Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Chicken Coops For Sale



In England you can buy nice little coops for housing small flocks of birds but you don't see them over here. Building our coop was so much fun I decided to start building some to sell.

The main problem for chicken keepers here is predators. The most common being raccoons and possums. Oh, and black snakes are another bane. So, I'm making my coops as predator proof as possible.

Pictured above is the first one I've made so far. It would be great for someone who has a small yard. It will house 2 to 6 birds and can be pulled around the yard with a lawn tractor to different locations if need be. I also put a 2x2 through the top as there was no way to lift it easily. It's quite heavy! The 2x2 can be removed once the coop is situated. It has two nice sized nest boxes at the back. It just needs the roof on the nest boxes and it'll be finished.

UPDATE:

I really want to thank all the people who have contacted me about the chicken coops. Unfortunately I'm unable to take any more orders at this time. As soon as I'm caught up I'll post pictures of any coops I have available. Gosh I wish I had 10 pairs of hands. I didn't realize just how many people would be interested in my coops.


Please bookmark this page and I'll be sure to post here when I have coops for sale again.

Oh, if you happen to be in Michigan please check out The Green Chicken Coop
Dan has some nice ones for sale.

Thank you all so much.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Chicken T-shirts

While we're on the subject of chickens don't forget to check out these chicken themed T-shirts!

Dirt Road Duds

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of another chicken coop I started working on. It's small and portable and will house 2 to four birds. I was hoping to have it finished this weekend but it's going to rain tomorrow and Monday.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Happy Hens and Baby Pigeons





W
ell, the roof is on and the hens in. We're getting 5 eggs a day right now. They're from the White Leghorns. The Rhode Island Reds haven't started laying yet. Probably in another two or three weeks.

The roof on the next boxes isn't nailed down yet. I'm so happy with this chicken coop! There are still some finishing touches I want to add. In fact I have some grand ideas which will remain secret for now. I'm still figuring out how to implement them.

More good news! We finally have baby pigeons. After three years of trying here they are.



Another pair are sitting on eggs. They should hatch around the 27th of March. Keep your fingers crossed!

Saturday, March 01, 2008

More chicken coop progress


Ken got the roof on the coop today!! I didn't get a picture of it finished because it was getting too dark, but here he is waiting for me to stop fiddling around with the camera and help with holding the sheets of Ondura straight while he nailed them on.

Chicken Coop Progress


Here we are with the nest boxes half built. I put a window in the east facing side. I'm not an early riser so at least the chickens can enjoy a bit of the morning sun until I let them outside.

Friday, February 22, 2008

We're building a chicken coop!



Here it is so far. Actually it's a bit further along than this now. I built the nest boxes yesterday and today I made the front door and got that hung. Tomorrow I have to make the back door and a screen window. On the right side I'm going to put a little "pop door" with a slider to let them in and out of the pen - which isn't built yet.

The "attic" area is going to be used to store the garden tools.

Ken's been tied up with firefighter training but he got the trusses up and hopefully tomorrow he'll get home early enough to put the roof on. He has the purlins on one side already and all the roofing material ready to go so it won't take but a couple of hours.

We decided to put it close to the house. It'll be nice to just step outside to collect the eggs but it will also be safer for the chickens. There are so many predators back there around the barn. We lost all of our other chickens to raccoons. They were in a pen with a shelter but the racoons would grab them as they ran close to the wire. We didn't want to get anymore until we had a good coop to be able to lock them up in at night.

I based the design on these Jimmy Vyse Arks available in the UK.

I'm having so much fun! I love building! A bit chilly at this time of the year though.

February Storm


It's that time of year again. Seems every February we get a period of high winds. This year was particularly bad. They brought down lots of power lines and the resulting sparks caused lots of brush and forest fires.

Ken was out with the local fire fighters battling forest fires for 9 hours! While he was gone the power went out then not long after that a terrific wind gust brought down this large white pine that was standing by the driveway. It couldn't have dropped in a better place. Just missed the house. Just missed the power line coming into the house. If it had gone more to the right it would have landed on the chicken coop we're building and if it had gone to the left it would have wiped out the garden fence!

Of course Ken wasn't able to get up the driveway when he returned home but that was better than any of the above scenarios. He took the next day off work and he and Joshua worked on cutting up the tree and getting the branches piled up out of the way.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

This year's deer

Here's this season's deer. Ken walked by me saying "guess I'll go get us a deer". About 5 minutes later I heard the shot. Sure enough there he was up on the hillside field dressing this nice doe!

Having so many deer around kind of takes the sport out of hunting but then again it was nice not to have the task of carrying her down off the mountain and out through the other hollow like last year. We just lifted her over the stream and into the barn.


This year we ground quite a lot of hamburger meat.

This is Ken using the grinder attachment I bought him for his birthday last year. It works great. The KitchenAid mixer was his retirement gift! When I buy him tools he usually says "wait a minute, you've been wanting one of these!" He likes kitchen stuff so this way I was sure he knew it was just for him. He knows that never in a month of Sunday's would I ask for a mixer!"

We got about 40lbs of meat altogether. One deer lasts us most of the year, in fact I still have a little bit left from last year but that's because I used it sparingly thinking we would run out. We keep talking about getting a pig as it would be wonderful to have our own pork too.

It's very comforting to see the freezer full of meat. Especially when it's free meat!

Some finished knitting projects


Winter really set in here so as usual when it's cold outside all I want to do is knit! The first picture is a hat I made using the Llama I spun - shown in the last post.

I'd made this little cardi and hat for a friends new baby granddaughter and well, I was thrilled the way the flower came out and decided I wanted a hat with a flower too! Hey, I just turned 50. I can wear crazy stuff now.

The cardi is known as the 5HBJ or 5 hour baby jacket.

Thanks Lorainne wherever you are!!!

It's pretty easy to follow and enjoyable to knit.

I'll try to find the link to the baby hat and flower patterns. They were easy too.