Re: [Homesteadingfamily] Our sad chicken news...

I can tell you what we did and you can modify it for your needs.

County taxation laws do not tax structures that are not considered permanent. For us that meant we built ours on skids and run a male-male extension cord to it for electricity. To the county this means it's not permanent.

So we took 3 - 4"x8"x14' pieces of wood and created our skids which became the building surface. We leveled those to the ground to create a level base. Then we took pallets and laid those on to the skids to create a deck 12'x14'. We had a wide variety of pallets available to us, since the local hardware store is always looking for pallet removal for the majority of their pallets. For us, we took all the very strong looking ones that could be used to create the surface we wanted. On this we laid plywood for a floor. Next we took 4 - 4"x4" to use as 4 solid corners of our coop. Our coop has a sloped roof so the front two are 12" taller than the back two. I also wanted any of the guys in my family to be able to walk in it, so our coop is 6'6" at the back and 7'6" at the front. Between those supports we used pallets to create all the wall joists by joining the pallets a the way around the coop, leaving an opening for a door we picked up at a garage sale for $2. The pallets are joined to the floor with bolts and also to the top using a 2"x4" across the top edge. There are also some pieces of scrape wood from other pallets that we use to hold together the pallets as the run across the walls.

We took 2"x4" pieces to create the roof supports. We then took plywood and put it around the entire exterior and interior walls to create an insulated dead air space. If we had lived in the north we would have added insulation to the walls, but in MO this has worked ok for us. We also used plywood on the interior and exterior of the roof, but the roof also has insulation in in. On top of the plywood roof is shingles. On the exterior walls is siding like our house. People are always surprised to learn that the coop is made mainly with pallets covered with plywood because you wouldn't think that based on what it now looks like.

We cut two windows, plus a small door in one side. The windows have a heavy gauge metal wire in it. This creates cross ventilation in the summer. There are wood coverings we put in this space for the winter to keep heat in. The small door has two coverings for it. The one on the inside is a slide down door, while the one on the outside is a flip down door with latch to lock it at night. The double door is for insulation and protection. During the day the door is up and latched in an open position. Our chickens (~40) plus guineas (~30) free range during the day. During the summer months the guineas pretty much roost in the trees at night, but during the winter they come inside to roost. The chickens always roost in the coop at night. Inside we have a two roosting bars, plus a roosting ladder and 8 nesting boxes.

During the winter we run a infrared heat lamp in the coop to keep the temps a little higher (55ish). We also run a lights during the day to extend daylight hours to keep up production. During the summer this isn't necessary, but lights are nice when one comes home late and needs to still collect eggs, feed, and replenish water. If you want I'll take a couple of pictures of it, but you really can't tell it's made of pallets. It's not the best construction, but keep the total cost of the project t less than $200 when we built it, 3 years ago.

-Sarah in MO, who has lost a few birds to predators, but not as many as I thought I would by free ranging them. The chickens rarely roam more than 1/8 of a mile and mos of that is near our house or in the woods. The guineas have been found over 1/2 mile away from home, but always seem to come home at night.

---------- Original Message ----------
From: CelticFrau@aol.com
To: Homesteadingfamily@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Homesteadingfamily] Our sad chicken news...
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:14:32 EST

Ooh, Sarah, I'd like to see that! There are a few places we can get
pallets pretty cheap and even free around here.

Nancy


In a message dated 11/22/2010 2:54:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
sarah_johnson@juno.com writes:

(12' x 14 building with siding that matches our house, made of mainly
pallets.)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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