A few years ago our chicken coop was assaulted by falling trees. It held up well considering that it was unable to defend itself. My remarkably capable husband managed to dispose of those trees single handedly. Well, he used both of his hands, and some homespun engineering. We didn’t notice at the time that one of the floor joists had been damaged by the weight of the fall. The roof was also leaking in places. I’m planning on incubating some chicks for the Spring but the coop had holes in the floor. So, after a few years of patches and workarounds, the time had arrived for a chicken coop update.
My husband was the one in charge of that project, of course. The first thing he did was to cover the roof with metal panels to prevent leaks. The next step was to tear out the rotted flooring. He decided to use what we had around. So, he covered the new plywood floor with some leftover roofing material, to protect it from moisture.
We have an overflow of dirt that we’ve been spreading on the floor, so we’re switching to dry leaves. We have plenty of those piled up along a perimeter fence that need to get raked up anyway….
We’ve been using some old coffee bean sacks for curtains for the nesting boxes. But the loose weave hasn’t worked out very well. They fall down and we reattach them way too often. If a box doesn’t have a curtain, the ladies don’t use it to lay eggs in. I figured I could handle this part of the project. I picked up an old curtain from the Goodwill Clearance Center. I tore it in half and nailed it up on the reinforced side, and then cut slits for each box. Time will tell if this works better.
