BROWN'S PERPETUAL POULTRY PALACE
a.k.a. THE MONEY PIT​
It all started when my son surprised me on Mother's Day with 10 of the cutest little guinea keets ever. Those little keets grew and grew. They outgrew their plastic "brooder" box and then they outgrew their refridgerator box. It became obvious that they needed a coop.........


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We decided to use an old garden shed that we already had. The shed needed some TLC-- rotten trim/damaged floor/ in need of a new roof and infested with field mice! ( seemed like a perfect coop, right?!)

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That first picture is a little fuzzy, but there is a large wisteria wrapped around the right side and there are rose bushes and other perennials planted in the front (it was only April, so everything is still dormant). So----- I dug everything up and my husband and son jacked it up onto skids and used a tractor to drag it down the driveway to the new "coop location". We set it up on cinder blocks to keep it off the ground. We pulled off the rotten trim and covered the windows with hardware cloth, then replaced the trim. My hubby repaired the floor and covered it with linoleum, closed in the "barn" doors and installed a regular door on one end. He took out the doors where the lawnmower ramp had been and closed it in, building a "flap" style door at the bottom that lifts up to access the area under the roosts for cleaning.
We insulated the walls with old hot tub covers (thick styrofoam and free!) cut to fit and insulated the ceiling with two thin layers of silver foil backed panels. The Hubby wired electricity for lights inside and out and a heat lamp. (The coop is so well insulated that it stays around 50 degrees all winter with just a 250 watt heat emitter). As for ventilation, there are soffit vents on either end and both windows open for ventilation. We framed in a simple wire covered wall with a wooden door to create an entry and storage area, and Dear Hubby built a really awesome weighted and insulated pop door that lifts with a pulley from the entry side. We added a simple ladder roost that the guineas could "climb" and large plastic bins to catch the droppings underneath. Outside we attached a 10X12 run with a roof line tall enough to walk under-- we used 4X4 posts dug in and cemented, wire over the top and sides and a tarp to cover part of it for shade. We buried wire three feet out from the coop to discourage digging predators.

The guineas enjoyed the coop and we enjoyed the guineas-- they liked to admire themselves in the mirror, hang out "chatting" on the roosts, roam around the yard looking for juicy bugs and just relaxing in their run......

And then the REAL fun began...... I went to Agway for feed one morning and discovered Chicken Swaps! I couldn't resist buying three adorable little pullet chicks: a black Australorp, a NH red and a RI red. It was love at first sight, and unlike the guineas, I could cuddle these little babies! The following week I went to another swap and found a sweet little frizzle chick to add to the bunch. I think this is when I morphed into a "crazy chicken lady"........

Well those little chicks couldn't live in a dog kennel forever, so I framed in a 5x3 foot section of the entryway, boxed in the electrical hookup and built a roost and ladder-- I used the space under the roost to store buckets of DE, grit and calcium. By now my Hubby was sick of coop modification, so I got a crash course in DIY building!
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You may have noticed that the chicks in these pictures aren't the same as those pictured above? Well that is where chicken math began to come into play. WHAT IF I wanted more chickens? You guessed it.....it was time for the guineas to move to a new coop. Just as well, that cute little frizzle that I named Roxanne turned out to be a Rocky and they really picked on him!


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