens since that first fateful June day...

First lesson: ALWAYS build it bigger than you think you will need.

Another thing about this coop is that it seems to be accessible to weasels. We got free rare breed chicks with every batch of broiler chicks we raised in 2009. Oddly enough, they almost all turned out to be roosters. At one point we had 6 or 8 roosters with our laying hens and it was crazy. Roosters chasing hens all day, pecking at each other, pecking at the hens. We had hens with no saddle feathers. It was bad. So, I moved all of the roosters to Coop 1.0, thinking it would make a nice bachelor pad. For the most part they seemed to get along when there were no girls around to impress or harass. But then roosters started disappearing. After a couple of nights of losses, I thought I would lock them up extra tight and close up all the doors. (We hadn't been worry too much about it because they were roosting on top of the coop, not inside.) Well, I managed to get them all in the coop and thought I was doing so good. In the morning, I found 6 dead roosters in the coop. Blood everywhere. All the roosters were untouched except their heads were missing. It was gross, and so depressing because I had locked them in there thinking I was protecting them. In reality I just made it harder for them to get away. So we haven't had chickens in there since that incident.

After the chicks were feathered out and starting to get crowded, we moved most of them to Chicken Coop 2.0, which was our first attempt at a mobile coop designed to be moved around the pasture.

Chicken Coop 2.0: our first real experiment with cattle panel construction, and we've never looked back from that either.

This coop was a challenge. It had 4x4 skids on each side, tied together with 2x4s on the front and back. Two 16-foot cattle panels were stapled to the 4x4s,bent to form the roof, and covered with a tarp. We used plastic chicken netting wrapped around a frame made from black plastic water line pipe to make an enclosed front. Pieces of metal fence posts served as anchors for the pipe/door frame. At the back, we used a staple gun and zip ties to attach plastic netting to the braces and the cattle panels. On one hand, this design was lightweight and tall enough in the center that a person could stand upright, so that was nice. However, the weight, height and lack of braces made it pretty susceptible to being blown around by the wind. We only braced one end in an attempt to make it easier to get into, but in hindsight, it was not enough. We also tried hanging the waterer from the top; that worked fine as long as there was no water in the waterer, but once it was filled with 5 gallons of water, it pulled the top of the hut down quite a bit. It also never hung level; we have zero flat ground, so that was kind of a problem. In December of 2006 we put most of our chickens in the freezer and the hens hung out in Coop 1.0.

Lesson 2: Lightweight and tall are good, but not at the expense of stability.

I don't remember this coop having a catastrophic failure, but I know we took it apart and reused most of the pieces in a future project.

We did not build any new chicken housing in 2007, but we did put together a 4x8 foot plywood calf hutch to be used for a pair of milk goat kids (Hansel and Gretel).

By late 2008 we had decided to ramp up our egg and broiler production. We had a little overlap between our old Buff hens and the new batch of Rhode Island Reds and a batch of broiler chicks to fill our freezers. So the Goat Haus temporarily became home to some chicks and continued to be used as such through several batches of broiler chicks in 2009.

The Goat Haus re-purposed as a starter house. Worked okay in the fall and winter, but it was not well ventilated enough for summer use and was not easy to clean out.

 In October of 2008 we started on Chicken Coop 3.0, which was another "permanent" building in the sense that it was not intended to be moved around the pasture. Again, we used full-length cattle panels for the roof and 2x6s for the bottom frame.

Our coop used four cattle panels.

We butted the panels up close to each other and secured them to the 2x6s with a u-bolt attached to a spike driven in the ground on the outside of the coop.

Zip ties were added to keep the panels lined up and add some stability.

The finished Coop 3.0, complete with an end wall of nest boxes with outside access and a cover of plastic sheeting secured with furring strips that are bolted together.

We also built a front frame with a door.

View of the back wall from the inside of the coop.

The chickens on move-in day, early spring 2009.

This coop has been great and we still use it several months out of the year. We consider it the layers' winter housing and have also used it to start several batches of broiler chicks. It works great because the hens have a dedicated space where it does not matter if they tear up the grass during the winter, and it is easier to provide water in freezing temperatures when the coop is close to the house.

