DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[perchie.girl]

At 4sq ft per I should be able to get 6 but I'm going to use this as a brooder coop ( I guess that's what it should be called). Hatching chicks. My wife likes the idea of keeping the eating egg layers separate from chick hatching hens. So that's the reason for this one. I may cut down the on the number of nesting boxes ( I just created them to the wall for look). I'm wanting 3 hens and 1 roo in this one. I will have plywood for the number of nesting boxes shown from cutting the side walls. As hard as it is for me to find Black Australorp 6 month olds, I figure to raise my on. I have one I got last thursday night and she has layed an egg every day since, 8 so far. I may take the advise I got to put some windows in on the left side. Not sure if I need larger vent holes on the ends other than the 6" dia holes, being that there will be chicks in there that need it warmer, may make the window open for more air flow in the summer.

Ah.... a brooder coop. Ventilation is different than air flow. Its more important to have fresh air than warmth. Many broodies dont set through the winter. Even so thats what the hen does Keep those chicks warm when its cold out. Better to have more ventilation than you need and just cover the holes. The biggest killer in winter time when its cold out is humidity.... that's one of the biggest reasons for good ventilation.

WRT broodies.... The breeds of birds that lay the most eggs usually are not the best broodies... Most are non setters. (There can be exceptions.) Because when a hen goes broody she will stop laying eggs. So for instance if you wanted to breed Australorps a good idea would to be collect those fertile eggs and give them to a broody..... Breeds of birds that often go broody? Game Game crosses Cochins Cochin crosses Silkys ...

For a broody hen I have seen the best setup is for an individual hen to keep other hens from adding to her clutch.... Some will pancake down and not move when another hen climbs in on top of her and lays an egg. The broody will then move that egg under her.... Problem is the eggs under her are already developing.... The new eggs get rotated in and if there are too many one will pop out and get cool so the hen will rotate that in....

I had a hen once I found on a nest in the dogs house.... she was a bantam Americana cross. She must have had twenty eggs in there.... Only four hatched. If I had found her when she had just started setting and excluded access from the other hens she could have hatched out at least ten. Afterwards that dog house was the bomb for the broodies.... LOL. I just made a chicken wire cage around the whole thing with enough room for a feeder and a waterer and a place to dust bathe. If I lived in a cold climate I would have a walk in coop. I would have set the doghouse in there and set up a broody area. But I dont. My coops are chainlink with tarps over the top. So the most protection I have is for the wind.

Sorry I wrote a book.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

Thanks. How would you know which ones are the new ones? Should I mark the ones when I notice a hen sitting?

Yes either with a shapie or pencil.....

deb

 

[ozexpat]

No the others will not stop laying when one of them goes broody ... unless they all think it looks like a wonderful idea and decide to join in on the broody party.

That's what my bantams did. Silly birds. But I digress. The non-broodies will continue laying even while another is brooding eggs. You'll have to check the broody nest regularly too though because the ones still laying seem to like to "help" the broodies with extra eggs.

I have minimum of 4 nest boxes in each coop. Coops are 30sq ft inside and elevated. 30 sq feet below that is covered and then another 60 sq feet of run. I house a max of 13 adult hens and 2 roos in each.


















If I get a broodie I put her in a broody box at floor level and mark her eggs so I know if extras were added. This tends to slow down the damage to eggs over fights for nests.

 

[SavannahsBrood]

No...a book was great. Thanks for the info.

 

[OScarlet]

I've been trying to figure out how to make a hot wire for our travel (hoop) coop. Our ground is very hard here and some of my friends don't have lawn or have fake lawn so I didn't want to have to hammer in stakes. Dh bought a serious charger, I think we could electrify the whole neighbourhood if we wanted to so we have been having a problem with arcing. What do you think of my prototype? If it works I want to make them out of redwood and slope the tops so they shed water but I thought I'd knock some up and try them. The one on the left is to fit around the corner of the coop and the one on the left is to support the wire along the long edges. They are about 8" tall I think.

 

[SavannahsBrood]

I'm new to all this but I have been around electric wire before that will work as long as you don't pull the wire too tight. Depending on the lentgh of the long sides you might need more than one of the ones for the long side. You could use PVC pipe to build them out of also. Just put caps on the ends, and to add some weight to them you ccan put some sand in the pipe. ( just enough to fill the feet of the stands). I prefer wood myself (it's what I'm good at working with) but PVC could be taken apart and take up less space until needed.

