Things have been nuts around here lately – hence the lack of posts. I’d love to be able to promise to remedy that this week, but I’m behind on everything, including my current freelance writing gig, so though I do have a couple of posts in the pipeline, I can’t make any promises about when I’m going to get them up.
On the weekend-before-last Arin, Ron, and Liam came out on Sunday to help build our chicken coop. We were fairly lucky with the weather, it only threatened to rain on us a little bit. Ron did the bulk of the construction with me as assistant, and t! helped with the heavy lifting as needed.
It all went together really well – Ron knows his stuff and the plan was pretty simple: a 6-foot by 8-foot coop with a single sloping roof, 7 feet high at the front and 5 feet high at the back (which hopefully means I won’t need to get up on the roof in the middle of winter to shovel the snow off it).
We put in a full day Sunday and got the posts, floor frame, floor, walls, and roof up, and window in. On Monday I added insulation (to keep the chickens warm in -30°C) and panelling (to stop the chickens pecking the insulation to bits) to the inside.
Tuesday I fitted and hung the door, and finished off the interior (perches, ventilation holes, feeder and waterer) and t! and I moved the chicks into their luxurious new home.
Despite what this photo shows, they are not using the roosts yet, which could be newness of the environment, or could be that I put the roosts too high, or used poles that aren’t wide enough. If they haven’t started roosting soon I will start making changes to the current roosts.
t! is going to spend tomorrow morning painting the coop bright red. The “Barn and Fence” paint I bought at the farm supply store came in black, white, brown, and red – at least that’s what they had left on the shelf, so a red coop it shall be! I’ll post a picture or two tomorrow. In the meantime, I should probably share this one that t! snapped while I was moving the chicks in:
No, it doesn’t have a name. No, it isn’t going to have one. Except possibly “Drumstick” if it’s a boy chicken. All except two of the boy chickens will be “Drumstick” or “Curry” or “Noodle Soup” or “BBQ”. You get the idea.
out here 
It’s looking good, and that photo of you and Kiev is great. Is it just me, or did you build quite a lot of room for future flock expansion into it?
Is it just me, or did you build quite a lot of room for future flock expansion into it?
Not really – at 48 ft sq it’s actually a little on the small side – we’re planning to keep 10 to 12 chickens over the winter (depending on what our rooster/hen ratio turns out to be), which works out to approx. 4 sq ft per bird in confined quarters over the winter. That’s a little tight, but they will be going outside (if they want to, of course) in all but the worst weather, and Chanteclers are a breed that tolerates confinement well.
The idea is that in the spring, one or more of the hens will go broody and decide to raise our next batch of BBQ the old-fashioned way.
That’s some serious some serious chicken coop! We just started raising chickens and just last week got our first egg. It’s all very exciting.
Is it red, yet? I’d love to see the completed project. Also, are the chickens roosting yet?
Really enjoyed talking to you today. I’d love to see some photos of the trees!
xox
Oh, Au Vin is adorable. I’m really interested to find out how many end up being male vs. female out of the flock.