New Coop

I do not have many pictures of making this coop, the nature of it require more people. Often we were all 4 taken up and someone still had to reach their foot out for a tool. We needed an extra coop, but we made it bigger than the wooden ones so that 2 wooden coops could combine in here. We dont want to have even more roving coops about our yard, but we needed space.

So now we have these 2. One of the smaller wooden coops had 2 egg laying hens and 1 bantam rooster, the other 2 coops have 5 birds each. The one that had 1 rooster, we left in there with his 4 hens, the one with 5 hens and the other 3 birds combined in the new pvc coop. This left us with 2 smaller coops.

The chickens, before we cover the end. It seems like a few too many for in here but we cannot do free range, and the children and I cannot move a large roving coop. They are called chicken tractors by many people and are moved by a truck, or tractor. I am not interested in doing it any other way than by hand, I would avoid moving it otherwise. If I move them each day, they never have a nasty space.

One of the reasons we needed a coop! We didnt want to put our older baby bunnies (these were born to one of our mamas) into a rabbit cage like the parents are in. they are in rabbit cages because they are afraid outside of them. They have always been in a wire box, on bagged feed. Our bunnies are now used to eating home raised foods, but they still like the comfort of their cage. We want our rabbits to range in a coop and eat the foliage as well as bagged feed. When we retire-we plan to grow their range area so we feed no pellets at all. They love clover, vetch, alfalfa and spinach. Those are full foods for them as well, they do not need the pellets.

This was our other coop need. We have 7 baby ducks, we are going to eat all but one of them likely. Nathalie will choose which one is not eaten. They are super messy and smelly in the garage brooding box so out they go. They can be in colder temperatures and they love the grass. the turkey poults and chicks have to be under heat in the garage for some time yet and they smell bad enough on their own.

The baby rabbits love the coop. They run, jump and hop about in it though they try to come out and socialize with us each time we open their door. They are kittens, rabbits are, I didnt know that previously. they are friendly and sweet because we have hand raised them.

We use 6mil plastic on a lot of things. My friend Amanda buys billboard tarps, I want to own a lot but not at this time. We dont want to pay the shipping to get them up here, and regular tarps are 3x more expensive here than down south. We buy as few as possible, the 6mil plastic is cheaper and I have never had a regular tarp last longer than a season out in the weather anyway. This works well for now. It keeps them dry, gives their food dish a place to live in case it rains. We will keep them in the roving coops as long as we can, they will have barn space made but I dread putting them in it. Right now, there is no clean up from the chickens. Once in the barn, even with a run, they have to have clean up done regularly. I do not mind mucking but I hate that they cant live in clean space. There are pros and cons everywhere we go, and I truly love cold weather but it is harder to have animals in colder weather.