We finally got around to watching Food, Inc, which left me feeling a renewed dedication to our urban chickening/gardening projects.
So, I figured it's also time to get around to making another blog post. The girls have been growing steadily over the past month, while the coop building has been, well, not so steady.
It's amazing how quickly chickens go from the fuzzy egg-shaped balls of cuteness (see previous posts), through their awkward/ugly half-feathered phase and begin to look like real chickens. The feathers started on the wings...
and quickly spread...
Please forgive the horrible flash photo. Unfortunately, we don't have more pictures of the in-between stages since we've been so focused on getting the coop built in time to move the girls outside. Even before we had the chickens Conor spent quite a bit of time learning to use Google Sketch-Up and made us a great plan to get the coop building started. Of course, there have been plenty of modifications, both accidental and intentional, along the way. The pre-planning has really paid off and the coop is turning out incredibly well.
We started by laying a 2x4 frame lined with wire mesh on top of some paving stones to create the foundation for the coop. The mesh will, hopefully, keep the city rats from finding their way into the coop by digging their way in. We also ran the wire outside of the frame up to the foundation of our garage.
The entire frame is recessed into the ground so that we can bury it and have a dirt floor for the chickens to scratch around in. With the foundation in place, we framed the front and back walls. Because of the limited space behind the coop, we attached the wire mesh and back wall of the henhouse to the back wall before putting it up.
The back wall is a bit taller than the front wall so that roof slants towards the front. The previous owners of the house left us some shingles, so we're using those for the roof.
Here I am, helping with the roof by taking photos of Conor putting the shingles on. You can also see the back wall of the henhouse. With the roof completed, we moved on to the finishing out the rest of the henhouse. We started with the floor, mostly because we were scared to start the walls which include doors, windows, nest boxes, etc... The floor was quick and painless, so we were forced to move on to the more complicated parts. Considering that neither of us really know what we're doing, I'm really happy with how they've turned out.
First, we cut out the holes for the nest boxes and two small windows and then attached the wall to the frame.
With the wall up, we attached 2x2s to the outside and continued to build the nest boxes.
We had planned on having the top hinged and flip up, but decided to have the face of the nest box on hinges to make it easy to clean it out.
More coming...
