A few words about the coop

As principal builder of our strange little chicken coop (diagrams and photos available upon request), I wanted to submit a report.

First some history. We looked all over for plans for a coop that was not too big, not too small and generally affordable. We finally found a Web site that had download-able plans for a small one that I could tell was within my limited carpentry skill set. Turns out the plans were only about 80 percent complete -- a classic bait and switch. Ever since the download I've been getting e-mail from the site trying to sell me more complete plans and other chicken-related bric-a-brac. Still, it was enough to get us going and I was able to fill in the gaps and make a few personal adjustments. But the coop does have shortcomings.

For one thing, it's not very tall (the peak of the roof is under 5 feet), and it's mostly a hardware cloth enclosed and expensively roofed run with a small nesting/roosting box at one end. So far, our young hens are not all that interested in nesting boxes since egg-laying is still months away. I put one roost in the nesting box and affixed a couple of others in the run area. That may have been the first mistake, because our ladies much prefer roosting out in the run. Since that's the least secure area of the whole coop (we imagine weasels burrowing in to wreak havoc), we went out the first few nights and crouched into the poop filled run to pull them down and stick them into their nesting area where they could be safely locked in for the night.

I could see this crouch and move routine would not be an acceptable evening ritual, so we talked over a way to make the whole coop into a predator-safe zone.

We considered burying a hardware cloth barrier into the ground around the coop, but I figured if we were going to dig a trench around the whole 10 ft. by 4 ft. footprint of the coop, we should use that to improve drainage and add a little landscaping trim around the base. We opted out of burying wire and instead ordered a yard of granite chips which The Dirt Doctors delivered, quite professionally, to a tarp near the coop. That turned out to be just enough and a little extra to fill a 12" wide and 8" deep trench around the coop. (Don't bother with the math, it doesn't work.) That should keep out any weasels. We're still worried about bears who could lift the whole coop off it's foundation, but they'd just eat the chicken food, most likely, and then go their merry way.

Digging a trench to those specifications is a lot more work than you might imagine, by the way.

We let the hens out after the digging and before the gravel delivery and they were pretty fascinated with the little racetrack we'd built for them. They obliged us by running around it a few times, finding newly exposed bugs and grubs that were invisible to my eyes, but not to their keenly focused head cameras.

Sidebar: When I watch the chickens, I love how their movements are so precise and programmatic. It's almost robotic, like a digital sensor somewhere tells servo-motor A to swivel head turret B 36 degrees to right, then engage pivot C 60 degrees down, then initiate single peck program, then return to original position. I can hear the servo-motors in my mind as they operate and sometimes I try to replicate them while I watch. The chicken seem to disregard all such mockery.

Anyway, we've now got a chicken coop with a gravel moat to repel any predatory huns. Maybe we should equip it with vats of boiling oil that can be poured down onto foolish weasels that test its defenses.