We all need a little levity heading into the weekend, so what better than a chicken roast? So, without further ado, here are the chickens!

So much to do and so little time. One of the bright spots for last year was the addition of seven chickens to our original flock of three. Our first year with chickens was a learning experience. We allowed the original three to free range our property and soon found out that a full grown chicken can cause a lot of damage to tender young crops not to mention that chicken shit was EVERYWHERE. The other thing we learned was that hawks LOVE chicken as much as we do!

After the loss of dear Waddle (may she rest in peace) our two remaining birds looked so awfully pathetic that we ordered seven more that were delivered last May. Now this is a bone of contention between the wife and me because our town bylaws allow us to have ten chickens. To this day I don’t understand why she only ordered seven, not eight. But there you have it, we have a flock of nine hens.

To house our larger flock I built an expansion to our original playhouse coop (see category chickens for details). By July our chicks had grown to pullets and we needed to transition them from the watermelon box in the garage to the new coop. Now nine free ranging chickens would wreak havoc on our greenery so, in addition to our coop expansion, we needed to build a chicken run. I put up a temporary run made from landscape stakes and plastic netting which worked to keep the chickens confined. In the meantime, I began to build the permanent run. I dug the post holes and planted pressure treated 4×4s in them along with a little quickset morter. The dear wife helped me with thepoultry netting which we were able to source from Lowes. So far so good.

Because the poultry netting was 48″ wide, it required us to make an upper and lower pass around the sides of run which we then “sewed” together with wire. As I was finishing up the back side of the run, the chickens merrily scratching away, a hawk swooped out of the trees, flew right over my shoulder and landed in the run. A short chase ensued whereupon one of our Wyandotte’s was lifted into the air. Luckily, she proved too heavy for the hawk to fly off with and was summarily dropped when I finally found myself in the run kicking at the hawk. The hawk, acting completely nonplussed, flew to the top of the coop and glared at me with disdain, finally flying off after about 30 minutes. Needless to say, it was right back to Lowes for more poultry netting to cover then run.

The seven chicks are rapidly outgrowing their grapefruit box and soon it will be time to move them to the great outdoors. Our current playhouse coop design is 2 feet x 4 feet, enough for 3-4 adult hens. My expansion adds another 16 square feet for a total of 24 square feet of indoor floor space and over 72 cubic feet of space, enough to comfortably house our flock of nine.

Two weekends ago I spent the better part of a day cutting and assembling the four sides to my chicken coop expansion project.  With the four sides assembled I was able to spend this past Saturday (an absolutely perfect day) attaching the expansion to the existing coop.  Time was my enemy as I needed to have the project attached, roofed and enclosed by the end of the day so our hens could safely go to roost that evening.

I began by attaching the roof members. This was much simpler to do before the the two boxes were joined. Phyllis and I then carried the expansion to it’s new location where I worked the ground to ensure that it was level with the existing structure. I removed the front window panel from the old box and butted the new box up against it and screwed the two units together. Next I cut the plywood panel for the top of the coop box. Since this had to slide in from the top it had to be done before the roof went on. After that came the roof, a good thing because it poured rain Saturday night. I discovered that the aluminum flashing I bought for the ridge was narrower than that used on the existing coop. This is one aspect of the expansion that I’ll have to revisit once the coop is complete.

With the roof in place I attached hardware cloth around the base. The final step for the day was to install the floor of the coop. This had to be done in two pieces in order to get them through the the front opening. Before I did that, however, I had to install a couple floor joists to support the four foot span of plywood. As a final step for the day I reattached the front window panel to the new box.  Phew, 1o hours from start to finish.

Next weekend I’ll add the trim, cut out openings for the nest box hatch and add a door on the back side that leads out to the run. Phyllis is in charge of building the nest box and painting.

The baby chicks that arrived May 12th are now just about 4 weeks old and they are growing like weeds. They have a full complement of feathers and are flying all around the brood box. We have to keep a screen door on top of the box to keep them in. There is also a lot of “chest bumping” happening as they begin establishing their pecking order. My wife has been taking them out to the coop on nice days to get them used to their future digs. Being chickens they do what chickens do, which is mostly to eat, crap and dust bathe.

I began framing out the expansion to the coop this weekend and hope to complete it next weekend. It will triple the size of our current coop. After that I’ll need to build a permanent run, part of it will need to be covered. It will also need some temporary barrier to keep the older girls separated from the younger ones until they are ready to be introduced to each other. I’m still chewing on that idea.