The Build - part 3

On February 10th we got another surprise!

Olive gave us our first egg.  It was little, but it was the prettiest shade of Olive green.

 

I guess Hyacinth just needed someone to show her how, because she joined in the next day.

 

It was just the motivator I needed.  This project was getting old fast.  On a good day, I have the attention span of a goldfish.  With this project going on and on and on, and the gloomy cold weather, and other LARGE projects looming I was starting to get overwhelmed.  But the new eggs set me back on the right path.


By February 15th, the snows had started to melt away.  It was still cold, but at least it was above freezing, barely.  The next step required me to wait for help.  There was NO WAY I could move plywood down to the build by myself AND hold it up, and secure it, and mark it, lower it down, cut it, and put it back up in the same place.  So Doc donned his polar bear suit and joined me for an afternoon of fun, and frolic in the great outdoor.  Well, at least that's what I told him.  Plus, I promised him roast beef for dinner.  Whatever works, eh?

Melting snow plus stomping feet equals wet, squishy, mud.  And it was cold. 40 degrees sounds ok, until you add in the wind.  It never fails.  If you need to work outside and don't want it, nature provides you howling winds on this hill.  Which is ok, unless you are moving full sheets of plywood.  I like to think that's how the Wright brothers got started.

Anyway, our plan was to lift the plywood to the coop walls, tack them in place with a couple of screws, mark the interior studs and roof line with a crayon, and then remove the wall to a saw horse.  I would then predrill the screw holes for the stud screws, while Doc cut the roof line and cut out the window openings.  Then we would simply lift the piece back up to the wall, use the predrilled holes, and attached the wall with screws.  We actually got into quite the groove. 10 sheets took us several hours, but by the time the sunset, the coop had walls! Painted WALLS! 

 

 

The neighbors now knew we were nuts.  We were half frozen, but we had walls....and roast beef for supper.

The Build - part 4

Since I now had walls and no roof, winter decided to arrive.  After I would clear the driveway, I would walk down to the coop and shovel out the empty building. It was at this time that Merriweather decided to get in on the fun.

The roof would take more than just me working on it, so it would have to wait.  In the meantime, I was able to do all the smaller projects, like the windows, rafters, and the pop door.

Was there swearing? Yes.  Were there tears? Almost.  I was tired of living in heavy winter outdoor clothes, heavy work boots, being cold, being sore, plus keeping house and taking care of schooling, and everything else that had to be done. I was just plain TIRED.  But a partially done project to and OCD is more than a nagging project.  It's a mission.  So forward is the only direction.

 

 

 

One afternoon, as a study break, the boy helped me lift the large, upper windows into place, and held up the door while I attached the hinges.  The next day, Doc covered the roof plywood with the drip edge and the tar paper and helped me lift that into place and secure it down.  I felt the end of the project was just out of reach, even though I was no where close!

The roof was next, but Doc would have to help me with that one.  So I continued on with the little things that I could do on my own.  I worked on the trim I could reach with my small ladder ( I promised Doc no large ladders while he was away.) I covered all the windows with hardware cloth and trimmed them. I built a simple pop door, a LARGE pop door.  (Now Hyacinth doesn't have to squeeze herself out.)   I even built a porch and steps to the door.

The scale of this project was amazing.  Mostly because I was the entire work force for 98% of it.  The big stuff goes up quickly and seems like a lot, until the little projects - the finishing projects, eat you alive.  Killed by a shark, or pecked to death by chickens?  You decide. 
 

But onward and UPwards.

 



The Build - Part 5

Upwards.  The roof.  I don't mind heights.  UP is cool.  UP is a great view.  UP is a super cute kids movie.

It's down that's no fun. More specifically, falling.  I've done it on several occasions.  I did not care for it.  So while working on the roof of the coop didn't bother me, the act of getting up there, and more importantly, STAYING up there was a huge deal.  It absolutely, positively could NOT be done on a windy day.  The day had to be perfect.  The first day up, we decided to tackle the lower roof first, as it is not only smaller, but has a more gentle pitch. 

I was using these great dimensional shingles I picked up at the Habitat Store for only $4 a bundle, instead of $45 a bundle new.  They are great! OC I didn't buy enough, and had to make another trip, but they had plenty.  Armed with a ladder, a good 20oz hammer, these cool roofing nails that had a metal ring instead of plastic, and a good wingman.....see I'm even stalling going back up on that ladder describing it to you.  OK, UP I went.  Phew not so bad.  The first couple of rows could be done from the ladder, but remember this coop is built on a hill, so one side of the ladder had to be propped up 4 inches.  ("propped up" = we made a level, stable plywood platform, nothing wibbly-wobbly ~Doc)  Oh joy.  But there was simply no escaping it.  It was time to get ON the roof. 

