Remember this?
Well, over the course of only about 4 or 5 months, it became this!
It was all snow and ice over the winter, so we’ve been waiting for spring to figure out how to solve the problem. Here are the things we needed to consider:
1. Where to put the coop so that the chickens wouldn’t be walking in 3 inches of mud constantly.
2. How to let the chickens range freely, but stay out of neighbor’s yards. (One neighbor loves the chickens and offers to feed them her scraps – and the other neighbor doesn’t like the chickens coming over to eat her raspberries and bird seed!)
3. How to make a secure roosting spot for nighttime – keeping them safe from predators.
4. How to include cozy laying boxes for the eggs.
5. How to keep them and their food dry at all times.
Coming up with one solution to all of these requirements wasn’t all that easy. We were inspired by Joel Salatin’s “Eggmobile,” but had to do something on a smaller scale, since we don’t have hundreds of chickens, a tractor, or large areas of pasture. So….after discussing all of these things, I went away to a homeschool conference for 2 days and came home to THIS!
Robert had come up with a great solution! He built a smaller coop but complete with laying boxes, and a roost – old monkey bars from our dilapidated swing set! It has a door that latches, so they can be locked up securely for the night. (They “come home to roost” every evening at dusk naturally, so we just have to latch the door each night and open it in the morning.) It is heavy, but not too heavy to be moved, and it has a fenced yard so that the chickens can eat the grass, worms, and bugs they were meant to eat! (We give them feed as well.) We can leave the coop in the same spot for a week or more, and simply rotate the fence so that they don’t destroy the yard with their scratching and pecking. And then when all the yard surrounding the coop has been grazed, we move the coop to a new location and start the process again!
So far it has worked wonderfully! It took them a couple of days to figure out the new routine. At first a few of them were “flying the coop” to return to the old coop to lay their eggs, but now they seem to feel at home in the new space.
Robert had come up with a great solution! He built a smaller coop but complete with laying boxes, and a roost – old monkey bars from our dilapidated swing set! It has a door that latches, so they can be locked up securely for the night. (They “come home to roost” every evening at dusk naturally, so we just have to latch the door each night and open it in the morning.) It is heavy, but not too heavy to be moved, and it has a fenced yard so that the chickens can eat the grass, worms, and bugs they were meant to eat! (We give them feed as well.) We can leave the coop in the same spot for a week or more, and simply rotate the fence so that they don’t destroy the yard with their scratching and pecking. And then when all the yard surrounding the coop has been grazed, we move the coop to a new location and start the process again!
So far it has worked wonderfully! It took them a couple of days to figure out the new routine. At first a few of them were “flying the coop” to return to the old coop to lay their eggs, but now they seem to feel at home in the new space.This is only a summer situation, though. We will have to build something permanent (and out of the mud) for the winter when there is no grass to graze since it is covered with snow. They need a dry and roomier coop for those months. Roomier also, since we’re getting 6 more on Monday that will bring our total to 14!
I am enjoying our chickens so much. They are so much fun to watch and assign personalities to! They are such a funny bunch of ladies, and they produce the yummiest eggs ever!
You totally make me want to move out of city limits and get some chickens!!! How exciting to come home to this!!
Cool, going UPscale for the chicks. 😉
Shirley