Our Chickens - Plans for Building a New, Bigger Coop!
Lady, Pete, Repeat, Dr. Quinn, and one of the Dove Sisters
We have 16 chickens. That includes 5 older ladies who no longer lay, 5 roosters, and 6 hens who just came into laying a month ago. The 5 old ladies and 3 of the roosters are destined for the chopping block, hopefully soon. The rest are getting new digs!
About 6 months ago, after seeing so many awesome posts about them and doing a bit of research, I told the husband that I'd like to start keeping quail and having quail eggs. In order for that to happen, we plan on building the chickens a new, bigger, more permanent coop. Last night we finally drew out plans.
As we build the coop, we will also be building a wood shed. Half of this structure will be wood shed, the other half will be chicken coop, with nesting boxes and a good sized roost.
So once the chicken coop is built, we will be fencing off a 40' by 30' section of our woods specifically for them. They will be able to walk out of the coop and into this area. We will still let them out of the enclosure during good weather.
The chicken tractor we are currently using as a coop will be washed and prepared for keeping quail! How exciting!
In the meantime, here are recent photos of the chickens.
Lloyd the No-Longer-Lonely Rooster
Pete (or maybe Repeat?) stretching his wings
That's Cluck Norris in the lower, left corner
Pete (or Repeat) strutting around with Dr. Quinn and the Dove Sisters. Cluck Norris and Phoenix are in the foreground.
Cluck Norris
A little "behind the coop" action going on
I'm sorry, did we interrupt?
Another shot of Cluck Norris
Once we get our materials sourced, we will begin building our wood shed/coop. I will be sure to document and share it with you! I'm really happy. I hope our chickens will be happy as well! Thanks for stopping by!
How exciting that you are deciding to keep quail. As you know, I am really enjoying mine. I'm still hoping to get that second generation underway, but my first batch are really earn their keep. They lay and lay and take so little room, eat very little and make the prettiest sounds. I can't wait to see your plans. I am going to be doing a larger coop for my quail for the Spring, too, as I really want to increase their numbers so at some point they can also provide meat. Good luck and I can't wait to see another quail aficionado get the Quail bug!
How many did you start with? Did you go with eggs to incubate or did you buy chicks? What breed do you have? Sorry so many questions. I'm asking everyone that has quail so I can best figure out how many to start with. I've gotten varying answers.
I can't wait to get started!
I ordered 25 eggs on ebay and ended up with 15 full size. I have Coturnix and you can get these in so many coluor variety, but I wanted the wild colour so they would be more like our wild quail. I like hatching eggs, so that is why I went that route, but ordering chicks would probably be fine, or seeing if anyone locally has them. You will love them! And they are more tame and sweet then I imagined. I thought they would be flighty but mine come out when I open the door to feed them and I just pick them back up and pop them back in. They will sit in my hands, some of them. I figure the friendlier will always be my breeder/egg quail as I could not eat them if they love me :) But I do hope to have some for met some day.
I swear @hethur those chickens pose for you. But the nasty behind the coop Is a little over the top! NSFW!
New coop and everyone will be happy. Can’t wait to see what names you give to the quails. 🐓🐓
Hahaha! Birds will do what birds will do. ;) Glad to see you stop by, @mother2chicks!
Awesome news! The chickens are going to love a new coop. I have no doubt that you're going to have a blast with the quail!
Right on! We’re finally getting the tree that I’m scared of taken down tomorrow. That’ll free up space for a shed, and our new chicken yard and quail house! Hopefully it’ll all be finished in the next couple of weeks. I want to hit the ground running when spring gets here!
I’m excited to see your projects and new birds!
Your new girls that just started laying, did you hatch them?
We did! We hatched them in May and June, two different batches. We ended up with three girls and two boys from each batch, though we incubated nine eggs each time.
Our chickens are basically mutts. I have no idea what breed our rooster at the time, Foghorn, was nor do I know what breed Lloyd is. Our older girls that are the mothers to the new ones are four Easter Eggers and one Golden Rocket. Oh! One of the Easter Eggers is called a Lavender Ameraucana. Her name is Sugar Cube.
Awesome. Did you have a broody hen, or did you use an incubator?
We have a little incubator that holds 9 chicken eggs or 12-15 quail eggs.
very health chickens well looked after hethur thank you
With love,
harj : ) xoxo
Abstract artist
(My latest artwork is "Government")
Thank you, @harj!
Thank you! hethur great to get your interpretation on my last art post called "Government" your insight would help us : )
With love,
harj : ) xoxo
Abstract artist
(My latest artwork is "Government")