Chicken Coops for Sale in Ennis, Texas
Chicken Coops for Sale in Ennis, Texas
Build Your Own Chicken Coop – A story of chickens
So WAY back in March…Josh and I had a talk with the boys and we decided as a family that we would get some chickens. We were all pretty excited about this new adventure and couldn’t wait to get started! At the beginning of April we headed over to to figure out what we would need and how many chickens we wanted. They had a very helpful employee who told us everything we would need to know about taking care of our chickens. Also, lucky for us we had Housewife Gena available to answer any questions we might have!
The boys were excited to help pick out the chickens and were even more excited when the IFA staff told us the chicks needed to be held lots and lots so they would be used to the kids. 🙂� After about an hour there we came home with…
Six adorable chicks! Because we are a family of five we decided to get two chickens that are said to lay daily and four chickens that lay 3-4 times a week. We figured that would be plenty of eggs for us!
A couple weeks later, IFA did an Easter Egg Hunt. Now being a farm supply store, they don’t give away just candy in their eggs, they also give away…you guessed it CHICKENS! (And bunnies and ducks and turkeys) Housewife Jenn’s kids ended up with four leghorn chicks! Another family in our ward decided they didn’t need any extra chickens and gave Jenn’s family another two chicks! Since we were already building a coop for our chicks, we offered to let Jenn’s family’s chicks live with ours.
So here are the little chicks! Happy under their heat lamp and eating away! 🙂�
While our chicks were perfectly happy in the garage, in their tote…it quickly got too small for 12 chicks. As soon as they were ready, we transferred them to the backyard to a makeshift coop. I did not take a picture of the makeshift coop because…well it was pretty sad. It served it’s purpose and the chickens loved it but it was not anything you’d want to show off! With that in mind, Josh began the process of building a coop for our chickens. We saw a coop at IFA that we thought looked great! However, it was $600.00. As much as we liked our chickens…we didn’t $600.00 like them!
So Josh took a few measurements and we sketched out what we wanted for our chickens, using the IFA coop as inspiration. We took a trip to Lowe’s to price out our materials. We were lucky enough that we had left over wood, Jenn’s family had left over wood and a family a few houses down from us reroofed their house and donated their left over roofing supplies to us! It was our goal to use as many materials as we already had and keep the cost as low as possible!
Let me say now…Josh and I have never “built” anything. Really. This was quite an adventure for us (mostly Josh since he did almost all of the work) and I’m so happy with how it all turned out!
He started with the base for the coop itself. We wanted to make sure that there was enough clearance for the chickens to use under the coop as part of the chicken run.
He used four 3″ screws in each post to make sure it was nice and sturdy.
Wall framing almost done!
Look what happens when you start building a coop…your chickens start laying eggs! 🙂� (So far Jenn’s chickens are the only ones laying. Lucky for us, our chickens are DUAL chickens so if they don’t get to laying…they going to get to frying!)
The framing completed from two angles.
Up go the walls!
Putting in the hinged door for collecting eggs.
Getting the eggs out will be a breeze! 🙂�
A few angles of the walls all up and the plywood for the roof up. As you can see, our coop has skylights…that’s how we roll.
First coat of paint and the tar paper on the roof. You may wonder why we chose this color for the coop. Well to be completely honest, we picked colors we wanted to paint our house and figured the coop would be the perfect guinea pig to see if we like the colors! 🙂� The coop is Valspar’s Royal Gray. (I know, it looks blue to me too!)
For the door we chose Valspar’s Kettle Black. It has blue undertones so it goes really well with the Royal Gray.
The roof complete with the windows in. I’ve seen lots of super cute coops with real glass windows. It was less expensive ($1.29 a pane) to just use plexiglass. And it worked perfectly!
The coop with the final coat of paint, windows/hardware on and trim put up.
The door on the coop. We chose to put a large door on the side to make it easier to clean out for us. And I have to say that it makes it look way cuter! 🙂�
The Roosting bar inside the coop.
Trim all painted and mesh put around the bottom of the coop.
The nesting boxes. The only thing I didn’t get a picture of was the peel and stick tiles that we put on the bottom of the coop. They were only $0.02 a tile! I think we ended up using about 14 tiles.
The finished product with the happy chickens inside!
Another angle. After the coop itself was completed. Josh used 2 x 2’s and 2 x 3’s to build the frame for the yard and another, outdoor roosting bar. We also added in the ramp for the chickens to get into the coop. I’m super proud of Josh for all of his hard work and I’m really excited for how amazing it turned out!! Our total cost for the entire coop…every last nail, hinge, can of paint, everything was about $290.00. And the best part is the chicken coop and run are significantly bigger than the one at IFA. 🙂� So HUGE round of applause for Josh and the coop!
