Friday, May 15, 2015

A-frame Coop

I don't use Facebook much, but I do follow a local "for sale" group fairly regularly. The other day I saw a chicken coop advertised. 

We were really needing a solution to house the 5 small chicks that had been living in a plastic tub in the garage. As a short term solution, I had been taking them outside each day and letting them roam in the "peck & play" coop that I have. It reminds me of the mesh foldable laundry baskets college students use. Our original small coop would work well except for the fact that the door is broken from the last nighttime attack.

We thought the A-frame coop would work for the chicks, so we contacted the seller and drove out to pick it up within a few hours. Turns out we're the third owners.

It's a bit more than we actually need at the moment. It has two access doors on each end, and moveable upper side panels. There is also a watering system, gravity fed from a bucket that sits on top to several valves inside. It is designed to be moved every few days, but it is quite heavy and requires two people to move it. Some of the hardware cloth was loose, so we tried to tack it down around the edges before moving the chicks to their new home.

The chicks liked the soft sided "peck & play" after being confined to a tub.

The coop is about 7 feet long.

We turned it over on its side to repair the hardware cloth.

The hardware cloth was not tacked down in some places.

We used "U" nails to tack it down.

The top doors on each end are designed as nesting boxes for laying hens.

The lower doors allow access to the chicks as they graze on the ground.

The automatic watering system uses a small bucket.

The water runs along the inside and has several valves.

There is a small trap door with a ramp to allow them to climb upstairs.

No comments:

Post a Comment