A thousand words.

It's been said that a picture's worth a thousand words, so I'll keep mine to a minimum. Let's just say... it's done, finally, it's done.

Here it is, before and after putting the birds into it. They were a little unsure about what to do with all of the space, but a couple of them spread their wings and fluffed their feathers like they haven't been able to in the old box.

Above: The kids exploring their new digs. They haven't really figured out what to do with the ramp up into the hen house yet, but I gave them a little clue later.

This is the back of the hen-house where the nesting boxes are located. I made two side by side. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to need to separate the two nests, but as for right now I have them open to each other.

This is the back of the hen-house, just below the nesting box. It's the area that was designed to be able to be pulled out for cleaning as well as for increased ventilation. I'm leaving it in for a couple of days, at least until the birds get used to walking on the wire.

Speaking of the wire floor. In the picture above you can see that half of the floor is covered with 1/2 inch hardware wire cloth. Actually it's all covered, but I have a piece of wood in there to get them used to it slowly. There's also two roosting bars. One of them is about 4 inches in front of the nests to try to encourage the hens to not roost on the nests, but on the bars instead. This should limit the amount of manure in the nests, and on the eggs in the future.

I told you I gave them a little clue later on. I helped a couple of them onto the ramp, and a couple came down on their own.


A couple of them just decided to hang out on the roosting bars. Here you can see the configuration of the two roosting bars.

Hope you all like! We are very happy with it. I will be adding the ability to put some old bike tires onto the heavy side of the coop so that I can pick up and move them if I want to. This should after all be more or less a very large chicken tractor. A~ is very pleased as well, and has said that she will let it go in the yard. :) Tonight was the vote at the planning commission too, perfect timing, so we'll see if it was able to go on to the next level or not. (fingers crossed.) I'll let you all know tomorrow.
P~