Building the Chicken Coop - Part one

The story of our coop creation in photos.  Abby was my build sidekick for the first week so she did several of the Lowe's runs with me to procure materials for what ended up being quite a process of getting an idea out of my head, onto paper, and built into a solid 3D structure.

Below is the base the coop lives on.  It is 5 feet by 8 feet and trenched into the ground and set on concrete blocks.  The pad is insulated between the top and bottom panels to help keep the chickens warm in the colder months.

Below are the walls for the coop all framed up and ready for someone to help me get them set on the base.  Abby is shown below just after three of us set and screwed together the walls.

The next photo below is of the roof joists
set on the walls and the plywood roof 
sheeting in place.  The end closet to the camera is a built in storage space for feed and bedding.  The bump out with the plywood to the left was our attempt at nesting boxes.

The photo below has the wall plywood installed as well as one of the two windows that open.  It also shows the metal roofing installed.

Below shows the coop from the human and chicken door sides.  There is a full sized old wooden door next to the window, and the coop door for the chickens is to the right of that (this is before it was fully installed).

The photo below shows paint starting to go on before the trim was installed.  The nesting box top is hinged so it can be opened from the outside.  I still need to switch the hinges to the top of the box so it opens better and get some insulation installed in the lid as well.

The storage space also has the doors installed in the photo below.

On the inside, below, this was after several coats of paint were installed to brighten the space as well as to seal it.

Below are the girls and Amelio exploring their yard space for one of the first times.  Getting too big to live in the laundry room by now.

One more post of the mostly finished product and chicken yard coming next.  As always thanks for reading.

Chicken Palace Adventure - Round One

Blue is chicken door

Human door side

So when we still lived in Ames we talked about getting chickens and could probably have easily raised a small group of birds on our lot after Neah our husky (who chased anything that ran) passed over the rainbow, however Joe didn't want to be that family that had chickens.  So we waited until we moved out to the homestead.  

The nesting boxes in theory

Our first summer was making gardens and getting the goats setup. But this summer my plan was to build a chicken structure and get some baby birds so the kids could show chickens for 4H.  All the photos in this blog are the culmination of six weekends (not necessarily consecutive) of mostly me building this lovely structure.  These don't show the final product but you get the idea.  I'll post a couple more blogs from the building adventure and of the girls when they were just little hatchlings over the next couple of weeks.

Storage for feed and bedding in back

This design was pulled together good features from other chicken blogs, Pinterest, and with function in mind.

It needed a human sized door (I had a couple spare lying around), a chicken sized door, nesting boxes, storage, insulation, water and feeders.

Water and food

Testing out the new roosting bars

I did a bunch of sketches which I will include in a future post and then off Lowe's with Abby and our first truck load of lumber.  
The first weekend Abby and I framed out the walls including the nesting box,  built out the platform and got that set into the ground.  Then over the following weekends I had help setting the walls on the platform, and then started working through the rest on my own as everyone else lost interest in the project.  

More details in the build photo diary coming soon.  Eventually I got the windows installed (after two tries), the roof installed, the walls insulated and closed in, and the girls roosting and nesting spaces wrapped up.  Last was loading in the food and water (we now have the water on concrete blocks and sealed all the floor seams after the chickens spun the water out the first week).  I learned the nesting boxes aren't really the right size and they keep kicking the bedding out of them so I have Brady Bunch grass and a lip to install soon to see if we can get them using the nesting box which we can access from the outside.  It also needs a good cleaning before winter hits.

Bob, Lacey and Amelio the rooster

Bob the friendly girl

For now they are all just laying in a convenient pile by the human door and we are getting 3-5 colorful eggs a day.  There are light brown, dark brown with speckles, blue and white eggs.  Just as diverse as our seven breeds of chickens.  There seems to be more than enough space for all eight of them in there and they all hustle in at night.  we getting them trained to come when we bring people food treats for them.  Instead of putting everything in the compost bin we are putting some things in the chicken yard and they love rotten tomatoes and watermelon the most.

First egg

My next job is building a proper chicken yard because the girls can escape from the one they have now and come winter the coyotes will be a problem.  I have to bury the fencing and come up with an automated way to open and close the chicken hatch although that will be easier once we have a door for the chicken yard.

So far we are having fun, except for when the little buggers escape as it's usually a two person job to corner them and get them back inside.  Although after Journey and Ginger got loose this weekend, one found their way back in and the other was more than ready to go back to the flock the next morning.  Stay tuned for more chicken adventures and chicken living upgrades.  As always thanks for reading.

Family Fun on the Run - Team Runs for Popsicles

I just wanted to share a photo log from some of our family summer adventures from 2018.  To the left is Joshua and I at the MS nigh ICubs game.  It was great weather and we stayed later to see if the tshirt shooter was coming back.





The picture on the right is from the Hope run.  Joshua earned a free race pass by running almost 30 miles for mileage club at school.  It was a muggy day but a fun run where I was struggling to keep up with little mister speedy.

One of our favorite adventures over the 4th of July is the carnival at Clear Lake.  We got there after the parade this year on the last day of the carnival but made sure we rode two of our favorite rides, the ferris wheel, and the tilt-a-whirl (holding up fingers for the number of times we rode and giggled that day.)

