Chicken House

One of the first goals for our farm was eggs. My niece, knowing that I’d been dreaming of becoming a chicken mom for the majority of her life, came through in epic fashion and delivered our first set of straight run chicks in July before we’d even officially moved in ourselves.

Thankfully there was already a coop in the barn and we were able to move them right in. Over the course of the fall, we roughed out an outdoor run for them and improved it a few times as they (and our golden retriever) showed us all its weaknesses.

Of the original eleven, we lost two to unknown deaths and one to a hawk, leaving us with two roosters and six laying hens.

They started laying mediocre numbers over the winter and as spring began to arrive, we were up to four eggs a day rather consistently. We knew we’d need to remove one of the roosters and we also intended to build a larger coop and run this spring to allow for a larger flock so we made plans on both fronts. Things were going swimmingly so I ordered 20 mixed variety pullets that arrived in early March.

Then, in mid April, my aunt asked if I could take her hens. She had recently retired from work and her and the hubs were wanting to travel, so she was looking to rehome her backyard flock. Six girls were delivered to us along with lots of accessories and a bucket of feed, all for the promise to share some eggs now and then. While they’re older, the new girls still lay enough eggs to make themselves useful and since I didn’t have to invest any money, time, or feed into them, I feel like we got a pretty good deal.

Chicken math FTW! We now had a flock of 14 birds with the little ones soon ready to integrate.

Which meant we needed to get the new coop and run ready asap.

My original plan was to build a new structure for the coop and to fence in the square between the garage and the barn. But that went out the window after we tried a few things, realized how crazy the wind gets out here (and thus how sturdy any structures need to be), and ultimately cowered at the price tag. So we brainstormed and decided to use what we had instead of building a whole new structure. The existing garden shed was oversized for bikes and simple garden tools (which was all we had planned for it) but perfect square footage for up to 50 chickens (which is perfect as long as chicken math doesn’t strike again… too hard). Enclosing the area around the shed instead would allow us to take advantage of the long side of the barn to reduce the amount of fence we’d need to build, provide cover and shade by this mature walnut tree (though we would be losing our tree swings - boo), and put the chickens front and center of the entire farm.

We started by removing the stuff we were storing in the shed, the old electrical wires and boxes, and the old building materials stashed in the “attic”. We tore the plywood floor of the attic out as well to leave just the exposed rafters.

We installed fresh plywood over the existing floor along with plastic sheets laid over and up the walls to make clean up easier and prolong the life of the shed. Then hubs cut some vents in and I got busy building a brooder box for the chicks (they were quickly outgrowing the stock tank they’d been in until now).

It was about this point when our mentors (aka my GB cousins) came and demonstrated how to process our extra rooster. I will spare the details here, but suffice it to say (as expected) we will not be adding meat chickens to our plans. However, our flock is much happier and calmer now that we’re back in the proper ratio with our 12 hens and a single rooster.

Next was cutting in the doors - both for chickens and for humans. For the chickens, we opted for an automatic door. Highly recommend. Ours is programmable to open and close at a set time each day and is powered by a solar panel. The existing doors open towards the driveway, but I wanted a new large door to open into the coop so that a) the chickens would not escape (and the dogs would not get in) in the process of me coming and going and b) when cleaning, I can just sweep the bedding out into the chicken yard vs. onto the gravel driveway.

For now, the rest of the interior elements are fairly simple. I opted to purchase nest boxes because the girls originally snubbed my homemade one. Then we moved everybody in and they also snubbed my beautiful natural stick roost ladder and decided to use the existing rafters in the top of the shed.

Whatevs.

Everyone is getting along so far, so I’ll call it a win.

Look out next week for Part 2: The Chicken Pasture!