The Modern Victory Garden

The chicken coop kit was delivered by freight truck this last Thursday and our big project this weekend was to get the coop assembled and the birds moved out of the shop into their new digs.   It was my husband’s birthday today, but he was a good sport and devoted almost all of the day to constructing the coop and attached run.   The weather alternated between sunny and rain today but our luck held and we got all the major work done before it began raining.   It took us quite a while to put everything together.    However, we are not totally finished as we still have the shingles to put on the roof.   We covered the roof with plastic sheeting and stopped mid day because it started to rain.   I expect I will get the shingles put on tomorrow.   In the meantime, it is now fully operational and our girls are spending their first night in their new coop tonight.                             

Probably the hardest part of the whole project was uncrating everything and carrying it back to the work area!   Once everything was unpacked and laid out next to the site, the actual construction work went fairly quickly.   I did not take too many pictures during the construction process because it really takes two people to do this work and I was busy doing my part to get the thing built.   I did get a couple of pictures though about mid way through the process.   Not a very flattering picture of my husband, but he is hard at work fastening in the nest box dividers!                                   

In the next photo, we have all the walls, and the roof sheathing up and are working on installing the drip line trim work.                                                

At this point, we threw some plastic sheeting onto the roof and prepared the inside of the coop for the chickens because a large dark grey cloud moved over us and was threatening to imminently rain.   The girls had been outside in their metal run and we wanted to get them inside and safe from the coming rain.   My husband installed the heat lamp fixture hanging from one of the rafters and positioned over one portion of the roost bar area.   Since our chickens have been in a heated shop with the heat lamp in their pen area, we wanted to be sure to give them similar conditions in their new home too.   While he did that, I laid down some fresh shavings; put their small container of grit in the corner, placed grass hay in the nest boxes; and put the waterer on a flat concrete block.   The two of us together installed the hanging feeder and with that we were done furnishing the inside and it was ready for the birds.   None too soon either, because just as we put them inside and closed the door behind them, the sky opened up and it started to rain hard for about 45 minutes straight.   Here’s how the inside looked just before we put the birds in.                              

After a lunch break and after the rain had moved on and the sun had come out, we went back outside and finished installing the run area and connected up the new run with the existing metal run by abutting them together and removing the insert panel in the metal run.   Here’s how it all ended up looking when we quit for the day and tidied up the work area.                                   

As you can see, the roof is just covered with clear plastic sheeting for the time being but I hope to get the shingles on tomorrow and wrap it up completely.            

I think it turned out really well and although we are both fairly tired this evening; it really was not that hard to assemble.   Definitely a two person job though.   My intention was to take my husband out to dinner tonight to celebrate his birthday, but we both were too tired and just wanted to take showers and hang out here at home.   We will move the celebration dinner to Sunday instead and I think I will tackle installing the roof shingles myself to give him a break.   He really was a trooper today working so hard on his birthday.   However, I think he likes the chickens just as much as I do and was equally motivated to get their new home up and operational.    It appears he may be a chicken wrangler in the making!