Chickens have landed! Thanks for all the advice! I actually updated this! yay.

[Ldavis24]

The coop is done (well this coop anyway DH is already designing the "permanent" coop) the chickens are in it and I am exhausted.

DH was supposed to start building the coop Saturday, but he was vomiting too much. So Sunday, still sick he spent all day building it and finally quit because he was too tired. Yesterday he worked on it again, it rained all day and we both worked while grandma watched DD. We were miserable and freezing but we nearly finished it. The chickens got in it around 4:30. Today we both finished up the final details and some minor fix its. The chickies seem very happy and I love them already (although I could still eat one without too much guilt, I'm weird like that I guess).

We have 5 hens, about 8 weeks old. They are very skinny. I can feel their breastbones very very clearly. The woman we got them from was very kind but I think there were too many in the coop without enough feeders, although they look healthy, bright eyes no discharge etc... I think she also had been feeding them layer pellets for approximatley 3-4 days before we got them. She tried to tell me I could just feed them layer pellets right away but I have done enough reading to know better! I have 2 RIR, the smaller one is the friendliest thus far, she has come to me more than once already and doesn't fuss if I pick her up. Then I have a silver laced Wyandotte, A brown (or is it gold, either way I am not sure what she is exactly) laced wyandotte and a mysterious black one that I am guessing is a black star.

I will post a link to all our pics tomorrow probably! I am too tired to mess with the computer much this evening. 

Thanks for all the great advice from experienced chicken mamas. We are really thrilled to have them. The coop was a semi-disaster/success, I will post the link to those as well.

Edited by Ldavis24 - 4/5/11 at 2:05pm

[BeckyBird]

Cool! Can't wait to see the pics of your new babies :)

[Ldavis24]

ok this is way late but here are a few pics of our girls and what we have decided (after many issues building it) will be their temporary coop for the next 6-7 weeks, right before they start laying they will move into their newer, bigger better home :)

 yes that is DD's head.

just hte rough frame. The coop is actually built into the whole pen where the cross beams are low is the base of the coop.

jjust because she is so cute and was daddy's helper all weekend.

So yeah, the coop is actually on wheels, we used 6 wheel barrow wheels (pricey but worth it) so we can literally wheel the whole set up around the yard. It is about 12 feet long and 5.5 feet in width. The coop is actually raised off the ground which is nice but the whole thing is not going to be big enough for our girls soon, hence the new coop. We are going to use this one for our meat chickies though since they only will live to 8 weeks or so, they can still peck at the ground and stuff and we can keep them separated! 

[laohaire]

I'll have to live my chicken life vicariously through you.

You consider that a temporary coop? Rough? That's about a million times better than we could do. No, make that a trillion.

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by laohaire 

I'll have to live my chicken life vicariously through you.

You consider that a temporary coop? Rough? That's about a million times better than we could do. No, make that a trillion.

hehe, you don't know my husband. He is a carpenter and thus if it is not perfect, it is not good enough. He holds himself to extremely high standards when building anything, to a detriment actually. He had the flu all weekend while he built this coop, puking periodically with a fever. He didn't have the time to make it "good enough" for him anyway. I think it is awesome and our chickies seem happy with it. I like that we can wheel it all over the yard so they don't destroy the same area. We did actually lock the dog in the house and let them out of the pen yesterday though...the cowards only 3 of 5 went out of the pen and then they spent most of their time running around trying to figure out how to get back in...I love chickens!

[laohaire]

Hmm. I wish I could wheel it all the way to the other side of the state when you're done with it. Lol.

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by laohaire 

Hmm. I wish I could wheel it all the way to the other side of the state when you're done with it. Lol.

theoretically we could attach it to the back of his pick up and haul to western mass...that wouldn't raise eyebrows on 90 at all 
 

I have to take some more pics of it completed so you guys can get the full effect...

[laohaire]

Snort!

What's funny is, that even if you actually did that, I-90 would actually be the easy part. Your DH would start swearing when he reached the hill we live on. I know this for a fact because EVERYONE starts swearing when they get here. There is no garbage pickup on this street because they refuse to come here. The oil delivery guy actually took photos of our street and yard so he could show the guys back at the office. (The hill was compounded by the massive buildup of snow we had this winter, not to mention the dumped cord of wood in our driveway that made the snowpile, oh, 14 feet high).