This is where I know the Universe has a sense of humor.  I no sooner get ON the roof and the winds pick up.  And not just a little, but now gusting to over 35mph.  And the sun, as weak as it is, is now heating the lower shingles, burning my knees through my jeans. An hour later and it is time for lunch and the shingles are done.  After lunch I climb back up on to the lower roof, emboldened by my earlier success, and put up the exterior trim and metal hardware cloth on the upper window.  Then it was time for IT.

The back roof.  The super scary, super angled, super high, super slippery, back roof.  What was I thinking?! Who built this abomination to nature?!  Who?! Oh wait... UGH.

Again I was able to manage the first two rows from the propped up ladder.  I kept asking Doc over and over again if he had a hold of the ladder.  I knew he did.  Where was he going to go?  Well, ok, he COULD have gone somewhere.  I bet he wished he HAD been somewhere, but he was there, holding tightly.  He wasn't going to let that ladder go.  I knew that.  He knew that. But my brain wasn't so sure that gravity has received that memo.  SO I kept asking anyway.

Once I was on the ladder it was even more apparent HOW steep this roof was.  The tar paper, or roofing felt, wasn't making it any easier.  I swear it was coated in Teflon.  I made a command decision.  It had to come off.  I ripped great sheets of it, tossing it to the ground. I kept repeating to myself, " I will not fall.  I can do this."  Then about half way up the roof...I ran out of shingles. AHHHHH!

Which meant not only the dreaded trip to town, but that I was going to have to go up on that roof, AGAIN!  You'd think the emboldened thing would kick in again.  Apparently, I reached my quota for that and it was almost as hard to get up on the back roof the second time.  But I did.  I would nail full shingles down as Doc would cut me partials.  And the winds started to howl again.  By lunch time on the second day, the roof was done. 

My wrists felt like maracas, my knees burned and bruised to being bloody, but my coop had a roof. A 30 year roof, maybe a few years less by the lack of tar paper underlayment.  But I don't think the girls will care.

The Build - Part 6

By now it's early March.  The Earth is starting to shake off it's winter blues, the days are getting noticeably longer, the days are getting warmer.  Heck, a couple of work days even made it into the 60, and I had to trade my winter coat, for a jacket, and loose the jacket and trade the jeans for shorts.

The on and off blizzards, cold spells, and snow storms were finding it harder and harder to keep a firm hold on the passing season and began to give up altogether. 

As the ground began to really thaw, my thoughts drifted to the non-existent garden and getting that project under way.  I was tired of the build.  The girls were tired of their little coop.  So I let them out to play while I worked. (By now we had purchased a 1962 massey ferguson mf204 tractor and I started tormenting the sod for the garden.)

Just look at the survey crew in action.  Ya, black compost soil and a white chicken.  I didn't think that through.  But she had SO much fun.
 When I didn't work, I planned or shopped.  Because every coop needs bling.


 And honestly, to borrow from Ferris Beuller, "who could possibly expect me to handle work on a day like this?!"

LOL.

Coop Décor.  I found these great metal rooster and hen cut outs at Hobby lobby and spray painted them white, and lagoon blue and attached them.  I also picked up solar deck lights to illuminate the steps, pop door, people door, and back metal art/window.  I purchased locking jars at a closeout store for mealworms, and coopouri (which I make and might make available to others), and chick grit.  I also found large, metal, red sugar and flour canisters which fit on the exposed studs inside to hold grit and calcium for refilling the PVC supply tubes.

More than anything, I felt like I was puttering on the project.  I still had a deadline.  Remember, I had birds coming.  But I also felt like I had Spring fever.  Remember that from school days?  Your heart just isn't into it anymore, but you keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Funny thing that.  Usually that feeling makes you want to get OUTSIDE and play, but I WAS outside, all day, everyday! LOL. 

Worse than Spring fever though, I caught the dreaded chicken fever!  Chick fever to be precise.  It's a horrible thing all chicken people get.  You don't know when it will strike, but it's usually in February to Mid March.  You'll be minding your own business, walk into the feed store and hear that tiny little "CHEEP, CHEEP" from deep within a store.  Like a nursing mother who can tell in a room full of babies, her own child's cry, you hone in on those giant metal tubes full of cute little, fluffy, wittle, teeny, poofballs.  AGH! I blame my hen Merriweather.  She chose March to go broody.  The sweetest, cutest, sit on your hand, doll of a hen, turned overnight into something that would make Freddie Kruger curl into a ball behind a door and start weeping and sucking his thumb. 

