Today we started work on the chicken hoop house for the meat birds who are starting to escape their garage quarters.. not to mention stinking the place up! I wanted something movable, but chicken tractors weren't quite was I was looking for. So I found a plan online for a chicken hoop house and gave it to my hubby and told him that was what I would like. He took the plans, made some adjustments and away we went!
Materials list is as follows:
(2) 8' x 50" cattle panels
(4) 10' pressure treated 2 x 4s
(1) roll chicken wire (ours is 4' x 50', we can always use the extra!)
(2) 8' regular 2 x 4s
(1) package plumber's strapping
(1) 16 x 10 canvas tarp for over the top
(1) 8 x 10 silver tarp for the back
Misc. scraps of wood, or additional regular 2 x 4s
Staples, screws, nails, wire, zip ties, etc.
The hoop house will be covered with a tarp over the top and the back, leaving the front open. For summer we will also leave a gap at the top of the back part for cross ventilation. Each day the hoop will be moved to a new section of pasture in our vegetable field. That keeps the grass and the chickens happy!
First DH and oldest DS notched out the pressure treated 2 x 4s, each one about a foot in from the edge. They should NOT be flush when you are done. Also cut the front and back of the side pieces at a 45 degree angle, these will be your skids, and you will attach rope or chain to them for moving the hoop house. Many plans said to leave a bigger gap on the front and back piece, this is to make moving it easier and also so if you run over a chick when you're moving the house it can roll out the back. We're more concerned with predators, so ours is lower down. We'll just move it more slowly.
Our plans said to add brace pieces over the top of each corner, but if we followed the plans, the bracing would have been awful since the pieces are not flush.
So instead DH notched out the front and back pieces to fit the brace piece. Beautifully done!
Bottom frame complete.
Now it's time to add one of the panels. We first secured the panel with tie downs to keep their shape to make attaching easier. We attached the hoops to the outside of the skids using fencing staples.
Second panel in place.
We secured the two panels to each other with some wire. Notice the placement of the wire, this will prevent the wire from ripping at the tarp.
The back framing goes up. This is done by making an upside down V and attaching that to the panel with plumber's strapping. The 2 x 4 is also attached to the back of the bottom frame. Notice that we put the chicken wire on first before we added the back brace sections. This makes it easier to pull the chicken wire taut.
Framing for the door. We made ours about 2' wide. Again attached to the panel with plumber's strapping and screwed to the bottom of the frame. After the door was on we added additional support between the door frame and the edge of the panel.
Kids working on the chicken wire for the front section. Our kids are an awesome help to us.
DH notching out the wood sections for the door. I love those hands.
Almost complete! We ran out of time and we don't yet have hinges or a lock. Awesome work guys! The chicks are going to love their new quarters :) We retired for the night for a nice Resurrection Sunday dinner - roast lamb and potatoes, yum!
Notice something funny? My kids thought this was hilarious! I have no idea why one chicken laid such a teeny tiny egg.
That's a regular size egg, and the tiny egg. Weird.
This is where they sleep at night, in our mudroom. They sure do go through their food and water FAST!
In the morning we put them outside, which they love. Oldest DS cut off one side of a mouse chewed water container and turned it into a little mini pond which they love to swim around in. It is clean for about the first 5 seconds after getting filled. People are not exaggerating when they say ducks are dirty! We love them though, they hang out in a group in the backyard and go everywhere together.
Exploring their new world.
Exploring the wonderful green grass. I am pretty excited that our rotational grazing plan is coming along nicely. We still need to divide the third area in two and then we'll have four pastures total, with a possible fifth in our vegetable area.
Our little Daredevil. He has caused a bit of havoc on the farm in the last week! He was climbing on the haybales and knocked one onto the chicks container after I moved them into the garage. They haybale broke the container so I had to figure something else out for them. What we have now is actually better, I'll share a photo of that later. He also rode into one of our newly planted fruit trees today, luckily no damage, but he was grounded from the ATV for the rest of the afternoon.
The tree in question, as you can see it's just fine. Look at those buds! Other things are doing great on the farm as well....
The garlic.
The spinach, broccoli and cauliflower bed. They are doing wonderfully well. We had some really strong winds here the last few days, and a lot of the greenery you see is those "helicopter" seeds blown down from one of our trees.
The gooseberry bush we got from Henry Fields. I cut it down to half its height after we planted it. We've never had gooseberries before.. so we really hope they're good!
Grapes coming along nicely.
The chickens haven't quite been pulling their weight. We have 13 laying hens and only get about 8 eggs a day. They've definitely slowed in production, so we're looking at adding oyster shell to their feed again.