So we'll probably end up buying a doghouse or something and just stuff 2 or 3 poor hens into it, lol. (Just kidding of course).

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by laohaire 

Snort!

What's funny is, that even if you actually did that, I-90 would actually be the easy part. Your DH would start swearing when he reached the hill we live on. I know this for a fact because EVERYONE starts swearing when they get here. There is no garbage pickup on this street because they refuse to come here. The oil delivery guy actually took photos of our street and yard so he could show the guys back at the office. (The hill was compounded by the massive buildup of snow we had this winter, not to mention the dumped cord of wood in our driveway that made the snowpile, oh, 14 feet high).

So we'll probably end up buying a doghouse or something and just stuff 2 or 3 poor hens into it, lol. (Just kidding of course).

ha! I know you guys got slammed with snow up in western ma...Cape barely got anything all winter, every bad storm that came through New England seemed to just miss us...I like snow so it made me sad...

As far as the coop goes, it started of small and DH being the carpenter that he is kinda went crazy with it...It cost A LOT more than I wanted it to because DH REFUSED to use scrap wood and stuff for it... You could make a simple chicken tractor type coop that can be moved for probably under 150.00 but oh not DH...Sigh

I want to see a picture of this driveway! Wait we are on a public forum...hehe nm if you don't want to give away where you live!
 

[laohaire]

It's not just the driveway per se, it's the whole street. We're just dug in to the side of a mountain, basically, and since it's actually a city, we're all nestled tightly together. I'd PM you a photo but I don't even know how to position a photo to express it. The one the oil guy took didn't really show anything, except for the huge mountain of snow which is thankfully gone now. (Up the mountain, there's still a decent amount of snow, as of yesterday at least). The house was built in 1905 and the driveway is really narrow and wedged between a retaining wall and the house. Even in a small car, you could just barely open your door and get out if you pulled in at all (we just have one car and don't really pull it in). The hill leading up to the driveway is very steep. I want to say it's over 35 degrees, but that can't be, can it? Also, it's kind of a J, where the street turns very sharply to a hard left, and it's steep right there. So you have to slow down for the turn, but you can't lose momentum or you're dead. Walking 500 feet up this hill would be all you'd need for teh day for cardiac exercise. So even if you turned the corner and got up the hill (and yeah, in winter, that's another challenge of its own), and even if you managed to wedge yourself in the driveway (it's also a one lane street, too, so there's no room to maneuver - oh, and on top of that, we're at the end of a dead end street as well, so it ends right in front of our house and our driveway is the very last place you could go), then there's no way to get anything up to the chicken area in the back. There's a 16 stair staircase leading from the house/driveway level to the next terrace in the backyard. After that, there's a hill leading to the third terrace, which is where I'd keep chickens (there's an old and crappy fenced area up there). Our plot is about 50 feet wide by maybe 250 feet deep (it's a city plot, about 1/10th acre), and the back part is probably on level with our ROOF. Our neighbors, who live 50 feet downhill from us? Our dining room window on the first floor looks into their 2nd floor bedroom window. What's beyond our 3rd terrace level? A forest. This forest is to the south of us, and since the trees are towering over us, we get no sun on our land. I have a 4x4 herb garden in the sole square of land that gets maybe 2.5 hours of sun a day at the peak of summer when the sun finally makes it over the treeline. And that is why I think about chickens, because I figure they don't need as much sun as a tomato does, and I can still eat it.

I love the house but let's just say that food growth was not on my agenda when we bought it.

[laohaire]

OK, so I amused myself by finding a few photos that maybe will express some of it. Here goes.

There's no picture of the street, but you can see that it's steep just because of the angle you are looking up at our house. I was standing on the street as I took it, the street is a single lane, and you'd almost be able to see it if the camera was down just a tiny bit more. So there's almost no front lawn, it's just this steep hill. Yeah, it's a total pain to mow. In this town, it's common to see people mowing by rope (you tie a rope to your gas mower and lower it down the hill then pull it back up), or just do the whole thing via weedwhacker. We have a reel mower but if DH lets it grow too long he has to pull out the weedwhacker. We do not own a standard gas mower. The driveway is on the left side of the picture, leading behind the house, but we don't pull in that far.

