I've heard people say that the true test of a marriage is if you can build a house together and still like each other by the time it's all done. I think the same could be said for building a chicken coop--at least on a smaller scale.
This chicken coop has consumed every weekend for the last month. It has been quite the project! Ryan spent a lot of time figuring out how he wanted to design the coop. We've learned a number of things with this coop...some of them a bit after the fact. All in all, it's come together quite nicely.
An inside view of the coop, complete with roosts for the girls.
The chickens thought the process was interesting. Daisy (the big white one) would hop up inside the unfinished coop while we were pounding nails and gluing things down. At one point, she ended up with glue stuck to her feathers because she was so dang curious. Daisy has made friends with Linda, my mother in-law, who came to keep us company when Ryan's dad came over to help. Linda sat on a chair to the side, and had her phone out taking pictures of the girls. I heard her say to the chickens, "Now say 'cluck-cluck'." ('Now say cheese' in Chicken.) She took a picture, and then held it out for them to see. Daisy actually came over and craned her head around to see the camera. It was the funniest thing to watch.
Ryan was the primary designer. I built the doors, and served as slave laborer, painter, nail driver, staple-pounder and screw-gun master.
The girls seem to have adjusted quite well to the new digs. We built the new coop for them because the coop that we started with was just not big enough for them to fit comfortably. We didn't know enough about coops when we first got our chickens to realize it was going to be a problem. The banties didn't mind the small area to roost at night, but the two full-sized chickens would perch on the coop roof every night until I went out, pulled them off and put them inside. I don't miss the nightly tucking in. It was starting to get ridiculous. It is so nice to be able to just go out, shut the chicken door and be done with it.
The other reason we decided to build a bigger coop, is because we would like to expand our flock a little. Tomorrow, we will be picking up two black star hens. We are hoping they will adjust and make friends fairly quickly. We still have the old coop so we can keep them separated from our girls until they can play nicely together.
