Homesteading Chicken Coop Build, Chickens, Pond, Garden & Projects

Yes, a Palram kit Mrs DG picked it out at HD. Kindy pricey 8x8 was $1K, but it's her stress relief from teaching school.

It was high 50s this afternoon, full sun and 90 in the greenhouse with the roof vent open. It was not hard to put together but kinda fussy, definitely need a solid level base. The space she wanted it is just fill dirt so I just made a base out of pt 4x4 and dug it in to level it and screwed it to the base, gave me something to attach the shelves and work bench to.

 

Had an 8x8 collapsible greenhouse back in the day and used pallets covered with plywood for the base. When the greenhouse was up in the woods and water was trecked up there, 5 gallon water cans were used for watering and they doubled as heat sinks. Water plants in the morning, fill up the jugs and let that cold well water warm up in the greenhouse during the day, then they shared that warmth at night.

When we brought the greenhouse down next to the house I didn't need to keep jugs of water. That sucker would get hot with the least amount of sun and would need to be open early in the day. Set up an old space heater, set at 50*, to keep it from getting too cold at night. Didn't take much at all to keep it warm enough for the plants.

 

29 OAT and 33 in the greenhouse this am. It is right next to the house and will be no problem to run a small heater or like bogieb said, put some buckets of water in there to warm up during the day, maybe a small compost bin for a little heat. The chicken manure heats up fast when you add some greens to it. We candled the eggs last night and it looks like most are developing, only 5 out of 35 were clearly not fertile. Mrs DG stopped at TSC yesterday on her way home, apparently they had a breed of chick we just could not live withoutso we have four of these now too...I think she said ISA Brown?

 

This is my pet hawk named Little Sweetmeat. I feed him chickens when he is hungry. Little Sweetmeat is waiting for the automatic door to go up so he can have breakfast.

 

Looks like you blocked the door so when it opens, the entrance is still covered. Is that correct? We use the ADor as well. But out to a closed run.

 

Yeah, that's right. He would come up every day and eat my chickens. He knew the schedule and everything. He would wait outside for the door to open. I put that second door because it is easier than re-programming the door. Truth be told, I don't actually know how to change the programming on the door and I don't care to learn.

The the run is about 1/4 acre but it is open on top.

 

If I didn’t have an enclosed run, my chickens would be gone.. we built the temporary run last year and I plan to do a longer run this year. The day after I built that run, a red tailed hawk landed on top of the run trying to figure out how to get a bite to eat. This pic is after I got the roof on. It was blue tarped for a while due to late material delivery and then the weather got cold. Glad to get the roof on. Next will be a 10’x20’ run and probably a chicken tractor to move them around the yard...

 

Thats great. I have had good luck with the welded wire fencing. it is sturdy without being too expensive. That might work well for your tractor. I tried to use chicken wire and my fence turned into more of a suggestion than a barrier.

 

What other predators are you dealing with? We have hawks, foxes, bears, skunks, fischers, etc. I don’t expect to leave the chickens in the tractor overnight. I have 1/2” welded wire and chicken wire available.. our run is made of heavy gage 4’x8’ chicken wire panels.. I think if we had some kind of weasel threat, I’d have to shrink the size of the openings in the wire..

 

Yeah, we have all of those. Fewer bear probably but bobcats and coyotes. I haven't had issues with the weasel types, we have pine martens. The coyotes and foxes will make a bird disappear. I lost a guinea fowl and had nothing left but a pile of feathers and a dismembered wing. One time, I culled two noisy roosters and lost 6 hens the next day with those 2 roosters gone. But, that was before the fence.
I have 2x4 welded wire around the run, 5ft tall. I think a raccoon or bobcat scaled the fence and was heavy enough to bend it up quite a bit. The critters seem to make it over or under the fence whatever I do.
I will occasionally set my traps inside the fence for nusance animals and they catch stuff pretty regularly.

 

Smoke him

 

I hear that.....

 

maybe today!

 

The eggs in the corners have shown nothing with candling, I think some of the others are not developing either but Mrs DG wants to keep em all till 24 days or so.


Two are pipping.



You can hear some chirping, it's hard to tell which egg though