(deleted)

OK, here's the driveway, standing about halfway in. This is an old picture and now it's got a gravel in it rather than just dirt. Try squeezing anything larger than a Yugo between the retainer wall and the house, right? I'll next direct your attention to the granite scree between the current level and the second terrace. Steep, right? You can just see two gate posts around the level of the first story roof, that is the third terrace and shows where I'd want chickens.

(deleted)

This shows the staircase just behind the house. You can also appreciate how damn DARK it is in our yard!! This was taken on a sunny day but the forest keeps us in the dark. The third terrace has no steps, just a hill leading up to it. The second terrace holds my composting area, a fire pit, a grassy area where DD can play, and a forest garden (shady plants like irises). The third terrace has our cordwood and a shed, with a decrepit fence around it.

(deleted)

This is just added for the effect of showing how steep the back yard is. This is taken from the top of the stairs, so you're pretty much looking down on the house already (and it's not even the third terrace). On the left side of the photo, you can see a little bit of the street, pointing at a steep angle downward. It's almost as steep as the top roof slope. Hmm, it IS as steep as the first floor roof slope. BTW we do actually have grass now; and the bulkhead is painted a lovely brown; these photos were taken when we were having some work done on the house.

(deleted)

Edited by laohaire - 6/3/11 at 6:47am

[Ldavis24]

oh wow...ok you know the first thought in my silly head when I looked at those pictures was, "wow all those windows are gorgeous! I love that" Your house is lovely! I really like it although the steepness would drive me crazy I think. I lived in Burlington VT for a long time and it is a giant hill down to the lake (if you have never been there)...Super steep, walking back up the hill is exhausting on a nice day and doing it during the middle of winter was hell...

I don't see why you couldn't have chickens even if a garden wouldn't work really (I feel ya on that one)...You could totally wedge a long narrow coop in there if you planned it right, or you could even let chickies free range during the day...Totally doable! We've only had our chickens for 2 weeks but I tell ya I love it...I am so looking forward to fresh eggs every day. There really is NOTHING as good as a fresh egg, so much different than the store ones and that in a nutshell is why we have chickens (and the meat)... PM me if you want some coop ideas! I am full of them, I also have a few really great websites that I could give you.

[LiLStar]

That coop looks great! we're going to get some fertile eggs soon to incubate (I think maybe to surprise the kids for easter! But we're not getting them BECAUSE its easter, it was decided, then I realized, hey, its almost easter, wouldn't it be cool to get them the night before so the kids wake up to them?) so we'll pretty much have the 3 weeks during incubation, then a couple more weeks while they're in the house in their brooder to figure out the whole coop situation. The general plan was for enclosure, get some chicken wire and some sturdy wooden stakes from a feed store and have my brother (who also has chickens) help us fashion that into a fence like thing..lol. With a used craigslist coop/rabbit hutch inside it. But looking at your framing, that really doesn't look all that hard to do! And then chicken wire+staple gun? Think us amateurs could handle making something like that? dh has done some things as a teen, like he built a rabbit cage. We're not exactly huge do it yourselfers, beyond like.. painting, haha. How much did materials cost? 

[crunchymama514]

I just saw the pictures of your coop, and it is lovely! I have chicken dreams as well, and I'm making plans for next year.

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by LiLStar 

That coop looks great! we're going to get some fertile eggs soon to incubate (I think maybe to surprise the kids for easter! But we're not getting them BECAUSE its easter, it was decided, then I realized, hey, its almost easter, wouldn't it be cool to get them the night before so the kids wake up to them?) so we'll pretty much have the 3 weeks during incubation, then a couple more weeks while they're in the house in their brooder to figure out the whole coop situation. The general plan was for enclosure, get some chicken wire and some sturdy wooden stakes from a feed store and have my brother (who also has chickens) help us fashion that into a fence like thing..lol. With a used craigslist coop/rabbit hutch inside it. But looking at your framing, that really doesn't look all that hard to do! And then chicken wire+staple gun? Think us amateurs could handle making something like that? dh has done some things as a teen, like he built a rabbit cage. We're not exactly huge do it yourselfers, beyond like.. painting, haha. How much did materials cost? 

