vituperation

Ever since I posted those pictures of our new rooster — whom we have renamed “McLovin,” because he’s superbad — I’ve been fretting. I went on and on in my entry yesterday about how bright and pretty he was, then could only post drab pictures because it was such an ugly day.

Fortunately, the sun came out today, and I took a break from working on the new chicken coop (more on that in a bit) to snap a few pictures that may give you a better idea of just how bright and glowing he really is.

Enjoy.

And, as requested in a comment yesterday, here’s McLovin throwing down the nasty on one of the buffs.

He seems to like them best.

So yeah, I’ve started building a new coop for the chickens. We’re getting tired of them pooping all over everything and digging the back yard up.

This coop is bigger — 10×12 — and has walls almost 8 feet tall. No more crawling through the poopy bedding to get to eggs the Jersey Giants insist on laying in the back corner of the current coop. The coop is also designed to be able to be split in half, because we’re most likely going to get more chicks in the spring (a dozen or so meat birds, a few Polish because they’re so damn cool-looking, and maybe a couple of Rhode Island Reds), and the best way to introduce new birds to a flock is to let the birds be around each other without actually being together.

Sort of like segregation, I guess.

Anyway, like I do with every new building, I’m trying something different with this one so I can learn more about construction. I decided to get fancy, and am trying my hand at standard 2×4 stud framing, instead of setting posts in concrete. In the really hot part of summer, the chickens like to get underneath the coop where it’s cool, so I decided to build this one on blocks, like the current one. They’ll be over by the workshop, and should have plenty of shade from all the big trees, too.

Even more fancy, this coop will have windows — four of them. I was going to put real house windows in it until I found out how much they cost (almost a hundred bucks each for the cheapest ones, yikes!), so now they’ll just be storm windows. Still, they have screens and can be raised and lowered like real windows.

I’ve finished the walls, put the ridge up, and cut all the rafters. Here’s what it looks like right now:

It’s hard to tell from the picture, because all the studs sort of blend together, but you should be able to see the window opening on the left wall pretty clearly. There are two windows on the front, and the door on the front will be double. There’s a 2×4 down the middle of the doorway, because when the new chickens are being introduced I’m going to run chicken wire down the middle of the coop to create two 6×10 areas. The front door will actually be two small doors.

If you look under the openings for the windows on the front, you can see some open space. That’s where the chicken doors will go. They’ll latch at the top and fold down to become ramps leading to the ground. I’m also planning to put covered gables over the chicken doors so rain won’t get in the coop.

Finally, I’m planning to run a covered lean-to off the back for their food and water. The goal for all the covered areas on the coop is to make it so I don’t have to jerry-rig something with hog panels and tarps again, like I did in the current chicken yard.

Live and learn, and all that.

I’m planning to fence in somewhere between a quarter and a half acre for them, and tentatively that’ll include the area behind the garage and tractor shed. Even cooler, I think I’m going to fence part of the front yard (between the garage and the street), so that they can get around there where there’s full sunlight if they want to be in it. Maybe they’ll entertain passersby, who knows?

And now, something bubbly.