Lessons: End walls really make a difference in the stability of taller structures. We have not had any trouble with the wind or snow damaging this coop. A similar design used as a high tunnel for vegetables, but with no end walls, collapsed under a heavy wet snow in the very snowy winter of 2010-11. Also, the furring strips are very helpful for keeping the plastic cover in place and limiting the tearing of said plastic. I think we added them after seeing how much the plastic billowed.

Last summer we had broilers in this coop a couple of different times. We learned that it was too hot for them in the summer time, and made one important modification.

Coop 3.1, with the addition of a hatch on the back end wall that can be opened to allow air movement at the level of the birds. Very helpful in the heat of summer.

From the beginning, we had planned for Coop 3.0 to be seasonal housing. We wanted to get the chickens out on pasture to help fertilize the fields and eat bugs and we knew that letting the coop rest several months a year would help to control any disease in the flock. So, even as we were building Coop 3.0, number 4.0 was already in the planning stages.

But, that had to wait. In 2009 we started selling broiler chickens to a local restaurant. We got a new batch of 25 chickens every 2 weeks and killed 12 to 13 chickens every weekend. With these chicks showing up so often and overlapping throughout their time here, we needed more space and we needed it quickly. So we built three ultra-portable chicken huts in January of 2009. The first one was built with materials scavenged from Coop 2.0.

We again used cattle panels, but this time we cut the panels in half before attaching them to 4x4 skids. The result was a much shorter, much more stable Chicken Coop 4.0 (a.k.a. the huts). We used the exact same principles as the original pasture coop, but the shorter height and narrower width allowed us to get by with no braces. Originally, we planned to put the three huts side by side in a circle of electric poultry netting. We had some challenges with that as lambs liked to get tangled up in the chicken netting and because the holes are smaller, they could not get out. We also had some issues with crows or maybe ravens attacking the chicks in the field. So, we built end caps for the huts that kept the good birds in and the bad birds out. Although I saw the crows sitting on top of the tarp, tearing at it, trying to get in one afternoon. 2009 was a long year...

Anyway, the short height of these huts meant that we had to crawl inside to grab the feeders and waterers twice a day and the birds at butchering time. That was not easy on the back!

Lessons: Very portable and easy to move twice a day. Small size meant chicks were somewhat crowded, but we had 25 birds in these for 6 weeks and then 12 birds for one more week. Short height was hard on our backs. Also, the 2x4s on the ends of these huts were placed well for limiting the amount of drag in tall grass, but the young chicks crawled right out under them and got out into crow country too easily. We later put chicken wire stops on them that helped, but then we were always tripping over the wire edges. Still I think these would work just fine for a small number of chicks. We still have all three, but haven't used them for chicks in a couple of years. This fall they may get re-purposed to help extend our growing season for lettuce and other cool season veggies.

Chicken Coop 4.0, simple and inexpensive.

After surviving 2009 we did manage to build the laying hens their mobile chicken coop in the Spring of 2010. We consider this one of our best projects to date, and I've posted other pictures of this coop before. This is the current housing for our layers 7 to 9 months out of the year, depending on the weather. We've had as many as 28 hens in this coop, which is built on running gear from an old wagon. We basically rebuilt the winter coop, but on a wagon frame instead of on the ground. We added a slatted floor, kept the nest box design and plastic sheeting cover, and found a new material that has worked out great. The plastic netting we had used the past was flimsy and broke down pretty quickly in sunlight.We discovered this vinyl lattice at Lowes and really like its durability and ease of use. It provides plenty of ventilation and protection from large predators.

The latest modification to Coop 5.0 was the addition of automatic water this summer. I took the water bowl we had hooked up to a drum last summer and simply hooked it directly to a hose. We always had to have a hose at the coop in order to fill up the drum, so I just cut out the middle man. Now the hose can be quickly disconnected from the bowl and moved right along with the wagon. Then we just hook the hose back up, and voila, clean, fresh water that doesn't run out.

So that brings us to Spring of 2012 and the construction of yet another chicken coop. I wasn't exaggerating, we've really built six different coop designs, and if you count that we made three of the one design, this was actually our 8th chicken coop in 7 years of chicken ownership. Off the top of my head, I'd say that has been somewhere around 400 to 450 chickens.

