Where to start - DIY Coop + Run

[paintedChix]

I love this! I don't "do" permaculture religiously, but it's a great mind-set for viewing your space and your critters and doing creative thinking about aways to integrate elements, building off one another.

Please keep us posted! I know this doesn't happen overnight.

I don't do full on permaculture, but trying to do some... in all actuality, I have 3 different places that I could start w/ zone one & expand out. Our property is huge (for us - 21 acres).
Eventual goal is to have 3 different areas of chicken coops w/ gardens. We have a 7 acre pasture, fenced in goat/sheep field fence that we can run chicken tractors on, too. Just need better, more heavy duty ones for that...

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NewChickyChick - what state do you live in? What garden zone? Always a good thing to see what native plants are in your area & will work for you & your chickens.

 

[ChaosMom]

I don't do full on permaculture, but trying to do some... in all actuality, I have 3 different places that I could start w/ zone one & expand out. Our property is huge (for us - 21 acres).
Eventual goal is to have 3 different areas of chicken coops w/ gardens. We have a 7 acre pasture, fenced in goat/sheep field fence that we can run chicken tractors on, too. Just need better, more heavy duty ones for that...

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NewChickyChick - what state do you live in? What garden zone? Always a good thing to see what native plants are in your area & will work for you & your chickens.

Our property is 0.15 acre. Believe me, yours IS huge!

 

[newchickychick]

OK sloooow down , back up. You have 19 week old chicks and planning on 20 more in July and you have not started you coop?! You need to stop gathering advice and start gathering tools and materials. The size your planning will not go up overnight unless you have an army of carpenters at your disposal.

Those cute peeps will be winged, stinky teenage monsters in just a few weeks.

Get to building!

Oh no, this is for a secondary coop! We already have one (and run) that'll easily fit the first 19 (and a hunk more!). But we want a really nice custom coop/run for them. The one we've got is prefab and we want something just really roomy and 'homey' for them. The prefab, we'd rather use for isolation in case any get sick/there's behavioral issues.

Editing to add on again: The custom run will be attached to the current run which holds the other coop separately, so if it's a matter of separating to introduce properly, they can easily intermingle. And if not, there'll be an extra gate as barrier to keep them from being forced too close/to interact.

We do also have a team of 2 of hubby's friends who'll help the three of us build. We're planning on starting in May for sure to be sure there's plenty of time for it to go up/add the bells and whistles. We just wanted to build a full coop for max size early. And of course if there were any hiccups in the building, we'd hold off on our next order until everything was all ready for chickens!

 

[newchickychick]

I don't do full on permaculture, but trying to do some... in all actuality, I have 3 different places that I could start w/ zone one & expand out. Our property is huge (for us - 21 acres).
Eventual goal is to have 3 different areas of chicken coops w/ gardens. We have a 7 acre pasture, fenced in goat/sheep field fence that we can run chicken tractors on, too. Just need better, more heavy duty ones for that...

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NewChickyChick - what state do you live in? What garden zone? Always a good thing to see what native plants are in your area & will work for you & your chickens.

We're in VA! We're apparently a 7b? (Never looked that up before. How cool!) We've got a heck ton of starters and seeds we're working on for the rest of our big garden we're planning, and I definitely would love to add in some nice plants the chickens (can safely) enjoy into their run.