Chicken Coop - UPDATED with pics!

One of the reasons I (re)started my blog is truly to document our crazy life. I tell people stories of my days and many respond with "you should wear a camera on your head! I'd love to see it!" and it's usually when I have some crazy story about chasing chickens at 7:30am wearing work clothes and needing to change into NEW work clothes because I was sweating like a pig by the time I was done.

Another reason is because my husband is literally OBSESSED with watching people's YouTube videos on their homesteads. It's hilarious. He'll watch people NOT talk, and just build. Clean. Feed. whatever. It's a bit strange that he's so into these videos...at least the one where the guy DOES NOT TALK AT ALL. But, he watches so he can learn. Figure out how other people did it and if they were successful. Figured if I'm going to have a blog about my mini-farm, I should include some of the things we did to get to where we are now. I hope if anyone ever stumbles across this blog, that they find it helpful!

Chicken Coop:

Steve built this entire thing by hand. He built it in our garage, then moved it to the location we wanted and put it together there (he used his Polaris ATV to drag the pieces). He has ALL the carpentry tools, because his Grandpa Teenie was a woodworker and gave Steve ALL his woodworking tools when he passed away.

He used 2 x 4's for the frame. We used a really durable wire mesh to go around the whole thing. He put a metal roof on as well. Each side has a nesting box (not seen in photo). Inside the coop are two rungs for them to perch on and sleep on. My goal is to get more areas in the run for perching.

The framing goes up

The hen house goes up

Getting there - the paint is called "Barn Red"

Nesting box construction + assembly

Nesting box going up

Before this summer, we had to go out each night and lock the chickens up in the coop/run area. We are afraid of other critters getting in and once they get in, the chickens have no where to run. So each night, after they'd put themselves to bed, I'd go out and lock them up. In the summer it's no big deal. In the winter or when it's raining? Ugh.

But, BUT! We were going on a week-long beach vacation to Ocean City, MD (I'll do a post on that later!) and needed someone to help with the chickens. It was not realistic to ask ANYONE to come over nightly to close and lock up. So we looked into an automatic chicken coop door and bought one. Now, we didn't need someone to come over each night. Just a couple of times during the week to check on food and water levels! Genius!

We also have two of these heated waterers so their water does not freeze in the winter. These work ok - if they can stay plugged in, they are great. Sometimes, the chickens running around have made it unplug from the extension cord and then the water freezes pretty quickly. So we check every day/couple of days depending on our schedule. If we're home, we check daily. We have two non-heated ones as well, so in the summer, there are 4 waterers available to them.

We also bought one of these 50 gallon rain barrels to keep near the coop for easy access to water in the summer. This is right outside the coop door and in the summer, it has a nozzle and we're able to fill their waterers pretty easily and not have to walk all the way back to the house where the hose is.

Fence:

After we lost 5 chickens within a few weeks to a DANG fox, we knew we needed to do something to keep our chickens safe. And to keep me from being paranoid and scared. It was traumatic, to say the least to watch a fox run off with my chicken in its mouth. I took the kids to visit my BFF about 2.5 hours away for a weekend. This was his opportunity to get this fence up, without anyone bothering him. This is a 50ft x 90ft fenced-in area. The gray building on the left of the photo is Steve's shed that came with the house. We left a space next to the shed that would allow us to build our barn and have the friends from the barn and our chickens can cohabitate. The height of the fence is about 5ft. So the chickens CAN flutter to the top of the fence and get over. We've had to help them get back or or we open the door around 4:30 and they all go home and go to bed :)

I will continue to post about what technologies and resources we use to keep up with all of this! As we add animals to our family, I will do separate posts for each and what each animal needs to live on our mini-farm.


This is my youngest, Ava, who just turned 4 right before Christmas. 


This is Abu, our first rooster. He's an asshole and has attacked me several times and drew blood. Jerk. 


This is our Brahma rooster. He does not have a name! He's HUGE. He may be a tad aggressive to the other chickens, he's submissive to Abu and does not even try to attack us. We actually have 3 roosters, but they all seem to understand the pecking order (pun intended!) Abu's the boss. 


This is Hei-Hei, my favorite chicken. Since she was a baby chick, she was the MOST interested in us. Eats out of our hands, we hold her, pet her. I've brought her into the house! She's super laid back and is the BEST chicken! <3