Chicken Coop

Back in August, I wrote about a little construction project with the boys, a bookcase for our CDs. The result was pretty crude, but functional. At the time, I mentioned that our next project would be a chicken coop. That, indeed, has been the project of the last several weeks.

Peter corrals the chicks.

Peter has a teacher at school who raises chickens and often brings chicks to the classroom. She has told us for over a year now that Peter responds to the chickens far more than any of the other children. Together, she and Peter have been plotting to bring chickens into our lives. At the end of this summer, Noriko and I finally acquiesced and the teacher, Wendy, went out and purchased four baby chicks for us to raise. We are hoping that all four are hens. The chicks are a Rhode Island White (named "Kirby" by Sam), a Black Sex Link (named "Midnight" by Peter) a Brown Wellsummer (named "Peter" by Peter) and a Lakenvelder (named "Metonite" by Sam). They were tiny a few weeks ago, but as you can see in this picture, they are now teenagers. Until now they've been living in a cage, both at school (weekdays) and in our house (weekends), but soon they will be big enough to spend all their time outside. And so the urgency of building the coop has increased.

We're working on a design we saw at the Life Lab on the campus farm. It is a nice little house, with a space for nesting, a nice perch bar, windows and, most importantly, two hinged roofs that allow us to both peer inside and collect eggs for breakfast. The folks at the life lab generously gave us the plans for free, so it isn't quite right to complain that the directions are poorly written. So I'll just say that I'm grateful for that carpenteering experience over 20 years ago (dimly, but just sufficiently remembered).

Stapling on chicken wire for a floor.

We've been going at it a little bit at a time: making the cuts one weekend, assembling the basic frame another. At this point, we're only one or two weeks from the time when the chickens will be able to take occupancy. Unfortunately, this weekend has been nothing but rain and next weekend I'll be in Chicago. We still have to attach the roof and legs, which won't take that much time. Painting it will take up another day, at least. But the thing that really worries me is how long it will take to build the chicken run. They don't just need a coop, but also a space to roam around safe from nighttime predators (mostly raccoons). That's going to take time and another round of ingenuity (dig a one foot deep trench to bury the poultry wire low enough to prevent digging entry? build the run as a fully enclosed chicken wire cube?).

Like the CD bookcase, this is not the prettiest thing I've ever built. But it is an improvement over the first. With luck, this will be another link in a series of construction projects with the boys. I'll post photos when the whole thing is done.