Having no rooster at the time, I thought I'd swap her eggs out for 5 cute little chicks.  She's have none of that.  So I ended up raising 5 fluff butts, dealing with a hormonal hen sitting on fertilized eggs I bought from another friend up the road (Thank you Frank!), and trying to finish this build.

"Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere a chick, chick", now has new meaning to me. I had the main coop (still under construction), the small coop, a broody coop, and a chick coop all going at once.  I was wondering if I was starting to loose my sanity.  (Who am I kidding?  It was gone long ago.)

March is also burning season.  Usually it comes the first decent evening of the year.  You know the one, you can finally crack your windows open for a night's sleep, breathing in that cool, crisp refreshing air, until a skunk -"fresh" out of hibernation wanders by your window at 3am?  Ya, that day.  So it's finally warm enough to open windows during the day and it's burning time.  Farmers burn the stubble in their fields, their rubbish piles, their piles of old trees and shrubs from pasture cleaning, and burn their pastures.  Prairie grass thrives on fire.  It is far more healthy for the grasslands to let it grow for a few years, and then let fire fly through and burn out all of the old grass and thatch that has built up.  Within a week, you can't even tell an area has been burned.  It comes up that fast, and new and fresh.  It was doing it naturally LONG before people were here.  The benefit now is that YOU set the time it burns.  Usually, you pick a nice day, with little or no wind and go for it.  Usually. 

You know that feeling when you are on the way home and you see fire trucks, and you say to yourself, "don't turn, don't let them turn..." and then they turn towards your place?  Ya, not a good feeling.  That happens a lot here.  Wild fires happen.  Accidents happen. Controlled burns get out of control.  One day, coming back home I saw black smoke rising from the neighbor's pasture.  He was clearing, when he hit a rock with the loader bucket and set half the acreage afire.  Another day, I was working on the coop and kept brushing snowflakes from my hair and eyeglasses, before I remembered it was 65 and I was in shorts.  The flakes were ashes from a wildfire on the next acreage. 

The state has been in drought so many years that fire is common, and dangerous, and unpredictable.  Like I said in an earlier post, the Universe has a sense of humor.

The Build - Part 7

The way I look at it, people can worry the first year there is little rain.  By the second year, prayers start heading upwards for water to fall downwards.  The state was in drought for three years.  We have just had a record setting wet Spring.  So where ever they go, prayers take two years to get there. April showers usually bring May flowers, but this year April showers brought May's deluge.  The amount of rain has been insane.

Anyway, let's get back to the coop shall we?

The exterior is DONE!  I have moved work to the inside.  The projects just never seem to end. I swear I owned the only "to do" board where I would scratch one item off and add two more.  I moved the nesting box inside so that I was better able to see where, and how high to make the poop board and roost. I decided on an "L" shaped board and roost beside the door and along the back wall. I used simple shelf brackets from the ReStore to hold up the weight of the poop board.  This allowed me to keep all of my floor space. 

I used a wide, prefabricated shelf board, MDF, from the hardware store, as it was 24inches wide, and was straight and hearty.

Here you can see the waterproof blackjack 57 floor coating, which I took 12 inches up the walls as well. The floor needed sealed, I lucked out on two days in the 70s for that to go down and cure. Treat yourself to one of those metal paint stirring sticks that goes on an electric drill.  Get the one that has a squared insert for the drill, so it doesn't spin in the drill head.

When you open your bucket, it will look like black water.  In the bottom half of the bucket will be a very thick tar blob.    A stick will not mix that mess.  When you start mixing it, the blob will break down and look like you are trying to mix oil and water, and it will look like it will NEVER come together.  It does and looks like thick black cream.  Like a thick black paint.  Then you can simply pour it on the clean wood floor and spread it with a roller or a brush !  I did two coats.

The roost is 8 inches above the poop board and has since changed.  But I will post that change later.  I didn't want it too high for the sake of my heavier breeds. It is a 2x3 turned on it's side.

 I also gave the interior two quick coats of paint.

For the ramp, I used one of those slatted wood shelves you can find at the hardware store.  It was on clearance for $5, it's teak, LOL.  I spray painted it to get all the nooks and hidey holes, and then put on a quick coat of paint with a roller and tossed on a bunch of sand.  I let that dry, and repeated for a non skid walking area.  It is attached simply with eye hooks on the poop board and cup hooks on the end of the ramp.  I filled the poop board with sweet PDZ and the back half of the coop with pine shavings.  The cool thing about this poop board, besides the easy clean up, is that I can hang wood frames with hardware cloth on them, and create a broody coop area in the main coop.

