As most who read my blog knows, ours is a micro homestead effort. And I mean really small.
As such, it’s easy to take things for granted or maybe cut corners. I did both with my chicken coop.
I have lumber laying around waiting to be used and several types of fencing, all of which would be suitable for building a decent coop. And I had every intention to do so, but the majority of our chicks were killed early on, and we ended up with only two chicks and one duck.
What I seem to be rather short on is time.
So when I ran across a picture online of a coop kit that had what seemed to be glowing reviews, I decided to take a chance and buy it.
It was easy to put together, though the included instructions left some to be desired.
The hasps and hinges were cheaply constructed and flimsy at best, though I reasoned they would work until I picked up something better later on.
Long story short, they worked and so were forgotten about. The chicks grew into full sized chickens, and the duckling became a fully grow duck.
At this point, the coop became too short, and they had to duck to get into the shaded spot underneath.
I figured I would build a frame with 2×6 undneath it to give more space, and then I came across a 7’X10′ run and ordered it online.
A while back, we had some high wind gusts, and the coop was picked up and thrown a good 25 feet into the vacant lot next door to us.
When I realized what had happened, I freaked out a little and went and dragged it back over. They were happily walking around eating bugs and weeds.
I cobbled the damaged parts back together and decided the coming weekend I would move them to a metal shed and attach the run so they would have plenty of room.
The coop had protected them from the feral cats that are fairly common here.
However, it failed to keep a large dog from digging in and kiiling them all while I was at work.
So here is my word of warning. Do not buy one of these small coops unless you’re going to put it in a protected area, as in from wind and predators.
Also, more than one likely, if you have more than one chicken, they will be crowded.
Naturally, the run I’d ordered arrived a few hours after our small flock was wiped out.
If you’re not already raising chickens but want to, I encourage you to study up on coop design and protecting your flock from the elements as well as from predators. Both known and unknown ones.
If you’re already raising some, even if you are well versed and know what you’re doing, it may not hurt to go through things to make sure you’re not forgetting or overlooking something important like I did.
Slocum's Creak 