Uttering the title of the post makes me crack a smile on multiple levels. I have two amazing brothers, amidst a more spectacular family, and our antics swarm & circulate around campfires. Yes, they were on an actual campsite at one time but eventually we just brought them home to the back yard. We were burning in fire pits when they weren’t even sold in The Depot… before they were even cool. Anyway my one brother, we’ll call him Dan for legal purposes, would set an amazing blaze of carefully placed logs. He would then seek out a piece of bark and as he lay it atop the fire, he would announce the same message as if for the first time anyone had ever heard it.
More ironically is that I personally worked as a project manager for a roofing company. When it came to water-proofing the chicken coop(s), how else should you keep your chicks safe from the elements? Thats right, I shingle those suckers! A combination of having worked in the industry but probably more so because we happen to have a few extra squares of shingles in the shed. The coops themselves are of worthy mention, if I do say so myself and they are the real topic of this story.
Returning to the notion of not realizing those cute little chicks were actually gonna grow into full-grown ugly chickens, I had to create a shelter pretty quick as they out-grew their cardboard box. Out in the backyard their was an old dog pen that recently became dormant (RIP P.I.T.A.) and I thought it noble to transform the old house into a contemporary chicken condo. I ultimately raised it on stilts and built a pen around it. As tribute to my Love, I painted it purple. Now the various doors and entrances and access points could only be known over time as the design molded to meet our needs. The girls come out of their home onto a board which is affectionately referred to as “the poop deck”. A perch here and log there and the chicks couldn’t be happier…
This last year, we decided to expand the flock so surely the coop had to expand with it. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the coops you can buy partially pre-assembled that actually look nicer than my own home, but I’m a little more rugged. A little cheaper… and a little more creative. While looking around the shop for material, it dawned on me that those old kitchen cabinets filled with crap could be flipped, cut and reconfigured to create a perfect coop with access doors and shelf dividers included. And so it was. About $40 in additional framing wood, a roll of chicken wire and four stilts and a house for 15 young pullets was born.
You can cluck n peck your way over to our Chicken Tribute page to see updated pictures of the roost…