Strange how things work out. I only had four chickens and one of them was old and no longer laying and another was a rooster. The best I could get was two eggs a day if both of the younger ones were laying and even one of them had gone broody and was producing nothing. It had also disappeared and was sleeping somewhere else. After a huge search she was finally found and was sitting on a batch of around twelve eggs. My first thought being a newby to keeping chickens was that it was still laying and was just being broody. I was looking around to get a few more chickens to improve the egg production and was going to do this after I got back from a trip to Hobart for the Wooden Boat Festival. The broody chicken was given a reprieve until I got back from my trip when I would remove her from her hidden nesting area and destroy the eggs.
Too my surprise, when I returned after a couple of weeks away I was greeted by the broody chicken with fourteen young ones running around with her. Awesome! Didn’t have to worry about getting more chickens but the pressure was now on to build a decent chicken coop to house them in. All they had at the moment was the small unit below that was put together from scraps of material that were lying around the property.
I found a design I liked while surfing the Internet as I wanted something that was a little ornate so I could make a feature of it in the yard. The design was based on an American barn and would be just big enough for the 18 chickens I now had although I will probably have to thin the numbers when I see how many roosters are amongst the new chicks. It would also be more weatherproof than the existing coop which would be good as we were only around two months away from the weather turning very wet and cold again.
It took around a week to build with a lot of that time spent painting the unit. Twelve millimeter ply was used for the build with the framing mainly consisting of 70mm x 35mm pine. Support legs were 90mm x 90mm treated pine. I was glad i had a fork lift attachment for the loader I have on the property as it weighed more than I realised on completion. Almost caught myself out on the construction as there was only 25mm clearance on each end as I moved it out of the workshop. Breathed a big sigh of relief when it was outside. Once I had removed the old chicken coop, cleaned up the area a bit and positioned the chickens new home where it needed to be I had to round up the chickens and introduce them to their new accommodation.
My chickens are all free ranging and the chicken coop area is open to the rest of the property as we have no foxes in Tasmania so predation is not a big problem. Once I had coaxed them back to the coop area with some food I quickly ran some fencing across the area entrance to keep them in there. Next job was to catch them and lock them inside for the night so they would become accustomed to their new home. That was a mission on its own but once done I sealed the entrance and left them for the night. The following day they were let out in the fenced off area and they put themselves in the new coop again that evening. Happy that they had accepted the new coop I pulled down the fence again and let them range around the property. All in all a great outcome and a nice feature in the yard.
