The Chicken Coop
Stakes indicate locations for the chicken coop's foundation posts.
Around June of 2018, we received notice that a special delivery was waiting for us at the post office. My wife returned with a cheeping, chirping package containing 17 adorable balls of feathers and beaks: seven white rock and ten guinea hens. As we had no coop or housing whatsoever for our new residents, we created a makeshift enclosure with chicken wire in the garage, a heat lamp suspended from the ceiling, and a small inverted mason jar with specialized lid for water. We fed them chick feed and checked on them several times each day. Everything was working well until the day I walked into the garage and stared eye-to-beady eye with a guinea hen who had escaped her enclosure and was now frantically looking for a way back to her flock. The garage next to our house is no beauty, leaks like crazy, and could really use a makeover. To be honest, it needs to be torn down and replaced. We just couldn't handle any more chicken poop where it didn't belong. As my wife told me, and I was soon to learn, chicken poop is one of the most definitive aspects of living with fowl.
It was definitely time to build a chicken coop.
We floated the footings on gravel-filled holes.
We laid out north and south walls on the platform...
...And raised them up to vertical.
We chose an asymmetrical look with rounded windows and doors to add some interest to our structure.
We planned to create the chicken coop on the low-sided west side. Here, a battery-powered door will allow chickens to enter and exit the coop to a fenced-in run. The walls and ceiling will be insulated as we don't plan to heat our coop much, and Wisconsin winters get fairly cold. On the high-sided east side and above the ceiling of the coop will be a tool and storage shed. Straw for bedding will be kept above the coop as extra insulation, and to keep it up and out of the way.
Carla excavated under the entire run (stone-ridden glacial till- augh!) to bury critter-proof hardware cloth.
Eric and Kurt try to figure out what goes on next.
Kurt and Carla hiding out in the coop.
Before the door was finished, we stuck the cedar shower platform up.
To make the coop a low-maintenance kind of affair, we added a few features so we would only need to check on the chickens once each week:
Carla researched and found an electric door with a solar eye that raises automatically in the morning and closes each evening. At first we were skeptical that the battery would keep functioning during our cold winters, but so far so good!
The second feature is the pvc feeder. Borrowing an idea from the ultimate well of tradition, Pinterest, we constructed a gravity-fed feeder that easily holds enough feed to get the chickens safely through an entire week plus a bit more.
Finally, a food-grade 5-gallon bucket with a spin-off lid was repurposed as the waterer. Four small nipples were added to the bottom so chickens have only to peck a bit to get a bit of water. This keeps the chickens and their ubiquitous poop out of the water supply! It was the single, 60-watt lightbulb under the bucket to keep water thawed all winter that moved us in the direction of electrifying the property (see the post "On-Grid or Off.")
The electric door keeps everyone safe at night.
The gravity feeder
The waterer, before the roof went on
After moving everybody in, the coop worked very well. A few changes had to be made, including a roof over the waterer, and a nesting box for eggs. After a year of washing dirty eggs, we are looking into what effects moving our nesting box lower than the roosting perch will have on chickens pooping on their eggs. Everything's a learning lesson... even poop. Uff Da.
Now, two years later, the trim boards are on and I still have yet to side the bottom in old, corrugated roofing, and the top in barn boards. Some of the hurdles are the rounded areas above the door and window. Carla keeps pushing to get this project finished, and I somehow keep finding other projects that need to get finished first. This summer will hopefully be the season we finish the coop and make it a beautiful addition to the property!
