The Chick Camera

With the arrival of Ronnie, our old rooster, we came to the realization that if we wanted to have chickens we’d need a place for them to live. Ronnie, actually used to roam the yard and sleep where he wanted for months with no problems. Strange that we actually had issues with predators when they were all in a coop…

Anyway, I spent some time talking to a local farmer and researching on the internet before I settled on a design for the coop. Rather than use a premade design like a normal person I drew up my own plans. It’s got pieces that are based on other designs but it’s got my own twist (btw part of my own twist is so far completely a waste — we’ll see if it stays that way). Anyway here is my friend Tyler and I working on it the first weekend.

We made descent progress that day and got a main piece of the frame up. Which I was interesting when it snowed (lightly granted) 3 days later.

We finally got it constructed but it wasn’t until this past weekend we got it painted. It’s still not completely finished but it’s good enough for some pictures I think.

I designed it to have a steep pitch on the roof so the rafters could act as roosts. And they do get used by about 50% of our chickens. All of them used it when they were smaller, I assume some are just too big now.

It’s difficult to see but there is a “second level” there on the side. This is the portion I referred to about it being a waste. So far the chickens use this area sparingly at best. I hoped that it would be a good place for nesting boxing but I’ve yet to see them up there… (of course they aren’t laying yet so we’ll see.)

Here’s a angled view of the mostly finished coop. I’m still working on cleaning a few things up and filling some potential predator holes.

Here’s the coop all painted up. Still some work I’m doing — adding more trim and still polishing off some rough edges but it’s almost done.

So far the plan seems pretty practical. The chickens make good use of it and seem to have enough space to sit in there waiting for me to let them out in the morning without attacking each other constantly. We have 15 chickens in here and they have a 70′x70′ (roughly) run that we let them into each day, including occaisionally letting them completely free range. Because of the funky dimensions this actually adds up to a solid 72 sq ft. There’s not a lot of space for more but I suppose I can add on if needed. Although if we get more chickens more than likely they’ll get a seperate coop.

The main area is 10′x4′ with 2 4′x4′ areas.