YOUR GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES
It’s moving day — for chickens
Posted on July 17th, 2008 – 9:20 AMBy Robyn Dochterman
At long (way too long) last, the chickens will make their move from giant dog crates in the garage to the spiffy new “Coop DeVille” barely 30 feet away. The special order siding was delivered and installed, and I’m pretty delighted with the overall effect. It’s different from the house siding, but the stained cedar trim ties it in to the style of the house. From the chickens’ point of view, the best part might be the 6′ fenced yards on either side of the coop, so they can scratch for bugs and leaves without risking their relative safety, since the neighborhood has resident fox, coyote, skunk and exuberant domestic dogs.
There’s a little bit of finish work to do inside today before the pullets bed down for the night. I have to paint their roost ladder and make some progress on the nest boxes. No one has started laying eggs yet, but it could happen any day. In fact, I ordered egg collection baskets yesterday so we’ll be ready.
Above is the big yard. The fenced area on the other side is smaller, but big enough to alternate with this one, or we can open both areas at once. Inside, there are several bars for the hens to roost on at night, two feeders, a five-gallon waterer and a space for six nestboxes.
Trouble gets the honor of being the first to explore her new digs.
Rhoda, Vera and Rosie are among the first to discover the roost bar against the back wall of the coop. Soon all the chickens were playing follow the leader.
The rest of the crew checks out the bedding of pine shavings and straw. They flung it this way and that, nestled into it, and tried their best to scatter it. It didn’t go very far — a new benefit of four solid walls.
19 Responses to "It’s moving day — for chickens"
Wow! That’s the fanciest coop I’ve ever seen. Those are some lucky birds.
Are you going to put a little “Coop DeVille” sign on the front? It looks like a little hotel for chickens. Or maybe “Hen Hilton”?
That’s so exciting. I can’t wait till they start laying eggs. Please take pictures of that too. Congrats!
Thanks for the nice comments! I’m so excited!
Elisabeth, while I was painting the inside of the coop, I started to think it was kind of a shame to give it to the chickens, since it would be a sweet little studio or guesthouse. Alas, we need a place for chickens more than guests (we have a guestroom in the real house). A sign out front would be great, wouldn’t it? I’ll have to look into that.
Sarah, I will definitely take pictures o the first eggs. I’m very eager and curious to see how that goes!
Robyn,
Do you have raccoons in your neck of the woods? If so, watch your chain link fence, those buggers can slip easily under it and then Coup Deville turns into a Coup de Death.
Hi Ann. Yup, we have raccoons. In fact, a mama and her three babies comes to clean up our birdseed on the deck every night. I’ve never seen them in the daytime, but I’ll certainly keep my eyes open. Thanks for the reminder.
Raccoons can easily CLIMB chain link fences too. Somewhere I have a picture of one caught in the act. Resourceful little buggers, they are. When I was a kid, our neighbor even caught one hanging from the second floor window screen. Figure that one out! LOL
How will you heat it in the winter?
Remember on Little House on the Prairie, Ma would sell her eggs to Mrs. Olsen and she’d say proudly, “I have 2 dozen today - all double yolks!” and I’ve always wondered how you get double yolks, and how you even know the eggs have double yolks. Answer THAT one, oh Great Chicken Expert!
Loved the pictures, and am looking forward to egg pics, too. I assume you shut your ladies in for the night - and doors are latched so the coons can’t open them. You might also consider fencing over the tops of the yards.
To answer Sarah’s question about the double yolk eggs: when you hold the egg up to a light source you can see a shadow of what is inside ( this is called candling) and can see one yolk, two or if there is a blood spot on the yolk. These eggs are usually from a chicken that is predisposed to twinning and are larger than the other eggs.
Robyn, boy it sure looks pretty now…give it a year or two of chickens living in it. The you will not even think of it as a possible guest cottage, more like a punishment chamber.
I would also put in a solid border on the bottom fencing, wood or rock. The chickens will dig along the fence line and like Ann says, coons or other animals can slip under.
For protection over the yard, I put up bird netting. If you shut them in at night, you should not have any problems.
For heat in the winter time, I just use my heat bulb that I had used when they were chicks. It seems to do the job. I also take care to order birds that are hardier in the winter time- no frizzles or other fancy birds for me- they will die because of the cold.
We do shut the girls in at night and the hatch doors close with two kinds of latches, including a hasp with a carabiner. We leave the upper windows open, but all the windows are protected with hardware cloth to keep out predators. We were going to leave other windows open last night, but I got worried, so we sneaked out about midnight and closed the lower ones. Today, it was a hoot watching the girls come down the ramp to the yard for the first time. It’s so nice to see the chickens do their chicken thing.
Debw, you are a fount of information! Thanks for the explanation of double yolks. It’s a common question and now I have a succinct answer.
Robyn, this is so exciting! I love the name and the fancy coop! Will you someday name a chicken after me? =)
You know what, Shruti? We’ve got 8 more chicks coming in October. I promise to name one of them after you!
Wow! How many chickens can it hold? Did you come up with the plans yourself or use ones written up somewhere?
Hi Amy. I used guidelines from books for how much space you should provide each chicken. The coop is designed to hold up to 30 chickens (we have 20). But for the actual design of the building, I have Peter Curtis to thank. He’s an architect who designed the remodel of our house last year, so was able to grasp the style I wanted and draw up plans very inexpensively.
Wow, that’s great!! Compared to how most chickens in factory farming fare, they are lucky indeed! Perhaps you could take some of these poor cocks that were found in the cockfighting ring in and become “Hen House de Rescue.” Or, we could lock the losers up who did this and make them fight each other until only one is left, then let the chickens peck him to death!
Robyn, where do you live? You have to be zoned a certain way to be able to have chickens, right?
Amy, it’s strange how people always seem to have to have animals that fight (dogs, cocks, whatever). I sure don’t understand that. I live in Scandia, where you must have 5 acres in order to have livestock. Some cities and suburbs are fairly accommodating about having a few chickens.
RE: Double Yolks - It’s called candling. You hold the egg up to a candle and the shell is transparent enough to basically see through it. It shows you whether the egg is fertilized and the stage of development. That is how Little House would have known they had double yolks. Now how they all had double yolks is another question.
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