Last Summer, I built our Chicken Coop of the Ages, and created a “run” for the chickens to run around in:

This has been in the front of our Hay Shed for the last year, and the chickens are making a mess. It’s also taking up extra space where we would like to put hay, so we have decided to move it to the back of the hay shed:

First we had to clean it up:

Then we built a roof out of wooden planks and a lot of chicken wire. We had to sew lengths of chicken wire together to make a “roof.” We used rocks to hold down the chicken wire where it met the ground (on the left):

Then I cut a hole in the wall at the back of the hay shed, and we moved our (extremely heavy) Chicken Coop of the Ages to the back of the hay shed.

Here are some happy Chickens scrounging for grubs in their new chicken run. (There is really no point in trying to clean off the chicken ladder… they love to poop on it.)

Oh yea, and while we were cleaning up the garden area, we moved a board that was leaning up against the shed and we found this:

Hahah. That’s a baker’s dozen of eggs.

Ashton Anna

Because of the weather, we’ve been keeping the below three horses in the “large paddock.” Today, we let them out to run around in the field. They ran around for a good 10 minutes.

From left to right is Maple, Onora and Aspen.

While I was out in the pasture I took a picture of our house in the snow:

Then I finally got a good picture of all three dogs… it’s really difficult:

From left to right is Penelope, Rosco, and Ansli. (Although theoretically, Rosco is the only one Ashton and Anna own. The other two are his good friends.)

Here’s Blu and Chunky. Chunky is doing a pretty good job of continuing to lay eggs, even on the very cold days. Last year, our chickens stopped laying when it got cold.

Mocha looking majestic:

Mocha checking out the Toyota:

After I came inside, the two mustangs that have been living on our back 10 acres finally stood together so I could get a picture of them:

Onora has a crush on the two mustangs, so when she noticed they were hanging out by her fence, she came running over:

Soon to be followed by Onora’s little best friend: Maple

That’s all 11 of our animals on a winter morning.

Ashton Anna

On 9/9/07, they gave us their 48th egg! and at $2.50/dozen, they have officially saved us $10!!! They have paid for themselves! Yeay

Now they only owe us the $140 or so that we put into the chicken supplies, etc. They are fortunate that I didn’t charge them for my time I’ve put into building their home.

hahaha!

Click for more information about the Chickens and the Chicken Coop

Here’s the back sides:

Here is a good set of Before and After Pictures:

It’s been quite a project, and I’m almost done… all I have left to build is a roof. I’ll be doing that before it starts to rain and snow for obvious reasons.

Oh yea, and here’s a picture of our chickens trying to get some sleep. (The light is from a heat lamp we have to keep them warm on the cold nights.)

More to come later,
Ashton Sanders

Here is the first picture I took of my completed chicken coop:

(We stacked the pallets around it for some protection from the dogs, because we didn’t know how ferocious they would be…)

After a couple weekends of upgrading, we got the chicken coop into place along the side wall of our hay shed, and added some planking, walls, etc.

You will notice (above) that the front of the chicken coop is one large door, so we can easily clean it out.

In the image to the right, you can see the side of the chicken coop with a little gangplank I built for the chickens to get into the coop with and a string that attaches from the gangplank to the top of the chicken coop. If you pull on the string it pulls up the gangplank to close in the chickens if we would like to.

My next innovation was even cooler. Here are my custom built nesting cubicles: (Here is a good picture of the big door in front being open.)

And on the back side, I’ve got a secret door so I can easily remove the eggs without disturbing the chickens, or having to open up the huge door in front.

Here is another picture of the secret door on the back of the chicken coop:

The weekend after the above picture, I made the front wall and door of the chicken coop solid (instead of chicken wire). Sorry, no pictures of the process…

But all of those additions so far, are nothing when compared to Anna’s great idea to paint the chicken coop! (Which was scoffed at by some friends lol)

Here is our newly painted chicken coop!

Anna picked out the Red color, and I helped with thinking up the design. You can also see a smaller door I created on the front door. (It’s got the “X” on it.) When I added the wood to the huge front door, it became very heavy, so I created that smaller door for easy access.

Today, our chicken coop has 4 doors, 3 solid walls, and a beautiful paint job.

(Today, we received our 36th egg! That’s three dozen in almost a month! And worth $7.50…. so they have almost paid for themselves…)

More to Come,
-Ashton

Introducing:

(Silly) Sally is the most skiddish chicken I’ve ever seen. We call her Silly Sally because if you get within 5 feet of her she starts darting around and clucking frantically as if you are the grim reaper here to collect her soul.

Silver understands that we aren’t trying to kill them, and hangs out a little closer to humans.

We calculated out that 1 dozen “Naturally Nested” eggs costs $2.50 (or a little under $.21 cents) each. We calculated how much money we’ve spent on the chickens so far, and how many “free” eggs they’ll have to produce to break even…

They owe us 577 more eggs. Hahaha. We’ll keep you posted on how they are doing in repaying their debt.

lol
-Ashton

Well I finally decided to go ahead with it and get some chicks today. I wasn’t sure I was going to get them this year with going to LA twice and being gone a long time for my wedding. So I researched and talked to a lot of people that have chickens and I was assured they were very low maintenance so whoever house-sits for me wont have a hard time taking care of them.

I decided to get 5 as sometimes they don’t all lay at once and I use about 2 eggs minimum a day so I figured if I get extras I will give them to mom. I went with a variety of colors but made sure they were all good layers and friendly. We decided to give them fun farm names too…. so far the black is Buttercup (named by a friend), I named the yellow one Daisy, and still not sure on the golden ones. Ashton’s favorite is the muti-colored brown one, I said she looks like a hawk so that name seems to be sticking. So if anyone has any fun names please throw them my way.

Right now they are in a big box which will hold them for a few months while we build a coop. One of our many summer projects!!

Enjoy!!