I did all the stapling with the gun of the chicken wire! I was so proud of myself, I did it all and the damn staple gun scared the poop outta me the first time I fired it off. I tried the nail gun too but that was scarier still..I'm a wuss..Anyway the frame is really simple...REALLY REALLY..I will post more pictures if you want so you can get an idea of the steps we took...The only issue is it is much heavier than we planned so we had to add 2 wheels to the back of the coop just to move it. The single hardest part of building it (keeping in mind we rushed the last bits like roof and windows) was flipping the frame right side up because DH made the rectangular base then the 2 sidewalls and had to nail them together on their side, we then had to flip the whole thing over onto the bottom and nearly broke the entire damn thing because of the stress on it...Didn't though! Once you see more pics it will be easier to see what I am talking about... I totally think someone with even NO experience could handle the basic frame and coop we made. The coop was simple because the studs were already up for the walls, DH just had to nail gun the plywood in the studs and ta-da walls are done...Same thing with the base of the coop (the roof was a bit trickier but just because DH got super angry with roof issues, threw part of the roof on the ground and then started it over with about 20 minutes to do it ((typical grumpy man at work))...DH just additional pieces of plywood and made a rough rough for each side, the inside being a ramp that opens to land on the ground for the girls...DO get some heavy duty hinges for the doors though. We got tiny ones but replaced them with hinges that are at least 3 inches long, much sturdier and safer against predators...Finally DH just made a super basic door out of plywood for going into the pen and we secured the whole set up with multiple slide locks at the 2 doors of the coop and 1 on the pen door. If a predator wanted to get in the pen they could just rip apart the chicken wire, a raccoon is strong enough to do...Look into getting hardware cloth (much stronger)...

The total cost of all the lumber/screws/hinges etc was about 250-275....We got everything DH couldn't get from work at Home Depot...We ended up getting too much lumber (I can give anyone the exact numbers if they like for the dimensions of our coop/pen which is about 12 x 5) the whole setup can be scaled down a bit too....It took DH about 3 days to build, but he was rushed and he is a carpenter so it would probably take someone with less experience a longer period I imagine...

I'm serious when I say it really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. DH was sick that whole time which is the only reason it looks as rough as it does..I know it doesn't look rough but DH would say it is if he was commenting on this point Sorry for the novel I will post a few more pics of the building process!

[Ldavis24]

this is a side wall that already has the wheels attached.

j

a view of the sidewall being constructed so you can see how he attached the wheels.

just after we flipped it. It was hard because there was no roof cross supports yet so it wanted to fold in on itself, but we flipped it really fast to avoid that. DD is helping!

the boards he is screwing into the sidewalls are for the 2x4s to rest on for the floor. My hubby is about 240lbs and he can stand on the floor of the coop without any issues. Very strong.

The boards go up on each side and then the 2x4s are cut to fit in and be nailed into the 2 boards. Then a solid piece of plywood (much more predator proof) is used for the entire coop floor and just put the nail gun straight down into the 2x4s, I could have done it!

the coop floor and first wall is up..Now just picture the other walls up and roof and it is so simple and done. The cutting of the wood took the longest time of anything.

I stopped taking pictures of the building because I was too busy stapling the chicken wire on and it was raining...hard but that is the indoor ramp door for the girls..

The best part is we can just move the coop all around the yard and it isn't that hard for DH and I two move it...ALTHOUGH the wheels, I forgot to factor into cost the wheels..PRICEY, we used wheelbarrow wheels and we got four originally at 20 bucks each (ouch) but we needed 2 more for the back of the coop because it was too heavy so total cost for the wheels was 60 bucks..

Ok sorry for the novel I gotta run now but if anyone has anymore questions let me know I will be happy to answer them or even have DH answer them!

[mattemma04]

That is a nice little coop. I hope to add one to my far back yard since I got a roo yesterday.Need to move them further from the home,or should I say neighbos! I want to add salad bars too like was done in this thread:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=482852&p=1

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by mattemma04 

That is a nice little coop. I hope to add one to my far back yard since I got a roo yesterday.Need to move them further from the home,or should I say neighbos! I want to add salad bars too like was done in this thread:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=482852&p=1

ooohhh I like that!

We have actually been letting them free range for a couple of hours each day, with the dog shut in the house and while we are outside to supervise...Too many other neighborhood dogs for it to be safe without us out there. 

DH has already started construction on the new, larger, permanent coop. I can't wait to have that done!