Building a home for the hens.

As Laura mentioned in a previous post, we're starting small. We're getting a few chickens and are now building homes for them. The coop is going to be for the layers, and we'll be building an "ark" or "tractor" for the meat birds. Researching on the internet, we learned that there seems to be a million designs for these buildings. It's going to be a basic coop with a couple of windows for light and ventilation, and insulated with straw. Having never built anything more fancy than railings for our deck, this has been a fun challenge.

Each construction project has to start with some serious quality time with coffee and the cats on the deck.

First, we built a basic platform in the yard.

And Angel helped.

We then cleared the site and gave it a stable patio-stone base. As you can see, we will also need to do some roofing work this year. The poor old shed is slowly sinking into the ground.

After much measuring, cutting, nailing and cursing, we've got a basic structure up. Well, actually not a lot of measuring.

Next up: pick up a few windows from a friend and frame them in. Once the windows are in, we can finish the framing, put a roof on it, insulated walls and make a door. The weather is supposed to be nice this week, so we hope to make lots of progress in the evenings after I get home from work.

After we get the coop finished, we need to get moving on building the tractor for the meat birds.

Maybe something like this:
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Teacher Help.htm
Or something a bit smaller and easier to move: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Chicken Tractors2.htm

or http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/fowl/tractor.htm

Here's a nice little how-to page: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/ChickenTractorproj.htm

Kablooie!!!