Gardening Tips » Chicken coop

New Chicken Coop

GardeningVet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:28:36 +0000

After deciding the the permanent chicken tractor was too bulky to move and the fact that I would like another garden bed to put my vegetables in, I took the permanent tractor apart and re-used the wood and ply to construct another more permanent chicken coop. I knew I wanted it raised off the ground to allow the chickens some shade under the coop and also to put the feed and water under it away from the weather. I found a pallet and started work on the 4 walls.

Pallet chicken coop

Roof to chicken coop

pop door

pop door string

door to chicken coop

Roost inside chicken coop

Egg access and clean up doors

Clean out doors

Chicken poop drawers

Poop drawers in place

Chicken run

Fired up the homemade incubator again

GardeningVet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:58:35 +0000

When we went on holidays, we had a disaster in our chicken coop/run. I had a friend who was living nearby chicken-sit for us and because she only came around once a day to collect mail and eggs and care for the chickens, I thought I would make it easier for her by relieving her the task of having to lock them in at night so the coop door was open but the chickens were in the run. They coped okay for a week in that set up but I got a frantic call from her in our second week of holidays saying that she arrived to feathers in the run and no sign of the chickens. I suspected the worse. When we finally got home, we found that something had dug under the run fence and gotten into the run and left just feathers, no body parts, no chickens. Needless to say we were devastated. So after a whole 3 weeks of no chickens – I must say the backyard looked decidedly forlorn with no bwok-bwoks around. We finally succumbed and I decided to set more eggs again in the homemade incubator and start afresh. I cut up the expresspost bag to line the bottom of the foam incubator and will put in non-slip drawer lining when I stop turning – hopefully that will make clean up time after hatching a breeze. Here they are now :

chicken eggs in the homemade incubator

After 2 days incubating, I had a friend’s dad who was asking if I could help him incubate some of his King Quail eggs (some call them button quail) – his hen had been laying great guns but just refused to sit on them. Unfortunately I think the bulk of the eggs he gave me (14 in total) would be a tad ‘old’ to be setting but I popped them in the incubator anyway because I had the space. Hopefully some of them will hatch. I believe quails take a shorter time to hatch than chickens so hopefully if I’ve timed it right, they will all hatch together.

King Quail eggs in the incubator

Building a chicken coop or permanent chicken tractor

GardeningVet — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:21:45 +0000

So I decided to bring a little bit of country into suburbia. Checked with the council to find out the rules and regulations about keeping chickens in suburbia – and they said only 5 hens max and no roosters. I went through the usual rigmarole of researching in poultry forums and finding out what makes a good chicken coop (and of course working out what I liked and didn’t like and what would fit in our suburban backyard setting) and came to the conclusion that I liked the semi-permanent chicken tractor solution which meant that the chicken coop/run sat on the vegetable beds and once the chickens had done their job of fertilizing the plot, I would move the tractor onto the next vegetable bed…and so the cycle starts again. This would save me from having to clean out the coop.

Pics of the coop building in progress

Setting out the garden beds – timber sleepers were bought and bolted together to form 4×6 foot beds with paths in between.

Framing the coop – used untreated pine internally

Chicken nest boxes

Chicken nest boxes painted

Chicken coop roof sheathed with external plywood

Recycled some old western red cedar venetian blinds to put on the plywood. Sheathed rest of coop with plywood and painted

Painted lilac and trimmed with white, added coop access doors

Access door to back where nest boxes are made, trimmed and painted

Added wire mesh in bottom of coop and fitted chicken doors to front of coop. Moved chicken tractor coop to position on vegetable garden bed

Just add chickens.