We tried to apply the lessons we've learned and hopefully we ended up with a broiler coop that will be as useful as our layer coops are.

Still cattle panel construction, but this time we used all 2x4s for the skids and added corner braces.

We also built considerably stronger front and back supports, more like Coop 3.0, which makes it heavier, but it is still possible for one person to move it around the pasture.

Framing

The finished Coop 6.0. We added four wheels to help move the heavy coop around. The wheels are essential for older birds that have to be moved daily or twice daily. But as we've learned the hard way, the wheels have to come off if this is to be used as a starter house. It hadn't come when I took this picture, but we also added a shade cloth to the older designs, which really seems to help keep the birds cooler when the coop is not under the shade of trees.

Lessons: In previous posts I have detailed the modifications required to use this coop as a starter house. It worked great as first designed with birds 3 weeks old or older. But if we start chicks in it again, we will definitely be taking off the wheels. Between the rebuilding required after the derecho, the starter house modifications, and the addition of an automatic water bowl, I'd say we're now on version 6.1.

Here's hoping we are done building chicken coops for a little while!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Late as usual, but it's the thought that counts, right?

The past few weeks have been very busy, so let's see if I can remember enough for a decent update. Thursday, December 22 we finally got our tree decorated and cleared out the dining room so we could have Brian's parents over for dinner. December 23 I selected pictures for our Christmas cards, uploaded them to Wal-Mart, and one hour later picked up the cards. Love it! The tree fell over and had to be redecorated, but turned out pretty nicely none the less. Note to self, add fishing line to that list of indispensable household items (you know, duct tape, WD40, and a leather shoelace - my first car was held together with two of these three items). The stuff from the dining room just moved to a table in the basement, but that's just a temporary home. We had some time to work on the basement kitchen over the holiday break and were able to finish all of the framing. Just this weekend, Brian and Pete placed the counter/cabinet, installed lights, and ran wires for all but one of the electrical outlets. Next up, building the pantry shelves, hanging paneling, and calling in a plumber to hook the sink drain up to the septic system. I haven't taken new pictures of the basement, but here's the tree and the living room decorated for Christmas.

We enjoyed several opportunities to visit with family during Christmas celebrations and a wedding reception for Brian's cousin Chris.

Brian's Christmas present was some new paint.

Hopefully it will be a gift that keeps on giving for years to come.

We kind of got off on the wrong foot though. The tractor was delivered a day earlier than we expected...so far, so good. On the afternoon in question, Brian came into the house and asked if I would drive him to the end of the road to get his truck. It took a minute for me to process how he could be at the house with the truck at the end of the road, but once I realized he had driven the tractor up I was happy to run him down to get the truck. He failed to mention to me that there had been a slight problem with the delivery, so it was a bit of a shock for me to see one of the brick columns flanking our driveway lying on its side in the middle of the flower bed I had created around it. All in one piece, but clearly not where it was supposed to be. At the time I didn't even really notice that the wrought iron fence between the two columns was severely twisted as well. Apparently the guy unloading the tractor did not leave enough room and knocked the column over, taking the fence with it, as he came down off the trailer. I was a little annoyed. Those of you who know me in real life can probably figure out that is understated sarcasm.

So Brian assured me that he would call the dealer and get it worked out. By the time we got back to the house he had talked to the dealer and made arrangements to get a diverter valve that would allow him to hook up more stuff to the hydraulic system (anything mechanical - not my thing, so hopefully that's close to right), and he said, "so we're calling it even and it's all taken care of." Wrong! You are taken care of; I am pretty sure the column is still going to be lying in the flower bed next Christmas. But I underestimated the allure of new paint and putting it to immediate use. Brian and his Dad set the column back in place that very evening and all was well. Except the next morning Brian got a message from the dealer to give him a call. We figured he had come to his senses and realized that a diverter valve was not really a fair trade. Wrong again. He said they were on their way to our house to drop off the valve and reset the column. He proceeded to do just that, putting the column back in place, setting it in quickcrete and fluffing up my mulch - end result the column looks good as new and is probably sturdier than it was before. And he took home the fence to fix in his personal forge. Haven't heard back on that yet, but overall what impressive service! He earned repeat business from us for sure.

