Now that the chickens are rapidly maturing into egg layers, I’ve had to upgrade the chicken coop.
Back in June when I built the coop, my focus was on getting a space for them to live in. A REAL coop. And not a snake-y, murder coop (see this post) where our 3 guineas were strangled by a snake on the second night.
Here a picture of the finished 1.0 version of the coop:
So here’s the deal with Chicken Coop 1.0…
- The interior is pretty awesome – roosting bars, a linoleum floor so it’s easy to clean, and lots of hardware cloth so there’s plenty of air circulation
- I adding on the little exterior A-frame enclosure to give them outside space – it’s not a BIG space but it’s keeping them safe for now. At night I lock them in the main coop because I don’t think the A-frame is predator proof.
- With the 100+ degree heat and a demanding job, I couldn’t finish the roof or the siding. Someday it’ll have a corregated roof (I have the panels – so that’s something, right?!) and I’ll finish the cedar plank siding so it’ll look purty 🙂 Right now it’s all just plywood and a tarp.
And here’s what’s happened to Chicken Coop 2.0…
First, the chickens have started laying eggs – woot!
However, I never added nesting boxes…uh oh…
My original plan was to build 6 square nesting boxes. There would be 3 boxes on the top and 3 boxes stacked on top of them. I was going to afix them to the wall and then build a fold down door so I could easily open it up and reach into the bag of the nesting boxes to snag the eggs.
It was a cool idea but it would take time to build out and let’s face it, I got lots to do on the farm!
So with new eggs getting laid daily, I had to come up with a quicker and easier nesting method. Poking around on the internet, Leah found me a picture of nesting boxes made with 5-gallon buckets. I modified the plan and viola – nesting boxes!
Here’s how I did it:
I bought (4) 5-gallon buckets, (2) lids, (8) bolts with nuts and washers, and a 2×2 piece of plywood.
STEP 1: Take the handles off of the buckets.
STEP 2: Drill holes in the buckets so they can be bolted together. I just drilled through the handle holes and bolted them together with 1 bolt on each edge. I bolted the buckets both top and bottom and side to side. When I was done, all four buckets were bolted to each other.
STEP 3: I set the buckets upright on the plywood square and drilled through the bottoms of the buckets and through the plywood. I then bolted the buckets to the plywood (1 bolt through the bottom of each bucket).
STEP 4: I took the two lids and cut them into thirds with my circular saw. I discarded the center third. I snapped the other two edge pieces onto the bottom edge of two buckets. This helps keep the nexting material and eggs inside the nesting buckets.
We bought some nesting pads to line the buckets and popped in two ceramic eggs to encourage them to use the buckets. Then we put whole contraption in the coop. The chickens were suspicious at first but then they loved it!
We’ve found a few eggs in the buckets and a few out in other areas of the coop or in the outdoor area. It seems like they’re laying during the day and most often in the afternoon.
We’re getting about a dozen small eggs a week!
And they’re so colorful! We’re not sure who is laying what and we were super surprised to find the green egg. We think it’s from our mystery chicken. She *may* be an Americana. We’re still not sure since she’s not fully grown yet.
We’ll keep you posted 😉
And the last upgrade for Chicken Coop 2.0…
So, I didn’t actually have a door on the side where I wanted to put the nesting boxes. That’s no bueno 🙁
Here’s what I did:
All in all, I’m happy with the upgrades and hope to unveil Chicken Coop 3.0 with a finished roof and siding soon!
