My chicken coop is almost finished ... I'm so excited! Randy has to finish the roof and hang the inside door. I am going to lay tile on the floor in the hen house and inside each of the nesting boxes so it will be easier to keep clean. We are going to "paint" the wood with linseed oil to protect it, and paint the door Barn Red. We are going to paint a sign for the door that says, "Barbee Farms Est. 2012". If the weather is nice this weekend we should be able to get it finished and bring home the chickens.

Making Progress

Randy got a lot of work done on the chicken coop this weekend. My granddaughter calls it the "kitchen poop". She's two-years-old and cute as a button. Randy got the inside wall up this weekend. He had to counter-sink the siding so there wouldn't be any gaps to fill. He also got the roof beams up in the hen house. The door from the hen house to the run is made from the siding, so when it's closed you can't tell there is a door. A friend of mine replaced her front door and gave me her old door. This will be the outside door that goes into the hen house. Randy got an old window out of a bus at work that he's going to put in the hen house to let in the sunlight. He's also talking about putting a screen door with a lock on the hen house so that on hot summer days we can open it to allow a breeze. He's making a long vent between the hen house and the run, but the screen door would really keep it from being so stuffy. Here is what is looks like so far:

It started snowing today. I'm hoping it clears up by this weekend so Randy can get more work done! Have I mentioned how wonderful he is?

The Chicken Scoop or the Chickens Coop

Welcome to Barbee Farm, a work in progress. Me and my wonderful fiancé, Randy, both have a goal of one day being completely self-sufficient. This is really hard to do when you live in the city. So for now, we are starting small. We have decided to “adopt” my brother’s chickens. I’ve already spoken to the City Inspector. As long as we follow all of the guidelines and don’t get any complaints on noise and smell, we can have them in our backyard. So, we decided to take all 10 hens, but not the 2 roosters. They are entirely too noisy. Besides, I don’t want baby chics, just eggs. I’ve read that happy chickens will lay an egg every 28 hours. That would be approximately 300 eggs a month from our little hen house. WOW! That’s a lot of eggs! I’m going to be like Bubba Gump Shrimp, but with eggs … I can make boiled eggs and scrambled eggs and fried eggs. Then there’s omelets and egg salad and poached eggs and deviled eggs, … well, you get the picture. So, when I told Randy (did I mention he was wonderful?) that I wanted a chicken coop, he went right to work on it. Now anyone can throw together a coop that would suffice in a weekend, but not my wonderful man. This coop is going to be beautiful and able to withstand hurricane winds. I’ve decided to paint the door and all of the wood a barn red, and put a sign on the door “Barbee’s Hen House”.  Initially, he was going to build it out of wooden pallets, which we could get for free. But, that wood turned out to be much too hard. So, he’s been purchasing the lumber as he needs it. So far, it’s cost him about $260. My dad (he’s wonderful too) gave us these really cool roof panels. Some look like stone and some look like wood. Randy is using the stone-looking ones for the roof (there wasn’t enough for the sides) and the wood-looking ones for the siding. My dad also gave us the chicken wire. So, this really awesome chicken coop shouldn’t cost us over $300. The hen house is 4’ x 10’ and the run is 6’ x 10’ so there is plenty of room for the 10 hens. Besides the eggs, another benefit of owning chickens is that their poop makes great fertilizer. So every time I scoop the poop from the coop it will go into my composter.  

The walls are up and half of the roof is done.

Chicken wire is going up, and just look at that awesome roof!

The siding on the walls of the hen house is going up ... yee haw!!!

By the time Randy is thru with it, it will be a Hen House Hilton!
I'll keep posting pics on the progress so check back!