One of the best things about being off from work is that there was time for something story-worthy to happen almost every day. The day after Christmas some close friends of ours had their first baby. Welcome Garrett! We spent the day with Brian's family, and among other fun things, we had a family sing along and played Scrabble. I got the highest one-word score I've ever received, by using all of my tiles at once to spell RUMINATE. Not only was that worth 68 points, but what a great word for a dairy scientist!

The following day was the wedding reception. On my way to the church in the morning to help prepare for the party, I noticed that the chickens were all crowded up against a fence. This is really odd behavior, especially since we had only let them out a few minutes before and their days typically begin with widespread foraging. Even more suspicious was the White Rock hen I saw a little further down the driveway. It was tightly hugging a depression in the side of a hill with a dazed look and a pile of feathers all around. I called Brian to let him know what I had seen, and he grabbed a rifle (just in case) and headed out the door. He had barely stepped out of the basement when he saw a big red fox with a chicken in its mouth just a few yards away in what we call the high-tensile field. He shot and the fox dropped. When he got up close to it he realized it was quite old and quite impressive in size. So for some reason he promptly loaded it up and took it to the taxidermist. Any men reading this probably totally understand. Me, I don't really. Where are we going to put a full-body mount of a 21-pound red fox?

 Just so there's no confusion, this photo is taken before mounting!

Ah well, I guess that's present number two for dear hubby. And I think that is probably why he then went out and bought me a totally extravagant present.

When we got home from the reception that evening he made a big deal of me walking into the house with my eyes closed and then revealed my gift... an upright bass. Wow! Wow! No, I don't play the bass, nor do I even read bass clef music (apologies to Ms. Bell, who tried to teach me to play the organ). But I love hearing the bass line and had toyed with the idea of getting a bass a few times in the past. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but in the time that I have, I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

The following day we finally got the ewe lambs moved to New Hope and settled into their new pasture and then brought the rams home. Breeding season is officially over. All of the ewes were marked, so we have a potential for 46 new mamas this spring. That could be as many as 92 lambs (if they are all twins), but we're more likely to have somewhere around 65 (1.4 lambs per ewe on average).

Then we headed to Pennsylvania for Christmas with my family. We had a nice trip even though it was brief, and I enjoyed a girls day out shopping with my mom and my sister while Brian and my sister's husband fished at one of their favorite spots, Spring Creek.

On the drive back home, New Year's Day, the sky was amazing.

It's hard to do it justice in a photo snapped while driving on the interstate, but the light was streaming through small openings in the clouds at the same time that most of the sky was dark due to heavy cloud cover. This was taken at 3 pm, when we should have been 2 to 2.5 hours from actual dusk. It reminded me of the verse from the Gospel of John about light shining in the darkness. I especially like the wording of the translation in the Message: John 1:5, The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out. That's a good reminder any time and a great way to head into a new year.

November, the month of...

...travel. Too much travel. The first trip was to Pennsylvania for the annual Penn State Dairy Cattle Nutrition Workshop that I manage. Before it got started I enjoyed a few hours of hanging out with my sister, shopping and gabbing. The conference is a 3-day affair, and we had record attendance of 566 people. It went very smoothly and was generally a whirlwind of activity. Particularly for a hermit who spends most of her time at the computer. If I'm not there, I'm in a pasture or in a flowerbed... neither get many visitors!

I think it was the weekend after the conference that Brian and I planted garlic, spinach, and lettuce. A bit late for the greens, but we'll see what happens. They all sprouted, so that's a good start. We mulched the garlic heavily with straw, and I am excited to have some fresh garlic next summer. We tried a hard neck variety for the first time this year. I couldn't believe the size of the cloves, very impressive. We had three inches of snow on October 28, and then had our first frost on the 29th, so we were actually pretty close to on time with the garlic planting. No snow in November or so far in December. And it's fine by me if it stays that way.

