Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Chicken Coop

access door If you follow me at all on Facebook, you know that I have spent a good portion of the spring and early summer building a chicken coop. It has been a long journey, but finally, the coop is complete!

This project has been more than just a utilitarian effort to house our new chicks. In fact, in my minds eye, it wasn’t even a 12’ x 4’ chicken coop that I was building, but a 12’ x 24’ post and beam barn with workshops and storage. You see, that is what I really wanted to build. I have always loved old barns. I’ve spent countless hours exploring old barns, at places like Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Fort Number 4 in Charlestown, NH, The Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY, and privately during my surveying career and as a kid growing up. I have spent hours, since I was kid, browsing through books by Eric Sloane about life in the 1800’s, and about old tools and old buildings.the book

A couple years ago, I bought this book on timber frame construction; my “Bible” on how to build my own post and beam barn. I have always wanted my own barn; a place to house a few animals, to store firewood, to have a woodshop, and a small blacksmith shop… a place to work on artistic endeavors, and a place to keep all my gardening tools and outdoor stuff dry.

Finally, a couple years ago, I decided to build a small shed from scratch, in post and beam fashion, using only hand tools. A first shot model for my future barn. I cut down trees for posts and hewed logs for cross supports, beams, and floor joists. I cut mortise and tenon joints and fastened them together with wooden pegs. By the time I got to the roof, I was a little tired hewing, to be honest, making strapping seemed like areal chore and required so many trees, and my attempt at making pine shingles proved VERY labor intensive and required a lot of practice and a lot of dry wood without knots… so… I opted out and bought rough cut lumber and cedar shingles. I also bought the 12” planks for the floor.

The shed…it’s nice, but it was my first attempt, and I used a lot of round, crooked, & various size woods, without a square angle or edge in the bunch. I still need to put the 12” pine board vertical siding up. Still, it looks very rustic and like an early 1830’s shed. Mission accomplished!

starting the fram with shed in the background Working on the frame

This year, once we started talking about chickens, I decided that we needed a new coop. Our old one was too small, and as I had built it 8 years ago with plywood and 2x4’s without paint or anything… it was beginning to have issues. I could have gone the easy route and bought a coop plan on-line and did the plywood thing again, but instead, I decided to build my barn - in miniature. In the beginning

I bought rough-cut 4”x4” beams and 12” pine boards from this fantastic local saw mill run by 2 sisters. I based the design on the small barn design in my “Barn Bible”. I decided not to go with wood pegs, but nails. I also went with the cedar shingle roof. Cedar smells sooo good!

Originally, the coop was going to have wooden wheels at the base of the posts, so it could be mobile, with a trap door in the floor and a ramp so the chickens could access the area under the coop, which would be fenced in. As the chickens scratched and ran out of plants, worms and bugs to eat, I would move the pen. Well…I can still move it, even without the wheels, but damn, this coop is heavy, so decided to keep it where it is for now. I’m going to cut a door off the back, once the chicks get older, and fence in an outside pen for them along the bank between the coop and the shed.

the back Baby chicks in the coop

The chicken wire panels in the front come off for easy cleaning of the coop and for replacement with plexi-glass windows in the winter. There is a main access door at one end and a nest access door to the 3 egg nests on the other end.egg door

This was such a fun project and one I am really proud of. I enjoyed building it and it adds a nice aesthetic to the back yard.

Of course now, I want to tear down my rustic shed and build the full sized barn project from my book. I’m sure there are a few other priorities to attend to before that plan comes to fruition.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

And so it begins…

Baby Chicks n Bantams 1 Well… on Monday the chicks finally arrived; 25 tiny, multi-colored, peeping balls of fuzz. We ordered chicks from McMurray Hatchery back in February. We picked all kinds… chickens with fluffy feet, some with fluffy heads, a few rare Spanish chickens, some weird dinosaur looking ones, some half-wild ones, and each kid ordered a little bantam for their own. The kids were out of their minds with excitement. Jeremiah was too young to remember the last batch and Grace was just a baby, so this is going to be a life memory for those two.

The gang

They have been waiting for the chicks to arrive with as much anticipation as Santa on Christmas.  Well, Ok…not that much… but they were very excited. I have to admit…me too. Chickens are more interesting to watch that one would imagine, and they each provide an egg every day. What more can you ask? And what are we going to do with 2 dozen eggs a day? Who knows… I told Grace if she cared for them, she could have 4-5 dozen a week of her own to sell. She is such a little entrepreneur!

The gang 2 Within the first hour, we experienced two chicken milestones. The first? Grace named one of the chicks “Steve”; the second? Steve’s health started to go down hill and Grace was in tears. I tried to explain to her that it is normal to lose a few chicks the first day. In fact, when I was a kid, our chick batches of 25 would arrive and by the end of the day there would be only 12. Maybe we shouldn’t name them yet, I suggested. Of course…that didn’t help.  But luck was on our side and Steve pulled through. The rest of the day was chick-mania. We went to Blue Seal feeds and picked up chick supplies, and came home and set up a nice little pen for them. Within a couple hours, all 25 had names. (not that I can tell who is who, or remember any names)

Grace is adamant that her little bantam chick is going to be trainable and learn to do tricks and sleep in her bedroom. I’m just smiling right now… I’ll break the news about chicken hygiene and intelligence another day. 

Jeremiah also had his own trauma. His bantam, Milo, immediately became the lowest on the pecking order and the others pecked its face until it was bleeding. We had to separate it from the others until it healed up a bit. Jeremiah was sure his chicken would die… it’s always his thing that dies or disappears. But again…things worked out, and after the chicks ate and drank, they all relaxed and left each other alone.Big bird So now the chicks live in a hamster cage on our window sill. As soon as they are big enough, they get to move outside into the new chicken coop that I’ve built. If you follow me on Facebook, you'll know that for the last month, I’ve been building a post and beam style chicken coop. 

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More on my chicken coop project another time…