Chicken Coop!

Well my wonderful Tool Man has also been busy this summer! One of the things that we had to do was build a chicken coop for my flock of chickens. We started out with 25 chicks and have 18 hens and one rooster left. Unfortunately a hungry Mama Cat found a way to get in our holding pen and had herself a little feast with 6 of my chickens! So the plans to move the chickens became a priority!

My hubby had already begun cleaning an area on one of the buildings around our house....luckily it already had a good roof and back wall! All he had to do was create side walls and front wall and door of course!

Lucky for us my granddaddy doesn't believe in throwing anything away...and he was able to use the sides of and old cotton trailer to build the remaining sides of the coop. Between the Tool Man and my Daddy I had a chicken coop in a couple of days! It amazed me what they accomplished with scrap tin sheets, wire to repair the chicken wire on the sides of the trailer and some old wood! I think the only thing they bought were the hinges and handle for the door!

My hard working Tool Man!!! And an inside view of the back wall of the coop!

After research and much advice to give my girls a perch up off the ground! So the Tool man put together this perch for me! The top and bottom is reinforce with a piece of sucker rod...and the rest is just 1"X6" boards and     1 1/2" dowel rods. He suspended this from the ceiling with heavy grade wire then secured it the the back wall with screws so that it wouldn't sway as the chickens got up and down!

The Tool Man also rigged this gravity feeder for me! When the chickens were little we had the traditional feeders...little tray with the holes in it...but they were always filling it up with their bedding and covering up their feed...and considering the floor of this coop is sand...I didn't want that! So Tool Man took a 5 gallon bucket (that he got for free!) and cut a hole in the bottom of it...suspend it from the ceiling over a tray...and now I have a feeder that I only have to fill up about every two weeks! The 5 gallon bucket holds about a 25 lb. bag of feed! Tool Man set it up on an old tire to try to keep the sand outta the feed. And this works really well. All I have to do is move the bucket forward to fill the tray everyday! That makes it so much easier on this pregnant woman!

Now there is nothing special about my waterer...other than the fact that I LOVE it and my Daddy got it for me! I tried to use the 1 gallon waterers. I had two of them and my poor chickens kept running out of water...I was going out there twice a day to keep them going! And with over 100 degree heat daily...water is very important for them! Besides all that the waterers that I had were the type that you filled from the bottom...which means I was taking them off the hooks, taking them outside the coop filling them up, carrying them back into the coop and rehanging them...sigh...cumbersome prego, with bad balance, uneven ground and heavy waterers...not a good combo. So with a plea to my Daddy (who helps take care of the chickens...it's a joint venture!) He went an bought me this wonderful 3 gallon waterer! The lid lifts right off and all I have to do is stick a water hose down in there and fill it up! Now I do rinse out the bottom of the tray daily...but it is still super easy! And my Tool Man even ran a hose inside the coop with a cut off valve on it so I didn't have to walk over the uneven ground to get to the faucet!

This is our latest addition! Nesting boxes! My Daddy already had these...all they needed was a little repair work and we were ready to go! I got the pleasure of helping Tool Man hang it on the wall of the coop this afternoon! We had some leftover bedding from when they were little it is ready for the eggs! Just hoping some of my girls decide to start laying soon!

All in all I have a good looking flock of chickens! By the way red buckets were put in so that the chickens didn't have a far to jump to the ground from the perch....was advised that it might crack their eggs...would rather be safe than sorry! And thanks to my Tool Man and my Daddy...taking care of them is easy! I am just ready for some eggs....bring on the fresh eggs please!

God Bless,
Mama D