At the end of two cycles in the breeding season, we were looking great with all of the ewes but one marked. A few of them have been re-marked since then, so it looks like lambing will stretch out a bit longer than a month. In other sheep news, we purchased a starter flock of Dorper ewe lambs. Dorpers are a hair-type sheep, which means they do not grow a thick wool coat that has to be sheared. Instead, the grow a coat of hair that sheds out as the weather gets warmer. They are meatier and I like the looks of them better than some of the other hair breeds that are too scrawny and goat-like in my opinion. The other major advantage of the Dorpers over our current North Country Cheviot crossbred sheep is that the Dorpers are less seasonal in their breeding. We are hoping to breed them in March or April for an early fall lambing. This will allow us to use the same lambing area with up to twice as many ewes. The other item off the check list in November was drawing blood samples to have our ewe lambs tested for scrapie susceptibility. We only keep those that are not susceptible, and we are making progress on that front. Out of 29 ewe lambs tested, 24 are not susceptible and will be kept around for breeding next year. So with the new Dorpers and our home grown replacements, our ewe flock is now up to 96. That's a 50% increase from last year and one-third of the way to Brian's goal of 300. Stay tuned to find out how we handle this; it could be interesting!

They are cute, and in great condition. We were told they never received any grain. Must have been some amazing pasture. But we believe they haven't had grain. We can feed the other lambs and these girls barely notice. If they were used to grain, we would know by now.

Okay, so all that activity makes it sound like I was home for a long time. It was just 5 days. And we didn't actually draw the blood samples until the 23rd. My second trip of the month was to Live Oak, Florida for the Southern Regional Dairy Challenge. The contest went very well; congratulations to all the students for all of their hard work! Before going there I wasn't sure if a "live" oak was a type of tree or just the opposite of a dead oak. I discovered it is indeed a type of tree. It's evergreen and has longer, thinner acorns than the oak trees I was familiar with before.

I was fascinated by the sphagnum moss growing on the trees. This live oak tree is at the camp where we stayed, but all the trees were draped in this stuff. You can see a holly decked with moss in the foreground of this picture. Cool and fascinating by day. Creepy by night. (FYI: as with all my posts, you can click on the picture for a larger view.)

The chickens have slowed their egg production pretty drastically. Four to five eggs a day is a good day right now. But we're only two weeks away from the shortest day of the year, and after that the days start getting longer again. I know it isn't by much. But progressively longer is better than progressively shorter. My moods get dark in time with the seasons, so I prefer the longer days! Here are some cheerful pictures from the day after I returned from Florida.

 I love these Barred Rock hens. Their bottom feathers look like petticoats, especially from behind.

 Ah, home sweet home.

 Yes, I'm a little nutty too.

The final trip of the month was back to Pennsylvania, this time to celebrate my Grandma Mowrey getting remarried at age 82. It was a beautiful day, and she and Bob looked very happy. All but one of my cousins was able to make it, and it was so nice to see everyone. Growing up we had so many family gatherings, now that I live farther away and have animals that complicate taking vacations, I really miss seeing everyone. We also celebrated Thanksgiving with my immediate family and attended our nephew Easton's baptism. I held Easton as much as possible during the five days we were there. He is a darling. Such a cute smile and a sweet personality. Even with our raucous laughter during the wedding reception, he just slept and slept.

 Windmills are popping up all along interstate 99. These were somewhere in the vicinity of Tyrone. Not a bad picture considering it was taken from the truck window while driving on the interstate. I love how the sunset was glinting off of the windmills.

 The gorgeous wedding cake, made by Robin, my sister in law.

My Dad and his brother and sisters with Grandma and Bob.

 My parents, aunts and uncles with Grandma and Bob.

 All the cousins and their children (except Suzy and Aurelia).

All the cousins and their spouses and children (except Jerry; Suzy, Michael and Aurelia).

Another of Robin's creations. This is a turkey cheese ball, which was gorgeous AND delicious!

So that was November. Surrounded by people most of the time and soaking up time with my niece and nephews, it was overstimulating for this hermit. Now I have to readjust to being alone. It's very quiet. I should get my Christmas shopping started and pull out the decorations. But I haven't found the motivation to do either one yet.

In these first few days of December, it's been more running, but closer to home. I enjoyed a beautiful holiday concert Sunday evening by the Celebration Singers. Six people from our church choir sing with the group, and it was a really nice selection of songs. On Saturday a friend of ours was ordained; it was a very nice service and a pleasure to be a part of that special day.