From the summer
of 2003: My son Bert modeling how to open an external egg
collection door of a recent chicken house I played around with. These
pictures can be a quick tutorial on how to turn a chain link dog kennel
into a chicken house! I bought this used 6' x 6' x 4' tall chain
link dog kennel for $30. One predator problem solved: A kennel
is automatically dog-proof. Dogs can't get in. But raccoons
still can reach through chain-link, and they will. So you need to
make most of the sides solid somehow. Don't use plywood; it would
be too heavy. I go to Lowe's or Home Depot and get paneling
from their seconds bin or "cull cart." Paneling cuts easily with
a utility knife. Paint the paneling to make it last longer in the
weather. Drill holes along edges. Use wire to attach paneling
to chain link. Now raccoons can't reach through. . . . . . . . .
You can make your converted dog kennel chicken house as simple or as fancy
as you want. Here I tried to make an external egg collection door.
The plastic bins inside are dishwashing bins, and they are sitting in a
long wire shelf that I scrounged. They are wired (I'm very fond of
wire) to the inside of the chain link kennel about two feet off the ground.
I then bent the chain link so my hand could fit through if I were holding
an egg. . . . . . . . . . . Note: This type of hen house is not
insulated. It would not be good for very cold climates. It
rarely gets below freezing in Portland, Oregon so I can get away with uninsulated
coops. (But when it got down to 16 degrees recently, I hung a heat
lamp over the chicken's perch until the temps got back up into the 30's.)
In other states, it can get regularly get below freezing and even into
the negative temps. Even if chickens survive such temps, they will
not be comfortable and can suffer painful frostbite of the comb and wattles.
Chickens are descended from sub-tropical jungle fowl; a warm climate pheasant.
I would recommend that chicken-keepers in colder climates have a well insulated
chicken house or tractor, and then the ability to install a heat lamp or
lamps if the temp gets really cold.)
Two chicken tractors
I built in the summer of 2003. I used my new pneumatic stapler!
It's very fast and fun. Both tractors are made from scrap wood and
stuff I had around so I painted it all with some stain I had which makes
things look more cohesive. What's a chicken tractor? It's city folk's
ticket to keeping chickens! Click
here to find out more!
Info about
raccoons:
I
learned about raccoons via my very first chicken pen and my very first
batch of chickens. My "pen" was made out of all chicken wire.
So there were no solid corners, and raccoons just reached right through
the wire and grabbed the chickens. The raccoons were smart; there
were about five of them and one got on each corner so no matter where the
chickens ran, they got nabbed. If the chickens would have stood in
the middle, nothing would have happened. But chickens aren't too
smart and will run up against the sides and/or into the corners.
The solution is simple; always have a solid-sided corner, preferably two,
for the chickens to run to.
One of my fave pictures
of Bert and me, from some time in Winter 2000. I like it because
in this picture, it was really cold outside but that doesn't stop us!
In Portland if you wait for a warm day with no rain, you'll never get outside.
We just pretend it's England and the soggy days are lent a romantic, pastoral
flair. :) In Portland, you either think the weather
is bad so you can't garden much, or you think the weather is mild so you
can garden year 'round. I'm of the latter mind.
At our old house,
I was going crazy with scrap wood and my new cordless drill (love that
thing). I couldn't stop making chicken
tractors and pens! Some of them turned out pretty funky looking,
like the one above left. The top was made of tarp that I then painted.
What?? I wouldn't do that now. The picture at right is a brooder
with a dozen chicks. Note the Rubbermaid container, the newspaper,
the light fixture hanging over it for heat, and the waterer and feeder
that you can pick up inexpensively at a feed store.
A row of chicken
tractors I built. It looked like "chicken shanty town." I built
all of these when my first child was about 7 months old, back in '98.
I got some sort of weird energy at that point in my life and just kept
building pens. Maternal instinct gone awry?
I think this was
my very first chicken
tractor. It was a long rectangle. It housed four bantams.
Two golden Sebrights, one black Silkie cockerel, and one red Frizzle.
Note the Rubbermaid container as a hen house. They'd hop into it
at night and be safe from grabbing raccoon hands.
This particular
set-up was just metal stakes in the ground with nylon poultry netting strung
around them. It had no top on it. Not too predator proof.
This arrangement didn't last long. At this point I had about 23 chickens,
mostly youngsters. I had a wide assortment of bantams. So pretty!
But I also had a hawk that would try to nab the bantams. Yes, I'm
in the city but have had a lot of wild predator problems! Raccoons,
dogs, hawks...
Chickens eating
apples that fell from tree. At right is a triangular chicken
tractor. At night I was sure to use a stick and shut the triangle
door so dogs couldn't get the chickens at night. It's a pain to have
to shut your chickens in every night and let them out every morning...it's
better to have some kind of set up where they can put themselves to bed
in some safe place.
It was sure wet
and messy this day! A picture of the dog kennel, with a dog house
inside for a hen house. Looking back, I can see I was quite paranoid,
because although the chickens were in a dog kennel (no dogs or raccoons
could get in), I still shut them in their house at night so nothing could
get them. They walked up the ramp themselves at nightfall and I shut
the door.
A nicer picture
of the dog kennel coop, with its "petting zoo" straw. Watching
chickens is very peaceful. They are not like people; they are very
simplistic. While watching them, some of your human tensions and
complexities tend to melt away. :) Also, I keep going back
to chickens as pets because once you get used to turning your kitchen left-overs
into eggs, it's hard to go back to buying eggs and throwing food away.
The picture at right shows two more chicken tractors I made.