 

 

 

The front, open area, of the coop has a blackjack-coated 4x4 post as a divider.  The front portion was filled with sand.  After a week of use, I decided I didn't like sand, and filled the area with sweet PDZ.  It is more pricey, but it is lighter, easier on the floor, and dries much faster than sand.  It is also cooler than sand.

 

 Now we move OUTSIDE.

The Build - Part 8

Now that the inside is done, let's move outside.  The run needs to be just as much a fortress as the coop.  There are critters everywhere.  And except for bugs and earthworms, chickens are pretty much the bottom of the delicious food chain.  We have foxes, coyotes, curious people, stray dogs, dogs that belong to lazy owners, abandoned cats, cats that belong to lazy owners, hawks, falcons, raccoons, mink, opossums, owls, snakes, and bald eagles.

While I can't protect them all the time, you can do your best.  We lost one to a fox while free ranging in November, almost lost the whole flock to a dog that was allowed to roam (more than once), and just two weeks ago spied a fox - a large male fox- checking out the run.  And that's just what we happen to see.  What goes on when I'm not looking.  We have a game camera, but even that doesn't catch it all.

Our run needed to be large, covered in hardware cloth, provide shade, and easy enough for me to build.  A sturdy box frame with hardware cloth.  Check.

I began by coating the wood that would be on the ground, even though it was treated, with blackjack.  More coating couldn't hurt.  I made a box frame with long self tapping bold screws and attached this to the coop. I used this box as a guide for where to dig my post holes for the end supports.  This is about the time I discovered that big box wood stores have a clearance bin.  I know! Who knew?!  It might be slightly crooked over the span of 10 feet, but if you cut that down in to smaller pieces, they are straight!  Or over run orders, or refused delivery, or cracked!  LOL.  I just cut that bit off and paint.  $2 for a 4x4x10foot cedar post is better than $20! Anyway...

The survey crew arrives.

 

 

 

 I also covered the front underside of the coop with plywood to which I attached a hardware cloth skirt.  It is anchored to the ground under the coop with lawn staples.  The box frame has a similar skirt that flares out from the coop base 2 feet from the coop.  The idea is that a predator is not smart enough to hit the cloth near the coop edge, not be able to get in, and back up 2 feet and try again.  I'm not a fan of working with this 1/2 inch wire cloth, but it is a necessary evil.  On the inside backs of the boards, I attached the cloth with roofing nails and disks.

I painted as I went, instead of painting around hardware cloth.  The vertical 2x4s simply screwed on and then the top box frame added with deck screws. 

 

Once the frame was up, I added the hardware cloth with roofing nails with disks and then sandwiched that with a piece of painted 1x3 using deck screws.  The door was a ReStore find and cost me $10.  I took out the old metal screen and replaced it with hardware cloth and white trim.  It has a hook and eye INSIDE, for working inside, and two hasps on the outside to prevent low prying critter hands.  The roof frame is also covered and secured with hardware cloth.  Then the entire roof was covered in opaque white corrugated panels.

 

In the run I have a wood limb low perch, a small climbing ladder, an old barn ladder mounted up high for a roost, water bucket, pvc feed bucket, and a ramp with patio.  Some climb up, some fly up.

 

The new double/ single row perch allows for everyone to have a space, with room to spare. I did add a large 12inch square vent on the bottom corner (our right) below the poop board.  This allows for even more summer air exchange.   In the cold months this will be fully sealed and weather proofed to stop the exchange. 

 

Even on the windiest of days, with all the windows shut, it is a full 10-15' warmer inside the coop than out, and very little air is lost from the front windows.  Open the first row of windows and you drop the temp a few degrees and increase air flow.  Open the upper windows and you almost match the outside temp and create a nice breeze.

 

 

The old little coop has been repainted to match and moved closer to the new place, so I can use it for whatever.  LOL.

 

 

 

I have added an overhang above the top monitor window to help with blowing rain.

 

 

So there you have it.  Almost 200 square feet, inside and out.  Room for 20, but I am happy with my 15 pullets, and two cockerels.

 

It took me three full months, a silly amount of lumber, and almost $2500.

 

I have also just assembled a screen door for those really hot days and night.  I purchased a solid oak door at the Restore, and removed the window panel and covered with hardware cloth using large nail in staples.  The white board trip screws through the cloth and into the door, further securing the wire.  It has two critter proof locks on it.  OH, and it is upside down, so that fresh air comes in near the floor, where the chickens are and then freshens the coop as it exits through the upper windows.