The Chicken Coop

During our cold arctic and snowy winter I spent a lot of time studying coop design and upkeep, & raising of organic birds. Lots of work needed to be done to the coop in order for it to house birds. It had not been used in many years. The 16X32 ft. building once held hogs then after a fire and a remodel it held hundreds of chickens back in the day. The windows were boarded up and falling apart, all three doors needed to be replaced. When spring came, the floor was flooded with water due to a negative drainage problem, the roof leaked in 14 different places and the inside was full of junk and extremely old poop from various animals. I talked to Steve about installing windows that came out of the barn. He said he would have his right hand man Kenny do it “‘cuz Kenny can do anything,” (Steve owns his own electric co. and has two employee - Kenny and Steve#2 of which we will see much of later in the story).

As soon as the snow started to melt I got to work on the coop. First thing I did was to remove all the storage junk inside and take down all the boards over the windows. One of the pleasures of living on the farm for me is having your own burning barrel. I pulled one metal barrel that looked to be in good shape out from behind the garage and started chiseling the top off (this took more determination than I expected). Then shoot holes in the bottom half with my trusty 45cal. pistol. Instant burning barrel! (I do recycle and take trash to a proper disposal site, but I also love to burn stuff.)

I had stopped at a few construction sites in my travels on sales route and picked up a good amount of leftover insulation from dumpsters used it to fill cracks and gaps in the windows and walls of the coop. Baby chicks can chill easily and die, so with the added insulation I got for free, I again saved tons of money while insuring my chicks stayed warm. With the spring rains I noticed some leaking in the roof. Once again everything I need was in the barn. I found big cans of black tar stuff and when the weather was right got on the roof and spread 2 galloons of tar over all the nail holes and that seemed to worked great. Cost of roof repair $0.


Next, I borrowed a power water sprayer from a friend and sprayed inside the coop for three hours removing all the old poop, spider webs and dirt from everything! And I mean everything… walls, ceiling and the floor. This was actually fun and will become a annual spring cleaning chore. One gallon of red barn & fence paint at $17 helped to paint the inside after my cleaning. Of course it was barn red. Also a 150Ft. of poultry fence, a box of good wood screws, tubes of window calking and expandable insulation foam for a total cost of $158.

Chickens need bedding on the floor of coop used much like cat litter three or four inches deep and needs to be change on a fairly regular basis, every three months is my personal preference. In my research I read of lots of ways to do this. Buying from the store would be the easy way, but costly because of the large size of my coop estimated cost per year $450. Not really a viable option for this farmer. So it turns out I have a neighbor that operates a old saw mill from the early 1900's powered by a tractor. It's really a site to see because I love all things wood. I needed to make friends with my new-found neighbor as he has something I need SAW DUST and lots of it. I noticed that he seemed to be home on Saturdays working his mill with two other guys. I stopped in one day asking if he would sell me some boards from a old weathered pile in his yard and his price was unbelievable low. I was happy to pay his price plus some extra so my new friend would remember me, when I was done loading all my boards and was about to leave I asked him about the huge pile of saw dust and said I would be interested a few truck loads, He said I could have as much as I needed for free just come and haul it away. On my way home I was pumping my fist and screaming some kind of victory cry. How could I get so excited about some pile of saw dust? What is happening to me?