The New Chook House P1

Yep, we're back in town, and the projects have begun!!! Jamie had promised me the Taj Mahal of chicken coops, because I want to start breeding some heritage breeds and have a chicken house that I could walk into easily without slamming my head on something! So, as soon as we got home, we started planning - except, it was all going to be so expensive to build what I wanted to built. Like hundreds of dollars worth of wood, wire and nails. Depressed, we came inside for a cuppa tea and a browse through Gumtree.

As luck would have it, a guy was selling his chicken shed in a town about half an hour away. It was advertised for $250 but he just wanted it gone, and Jamie had to help him pull it down. He said the price was negotiable but we thought it was worth the wood and tin alone.

The guy wasn't convinced we would fit the whole lot in the back of the van, but he didn't know us - of course we managed to fit everything in the 6x4 trailer and the van. High five! We ended up with two rolls of 1.8 chicken wire - really good quality stuff, about 50 metres of it - all the nails, the tech screws for the tin, the door, a ladder, a high gate and the entire house for the grand old total of $100!! He wouldn't take a cent more. This is pretty darn cheap - the chicken wire alone would be worth a couple of hundred bucks.

Well, it's going to look a helluva lot better than the mad tangle of wood and wire we have in the photo below. It'll be fox proof and pretty, and I'll be able to divide the chooks into two sections if I need, i.e nesting hens and babies, or sick and healthy chooks. It's close enough to the vegetable garden to herd them down there as usual to dig over the beds for me, but hidden behind the elders so it's not such an eye sore from the house.

Today, we've been starting to build the frame - but that's for tomorrow's post.