Where to house your chickens is probably the most expensive aspect of chicken keeping. The good part is that if you do it right, it should be a one-time expense.
My coop is both over the top and kind of ghetto at the same time. At one point my house was owned by someone who had sled dogs. They built a pen for the dogs designed to keep them in the yard including fencing buried under the ground. This has been ideal for me since it keeps dogs and foxes out of my chicken yard. Parts of the fence are nearly 30 years old but we have only had to fix a couple of spots.
When we got started I asked a builder friend of mine to build me a coop in the fenced area. He is Irish and intense and what he did was build me a rental. It is 12 x 15 with an arctic entry and is on pilings and he enclosed the ceiling (so no exposed rafters). I asked him if it was a little over the top and he said "Now you don't want to be wasting your materials, do ya" (imagine it with a heavy Irish accent). It is well insulated and has two operable windows. The biggest problem I have is the door. It is full sized and blows off the hinges at least once a year. There is a door laying in the yard right now...covered in poop. Big chickens have no problem getting in and out of the coop using the stairs. Little chicks have to work at it. I wish it had a smaller one for them to use in winter. Normally I just leave it wide open all the time. In the beginning we used to go out at night and chase them all into the coop. We realized this was not the best use of our time and have not bothered with it in years.
The inside is kind of odd for a coop. It has a main room and the entry. I have a roosting pole that runs across the room for them to perch on to sleep. I also have several nesting boxes that they don't use. I have never figured out how to get them to lay eggs where I want them to. We use the "Easter Egg Hunt Method". Our birds always just find a spot and lay their eggs and then we have to find them every evening like a fun game. Only it is a game that involves walking around in chicken poo. A couple like to lay in the corners of the main room under the boxes. One or two will start liking a milk crate we mounted to the wall...this is actually where I would like them to lay but it never becomes a popular spot. Most like to lay in dark corners in the entry area on top of the feed bags. Right now they are laying in my tote of oyster shells that they somehow got the lid off of.
We put linoleum on the floor of the coop before they moved in to try to protect it from rot and it seems to be working pretty well. We use straw in the coop and add it from time to time as the poop gets nasty.
The coop gets cleaned out each spring after break-up. A lot of the poo and straw gets put out into the yard which helps it compost a little easier. If there is a lot I put it in my compost pile. Chicken poo has to winter over before you can put it in the garden. I thought this sounded like BS one year and killed almost all my raspberries.
In summer flies are an issue. They are gross and there are LOTS of them. Mosquitoes also seem to hang out in there probably because it is out of the wind. In early summer the chickens eat the bugs, which is pretty sweet. But they must get tired of them or something because after a couple weeks they stop.
The biggest question I get is about heat and light. My chickens live off the grid. I am not paying for the fuel or electricity to heat or illuminate the coop.They are chickens. They lay eggs when they have 8+ hours of light. The temperature has nothing to do with it. I find that the eggs freeze and crack in winter by the time we get home so I just don't get any eggs from November until about March. It is also hard to have the Easter Egg Hunt in the dark and in the winter it is dark by the time we get home.
They usually molt in the late fall and stop laying don't start again until the light comes back. During cold months they get feed and we use snow instead of water because the water dishes freeze so fast. I have to have tough birds.
Their coop is about 10-15 degrees warmer than outside but when it is cold they hunker down and tough it out. When I lose a bird it is either a untested breed or an older hen or one that gets caught up in something and freezes before I find it. Last year I had one that wedged itself between the wall and a bag of feed and froze. I have had one that shredded the burlap feed bag and got all tangled in the shreds and froze. It is kind of astounding the creative ways they come up with to hurt themselves. Turkeys are the only birds that seem to be dumber.
The bottom line is that the coop needs a pole for them to roost on and it needs to be safe from predators. I have only had one incident and it was with a dog. He only got in because my kids left the gate open. I chased him off with a stick and ran after him down the road screaming obscenities like a nut case. Dogs are actually much more common and much more curious than foxes. If one gets in your coop they can kill all your birds in a blink and they are just playing.
No comments:
Post a Comment