The next two pictures are from another family run we do every year, Midnight Madness.  The race starts at 7:30 pm and ends with Popsicle and pizza.  Team Runs for Popsicle likes the bomb pops of past years but really any Popsicle will do.

Another fun thing about being out on an acreage is we have a lot of sky.  We can see stars and planets better than we could in town so we took advantage of the last super moon and pulled out our telescope.  Abby captured this awesome picture of the moon through the telescope with my phone. We also had the telescope out a week or so ago and saw Mars, Saturn and it's rings, and Jupiter along with several of its moons. We also saw some of the meteor shower.

Joshua joined his mom and sister this year and participating in his first triathlon.  I think he learned that while he can  swim, bike and run triathlons are harder than they look. I caught him at the finish line before he lost his breakfast on the sideline.  Super proud of the kid and I think he is already making plans for next year.

Other random things you see on the homestead.  Abby showed two goats, two chickens, a horse and woodworking and photography projects at two county fairs (long story) this summer.  We also share eggs and chores with the neighbors.  This is Abby and Poppy taking a walk to pick up some eggs.

Not all our fun stayed in town.  We had a mini vacation to the twin cities so go see a professional soccer game at Vikings Stadium.  Tottenham is Joe's favorite team and they played AC Milan.  It was a fun game to watch outside of standing in the waffle line.  And since Minneapolis has a fun baseball team we also went to a Twins game while we were there.  My favorite activity was visiting the National Wildlife Refuge right next to the MPLS airport.  14000 acres and beautiful with loads of wildflowers and wild life.  We also road the light rail several times, visited REI and the Mall of America.

We will have other adventures the rest of the year but they will revolve around school activities... 4H, sports, science clubs, scouts.  But this is all I have to share here.  Check back soon for some other blogs from our summer adventures.  As always thanks for reading.

Remembering Our Sweet Girl

Shortly after Sage came to live with us.

In August of 2013 we lost our sweet girl Sage after about 18 months of deterioration.  I realized I never shared about her here and she was a special girl worth sharing.

Always being mauled by her brother

Sage came to us from under a porch at about six weeks old when Joe and I were in grad school out in Pullman, WA.  She was an angry little white puff ball and spent her first three days behind our couch hissing and spitting when we came near.  I had not been around cats since I was a child and honestly thought of myself as a dog person until then.  I had never seen a cat spit before and she was feisty.  Eventually she tired herself out and I was able to scoop her up and set her down out in the living room.  

Aslan, our other kitten the same age from another litter, immediately took her under his wing and showed her the food and litter box.  After that he was always in her space, much to her dismay, crawling into the cat bucket with her/on her for naps.  Joe and I laugh now as we watch our new kitten Lilah do the same thing to Aslan that he did to Sage all those years ago.  But without that little guy with the huge ears we would have had a tough time with little Sagie.

She didn't warm up to us until my folks came out to Washington to visit for a week.  My mom was determined that Sage just needed some extra love and she sat with Sage on her lap for what seemed like an hour one day and that seemed to break away the last of the nervous stray in her.  She was a mamas girl but she was always shy around others and VERY leery when we added the dogs to our family.

Her princess pose

As a blue eyed chocolate point Siamese Sage was always a beauty and would strike poses that said look at me.  She has the most amazing soft fur and I loved snuggling with her and listening to her sweet purr.  When I was pregnant with our first child she would curl up with a paw on my belly at night and purr me to sleep.

Little sage loved the outdoors and while she and her brother are indoor kitties they always had a big window to sit in and watch the birds.  She loved chirping back at them when they came into view.  Occasionally we did let them out to explore while supervised and Sage always pushed the limits of gravity jumping to the top of a six foot fence or wiggling away under things.  She loved to just sit in the grass and enjoy a sunny day.

Sunny outside time

Into tight spaces

Her last big contribution.  Helping Abby with a science project.

Sagie was always a very athletic kitty and seemed to constantly find ways to get herself into trouble.  She loved to play but always on her own terms and would pounce on anything moving under blankets.   Her dad was always teasing her that way.  Even though she was petite compared to her 15 lb brother she could jump higher and father than any other cat I have known.  

One day when we were in grad school still I had a couple girl friends over to make candles and Sage and her curiousity got the best of her.  She jumped up onto the counter where things were drying and knocked over a votive.  I was pulling wax out of her fir for days.

One of my favorite pics of Sage
and Aslan at about a year old.

She was quite curious and would constantly open cabinets and pull drawers out so you could tell where she had been in a day.   I remember one very early morning about 4-5 months before she passed we had her in the bathroom because her bowel control was diminished.  Joe was up early to head to the gym and woke me with cussing because Sage had locked herself in the bathroom by pulling out some drawers.  Having had this happen before I got up and got the drawer back in but that was a rude awakening.

She was also a master hider and with her petite size she could make herself pretty small.  She was able to miss out on a vet appointment because we couldn't find her one day.  

Sage, Sagie Pooh, Poo, Princess Sage... our sweet girl.  It was hard to watch her decline in the end but I would not trade the time we had with her for anything.