This is just a quick stop in the chicken coop as promised in my previous post. Things are still pretty dang busy around here but I think I may be actually catching up, so might be able to post a real blog entry soon. But then again, it took me a week just to finish drafting this entry---so maybe not!
Meanwhile, the chicken coop....
The chicken coop measures about 22x6, a very odd size but it is squeezed into the corner of our woodshed and I didn't want to take up any more room than that. On the right is three roosts tiered in a "staircase" design so that the chickens on the higher roosts don't poop on the heads of the chickens below.
On the left is the nesting boxes. The sloped roof is to discourage chickens from roosting and pooping on top of the boxes.
Directly in front of the entrance is the large fiberglass window.
And directly to the left of the window is the chicken's door to the run outside.
There is no electricity in the shed, but we ran an extension cord from the house to hang a heating lamp in case of deep freezing temperatures in the winter.
So far we've used it only at the beginning of winter when temperatures were beginning to drop overnight, but our egg count had become so high that we decided to shut down the light unless it got real cold. It hasn't been on since and our egg count is now at a more desireable level of approx. two a day. Sadly, whether related or not, we have lost a couple chickens over winter including most recently our Chantecler rooster. I found him dead in the coop last week. And, sadly, we also lost on the exact same day our most beautiful rooster, Damon.
He was Farm Girl's favourite rooster and was a disappointment to loose, but he was also an Americauna which truthfully, I had no interest in reproducing green egg laying hens anyway. But he would have made a pretty show bird. Unlike the Chantecler rooster, Damon did not die from winter weather, instead he was attacked on a rare day that I let him out of his cage in the big barn. It was a beautiful sunny winter day with no snow to be seen, so let him and Buffy out of their cages to explore and free range. Buffy stayed close to the barn but Damon wandered off...I found him lying next to the driveway later in the day. We think Frank or Skeeter, the turkey, attacked and killed him.
To bad about your roosters :( I didn't know that turkeys would do that... We've lost a few chickens this year. I don't think any to the cold, bu to predators. Our chickens are free range ALL the time, except at night when we lock them up. They are trained to go into the coop or roost near it to make it easy for us to put them away. We also have had a WOLF roaming the area. Seriously. In Wisconsin. Pretty scary!
I live a very simple life on a small hobby farm along with my husband, three kids, and an assortment of animals. Life may be simple but I love every minute of it.