UPDATE: Hello dear readers!!! This has been a long time coming, but this post is going to get a HUGE revamp! With having babies and life getting in the way, I’ve neglected this post and getting out the information that I should. I am going to be working on updating this post with as much information on the building and materials as I can. We didn’t keep super great track of all the materials we used, but I will do the best I can to give you as much info as possible! Thank you all again for loving this project!
© The REAL Housewives of Riverton, 2011-2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s authors and/or owners is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to The REAL Housewives of Riverton with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Chicken Coop in Ennis, Texas
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Ennis Texas" into any one of the numerous search engines and a wealth of information will pop up. This information will provide links to other websites that will be informative and will provide the right direction for finding Ennis Texas chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Ennis, Texas With the significant boost in poultry keeping there has actually been a similarly huge increase in the variety of poultry paraphernalia for sale. Poultry real estate is a proceedings in point. It's additionally a timeless instance of the excellent old bandwagon being jumped on as various would-be poultry real estate specialists peddle an array of holiday accommodation declaring to be the ideal option to your chicken real estate demands. Typically the price looks eye-catching, the house looks appealing, hell even the clean-cut household standing there feeding the chickens look desirable. Certainly they understand a high quality chicken house when they see one? There are several low-cost and awful cages flooding the marketplace. I know this as I've tested a number of them in the area, and seen a ewe run directly through one when the feed container appeared. The outcome was just a pricey heap of fire wood and a little flock of bemused as well as currently homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Enclosures in Ennis, Texas
More often than not these mass produced models are built of quick grown hardwood - come the initial drop of rain they swell, leaving you either blockading a doorway that will not close, or tearing the door furnishings off in a vain attempt to launch the squawking inhabitants. The first warm day means the lumber dries out as well as cracks, the felt roof covering bubbles and boils, as well as come nightfall the chickens refuse to enter. This is not as a result of their disappointment at the decline of their as soon as attractive apartment yet since the hovel is now a place for, and probably crawling with, the chicken keeper's bane, red mite. Add on that it said on the blurb that it would suit 4 large hens when that stocking thickness was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and just what are you left with? A couple of hinges as well as some kindling. A decent coop for thee to 4 birds should cost you in the region of ₤ 300 though this could depend on whether you choose for a complimentary standing house or one with a run affixed. Assuming you are varying your birds in a large space and also the pop hole doorway allows sufficient for the type you keep, after that the major demands of real estate boil down to three points which will specify the number of birds the house will hold; perches, nest boxes and air flow. Most breeds of chicken will perch when they go to roost in the evening, this perch must ideally be 5-8cm wide with smoothed off edges so the foot rests comfortably on it. The perch needs to be higher than the nest box entrance as chickens will also normally search for the highest point to perch. A perch lower than that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is by the way when they produce one of the most poo) resulting in dirtied eggs the following day. They should not nevertheless be so high off the flooring of the house that leg injuries could possibly occur when the bird gets down in the early morning. Chickens require concerning 20cm of perch each (in small breeds this is certainly much less), plus if more than one perch is mounted in the house they need to be greater than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their next-door neighbors but are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird ahead. Preferably the house ought to have a least one nest box for every three birds and these must be off the ground and also in the darkest location of your home. The house should have ample ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly accumulate every evening, also in the coldest of weather. Understand, air flow deals with the principle of warm and comfortable air leaving with a high void attracting cooler air in from a lower space - it's not a set of openings on opposite walls of your home as well as at the same degree, this is just what's referred to as a draught. If you have a house with a run affixed then the points above are still real, but you must additionally consider the run size. The EU optimum legal equipping density for a totally free variety bird is (as well as let's encounter it, one of the motivations for keeping some hens in your home is possibly improved or far better welfare) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m settled. Take a close take a look at several of the deal homes - it could well be your home has the best perches, correct ventilation as well as enough nest boxes for an affordable variety of birds, yet will each of the chickens have anything more than an A4 sized piece of ground to spend the day on? And so as the saying goes, "you get what you spend for". You may assume you've got hold of a bargain, but you as well as your flock can rue the day you did. Acquisition the best house as well as it will last for a few decades, if not longer given the appropriate therapy. Ultimately your fowl and your poultry maintaining encounter will certainly be much the better for it.coops plans
More Posts
Chicken Coops for Sale in Concan, Texas
Chicken Coops for Sale in Commerce, Texas
Chicken Coops for Sale in Broaddus, Texas
Chicken Coops for Sale in Avinger, Texas
Chicken Coops for Sale in Cleburne, Texas