 

[perchie.girl]

I've been trying to figure out how to make a hot wire for our travel (hoop) coop. Our ground is very hard here and some of my friends don't have lawn or have fake lawn so I didn't want to have to hammer in stakes. Dh bought a serious charger, I think we could electrify the whole neighbourhood if we wanted to so we have been having a problem with arcing. What do you think of my prototype? If it works I want to make them out of redwood and slope the tops so they shed water but I thought I'd knock some up and try them. The one on the left is to fit around the corner of the coop and the one on the left is to support the wire along the long edges. They are about 8" tall I think.

Looks like a good start..... YOu do know that in order for hotwire to work you have to drive a ground stake in the ground to complete the circuit.... This is what provides the shock animal is standing on the dirt or grass and touches the wire that is hot.... the circuit is completed and Zap.

If this is for a tractor then you can simply fasten the insulators to the tractor this would allow you to move the whole thing without additional setup time. If you want space between the tractor and the wire they make insulators that stand the wire off about six to eight inches from their fastening point..... Or you could use pvc to push the wire out.... we used PVC stand offs all the time for horse corrals.

My ground is not only hard but very very dry.... Therefore standard hotwire does not work here. Oh it may work for a grand total of about two months.... but for consistent function it has to be hooked up differently here. The setup is called a Bipolar setup....two wires run parallel about one or two inches apart. You can also buy electric fence tape that has two wires in it top and bottom. One is positive and one is ground.

wiriing diagram for Standard and Bipolar Electric fence

The diagrams are for fence tape they work the same for single stranded wire.


deb

 

[OScarlet]

Thanks for the help yeah the ground is really dry here too we used a jack hammer to make our french drain because the bobcat couldn't do it! DH thinks that we can use a tent peg to ground it when it is at our friend's house who will most likely look after them, their lawn is wet because they use sprinklers a lot. She will be fine putting in a steel tent peg but probably not a series of stakes. I didn't want to attach it to the coop itself because it is being heaved in and out of a pickup and carried sideways through a gate and I just know something will get caught.

We have a double wire set up -- actually a triple wire on our coop, hmm, maybe I need to make them with two insulators stacked and run a double wire. DH is an electronic engineer and rewired our old 100 year old house so he is pretty handy with the wiring, I just leave that to him!

The feed shop guy suggested PVC too. I used wood just because we had some lying around already so it was essentially free. I like free

 

[perchie.girl]

Thanks for the help yeah the ground is really dry here too we used a jack hammer to make our french drain because the bobcat couldn't do it! DH thinks that we can use a tent peg to ground it when it is at our friend's house who will most likely look after them, their lawn is wet because they use sprinklers a lot. She will be fine putting in a steel tent peg but probably not a series of stakes. I didn't want to attach it to the coop itself because it is being heaved in and out of a pickup and carried sideways through a gate and I just know something will get caught.

We have a double wire set up -- actually a triple wire on our coop, hmm, maybe I need to make them with two insulators stacked and run a double wire. DH is an electronic engineer and rewired our old 100 year old house so he is pretty handy with the wiring, I just leave that to him!

Good about DH..... Hot wire is rather simple you guys will do well. Oh and another way to do the hotwire is with the pvc..... but do runs like a single pipe run the length you want to run your wire....... with verticles every so often .... They do make corners . You could make two ells that would sit like brackets around the coop. Just use a couple of alligator clips to attach them together ellecrically,. Same goes for fastening the hotwire charger too.

Are you keeping the chickens in or predators out? Or are they staying inside the tractor.....?

deb

 

[OScarlet]

Predators out, for an urban neighbourhood not terribly close to the canyon and two manic dogs we have a lot of animals that frequent our area. Racoons, possum, coyotes in the street but not the yard, skunks, lots of skunk.

This is the tractor
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/835533/chooks-on-holiday/10#post_12283726

Our chickens are in it because I cleaned out our regular coop and found that they have NUCLEAR poo! It ate through the paint! I need to fix it and it might take me a while, especially with the damp weather.

Our coop has eyebolts with tubing (acting as an insulator) threaded through the eyes and the hot wire running through the tubing. This is our temporary set up until we build the permanent run and then we will wire the whole lot.