Chickens!!!
take a look at these cute ladies!
My chickens are finally laying! Hooray! Here are some pics of the girls and their coop/tractor. My boyfriend Dustin built it for me last summer, and I think he did a fine job. I painted it to match the house, although now I kinda wish I had painted it barn red. But it works well and the girls love it. This weekend Dustin will be adding nesting boxes to the side, now that they are needed. :-) The entire tractor measures 4' wide by 8' long. The coop end is just about 5' tall, and the tractor end is 2' tall. The coop itself is 3' tall at the peak, 4' wide and 3' deep (inside dimensions). The roof is sloped down to about 18" tall (inside coop dimensions)at the back door and is shingled with cedar shingles. The entire back of the coop portion swings down to allow easy access for feeding, cleaning and egg gathering. There is a triangular door built into the side where the chicken wire slopes down from the roof to the tractor in front of the coop, and a door built into the front of the tractor, which we will be able to open once we have a run built for them. We used chicken wire for the top of the tractor, and hardware cloth around the sides and ends of the tractor. We left the chicken wire detached from the front of the coop at the top, so I can pull it open to dump in kitchen scraps.
The corners of the coop are set on pavers to prevent the wood from rotting as it is untreated. This leaves about a 1.5-2" gap under the coop, but I haven't had any problems with anything trying to get in, so I'm not too worried about it. And those fat ladies are not going to slip under it! lol
We have a total of four chickens, 2 Araucanas, a Welsummer, and a Cuckoo Maran. The Araucanas are mixed breed, I'm sure, as they have tails, but they produce beautiful blue-green eggs. The Welsummer and Cuckoo Maran produce brown eggs. When we got the chickens, we had a dog named Lou, so my son named the chickens Louise (white & bronze) Lucille (white & silver) Lucretia (black) and Luellen (the Welsummer). We had another Araucana chick named Luann, but she didn't make it. We had to rehome Lou, but our new dog is named Blue. Are you sensing a theme here? lol On the other hand, our hamster is named Dr. Evil (he bites) and the geckos are as yet unnamed. If you can come up with any Lou-ish names, we're open to ideas!
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chickens, coop
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