Chicken Penthouse

This will be the "documentary" blog on how we built the chicken coop. A picture is worth a thousand words... or at least 10 words. So, a lot will be pictures so you can get the idea of what we did.

First, they started in a box in our kitchen.



Then, they were kicked outside and put into a 4x2 space. (including the box)



We decided we had better get going on the small chicken coop that was going to be made out of scraps of wood. As time went on, the coop grew and became quite the nice little place for them to live. Needless to say, it took way more time and way more money than we first planned. But, I think we are all (including the chickens) happy with how it turned out.

This has been a great way to teach the kids some practical building skills. They helped measure, saw, hammer, run the nail gun, apply shingles, and put on siding. The kids worked so hard! I was proud of them!







It was so hot on the day we did the shingles. It was almost 100 degrees that day!!





It was so windy while we were trying to put on siding. We lost power that day for about 6 hours. We had work to do, so Keith started up the generator and we kept going!










We decided we would try making some solar bread while we were working outside. Our first attempt didn't turn out so good, but this is our second attempt at solar bread. We all enjoyed it for dinner last night.




Ok, here are some pictures of the almost finished chicken coop. We moved the chickens in before we are totally finished because they really needed the room. The new coop is 8x8. We have it split in half inside. One half is for the chickens and the other half is the "human" side. We will keep the supplies on the human side... chicken food storage, and the other things we will use to care for the chickens. We haven't built the nesting boxes, but they will stick into the human side. There will be a lid on the box and we can gather the eggs from the human side of the coop. I'll have to add pictures when we get that part done. There are 4 windows to allow the maximum ventilation.













This is the "poop" door. I know, so exciting. This is so that we can undo latches, lift the door and shovel all of the "stuff" outside to clean the coop.



Their outside chicken run is 5x10. They seemed to enjoy having more room to move.