Our little ladies are snake killers

Yesterday afternoon the Wifey and I were taking a little stroll around the property when we came across a bit of a commotion among the two Wyandotte chickens.  Wifey saw that one seemed to be choking on something and sorted out that it had a baby snake in its mouth.  After a moment, it spit out the snake and the other Wyandotte stole it.  They then proceeded to play a rousing game of "keep away" until the ~6" snake was consumed.

Amazingly, a few minutes later they found a second snake in the woods.  As with the first, they played "keep away" and devoured that snake, too.

The only downside to the whole thing is that if those were baby black snakes (which eat the copperheads), I'm not nearly as happy about that.  Oh well.  That's nature doing nature things.

So the chicken coop wasn't large enough....we extended the run

As we got through our first 6 months of chicken farming, we realized that there's a reason the term "cooped up" exists.  Anticipating a cold, snowy/rainy winter (that never happened) we were concerned that leaving the chickens in their original digs would be problematic and end up with them getting rather stir crazy.

So we decided that we I would build a much larger run attached to the coop.

In the interests of making an extension using as much existing/leftover material as possible, I made it 4'x10'.  Why 4x10?  Because I had a number of 8' long 4x4's and had a few leftover 4x4's that were 12' long.  One was pretty twisted so I decided to cut off 2' to minimize the worst of it.  Thus: 4'x10'

As with the original coop, I made a base frame.  Unfortunately, I decided to try a different anti-critter approach to the base.  Rather than install the 1/2" grid as I did with the other, I attached it to the frame and excavated a trench underneath the frame and had the grid go vertically downward.  That was A LOT more work for a similar result.  Never again will I do that approach.

As you can see from the picture above (and below) we have a chicken waterer inside that can be plugged in to keep it warm during the winter.  Although it's smaller than the one in the coop, one thing it has going for it is that it doesn't have cups to collect dirt in it.  The chickens just poke a ball valve to get water.

As with the initial coop, we made a PVC food dispensary.  This time, we made it out of considerably larger diameter PVC so we don't need to fill it as often in the winter (or at all, for that matter).

As I mentioned above, we were concerned about the chickens getting bent out of shape if we were unable to get them out of the coop for a lengthy period of time.  As such, the wife wanted a swing (which they've never used) and a nesting bar (which they also have never used).  Regardless, they have them.  What they do use is the tire/dust bath.

 

We have also attached another solar powered light.  This one was purchased from Walmart.  We actually like it the best because you can install the panel and light separately and direct both sensor and light through independent articulation.

 

Lastly, I installed a hinged trap door separating the original chicken run and the new extension.  There are two pins that can be installed to keep one area from the other.  We have yet to need to close them off, but it's a nice option to have in the event we ever need to do so.

 

We made a chicken tractor

Our chickens free range the bulk of the time, but we made a chicken tractor (I didn't name it.  It's just what it's called.) for when we want them outside and won't be around ourselves. 

It was pretty simple -- just some lengths of PVC, some zip ties, construction netting, and some mesh to act as a sun block during the summer.

Chicken coop repairs

The biggest defect we found with our coop was due to improperly installed staples.  We had the nesting box door start coming apart midway along the hatch.  I made a stiffener piece to tie all that back together.

The other repair we had to make was due to a sizeable tree branch puncturing the roof.  To repair that, I made a sandwich patch of two pieces of 1/4" plywood.  I ran bolts through the corners of those pieces and sprayed on multiple coats of Flex Seal on the outside surface.  I also applied a caulk to the edges of the interior plywood sheeting.  There have been no leaks since making that repair last Fall.

Chicken coop improvements

After assembling our coop and painting it, we made some improvements.

We built a feeder for them out of PVC pipe.  We have it oriented in such a way that the opening is right at the door.  The Tractor Supply bucket was modified to be a 5 gallon waterer.  I'll try to get better pictures later.

I also made a larger roosting bar out of a 2'x6".

We did that because we'd read that chickens prefer to roost a bit up off the ground.  That was accurate -- the chickens far prefer using that taller bar to the shorter one.

I made this attachment point for when we got two some new chicks.  They were too short to use the normal waterer and needed a separate feeder.  So this fixture will work with any standard ball-bearing type water feeder.

We have also attached a few solar-powered lights around the perimeter to both help us when we ensure things are closed up for the night and as a theoretical deterrent in the event of a predator interested in breaking in at night.

 

Chicken coop assembly, prep for occupancy

The last time I posted about the chicken coop, we'd purchased the kit from Tractor Supply as a tester.

A year later we're using the same coop and are quite happy with it.  It was listed as a 10 chicken coop.  I think that'd be tight unless they were bantam sized.  We have 6 and could probably handle 2 more without a ton of crowding.

To build it, we made a frame out of 4x4's and excavated underneath so it's slightly sunken into the soil.  We attached 1/2" grid hardware cloth to it with a few-inch overlap on the bottom.  We chose 1/2" grid figuring that any snake that got underneath would get picked to death by the chickens.  Once we finished attaching the frame bits together I bored holes in it and drove rebar into the ground to keep it from moving.

At this point Wifey and I took each subassembly out of the boxes to identify everything.  The instructions weren't incredibly detailed so we had a few missteps as we built it accidentally having some inside faces going outside and the like.

 

Eventually, we finished assembling everything and carried (2 people were plenty since it's lightweight) and mounted it to the base frame.

Once that was complete we painted the inside with chicken-safe paint we purchased at Tractor Supply and painted the outside with Thompson's Water Seal to help make it weather-resistant.
 
We're quite happy with the result. 

 

 

When we purchased it, we assumed it'd be a 2-3 year coop at the best.  It's now 1 year old.  I'll do a follow-up post to show other changes we've made to it as well as some improvements.

Been a long time since I've rock and rolled....

I see it's been a bit over a year since I blogged.  Work's been very busy, life's been busier.

Since the last time I blogged.  We gardened.  Green beans were successful, tomatoes weren't so much.  We grew canteloupes on an arbor which worked out pretty well.  Wifey and I pruned the fruit trees for the first time this past winter.  Just finished setting up an electric fence around the orchard to do away with the eyesore that is the deer netting around the trees.

I'll do some good updates with pictures soon.