ADVENTURES OF THE CANADIAN FAMILY ROBINSON

How our new coop was created..Our old chicken coop was quite temporary, it was built for free and worked quite well but we outgrew it quickly and when we decided to move it I quickly realized it wasn’t structurally sound I threw it up in an hour without a saw so it was not very solid. Curt tried to move it with the bobcat and that was the end of that coop. We then put the chickens in the very ghetto looking old rooster pen we had, it was surrounded in lumber wrap but luckily the weather was mild so it worked for a bit while we got the new coop planned out and up!
Sierra and Ocean are the chicken caretakers on our farm so it seemed perfect that the new coop would be a homeschool project with them. We sat down with the girls and they each drew out a design for what they thought the coop should look like. Then we looked together at what materials we had available we could reuse and recycle into the new coop. Then we looked at some coop design ideas online. We figured we had alot of the materials to build an 8 by 8 coop, including some metal roof we got free at the recycling place.
This could eventually hold up to 24 hens so gives us room to grow
The girls each wrote a material list and Curtis took them to the local building store. We were able to use the girls homeschool learning funds towards the materials we needed since it would be a learning project in the area they are interested in! Have we mentioned how much we LOVE Wondertree SelfDesign and the incredible support they give us families in supporting our children’s interests!!!
Back to the coop
We built it together as a family and Ocean got a new measuring tape to use and she has now officially learned her numbers by building and using her measuring tape, what an awesome way to learn! The girls and I are working at finishing up the outside run for them, we are doing rotating runs so that we can give it a chance to regrow when they eat and scratch it right down! We will add some pics of that when it is all done! We area also having some trees milled up on our land which will be used as siding for the coop among other things! The coop is up and our 9 chickens are loving it and laying us 7-9 eggs a day! Sierra has started selling them and is working on her math calculating feed costs, into her egg prices. Anyone want to buy farm fresh eggs?

Here are some pics, some of our old coops too! I have added some of Stormy too and the new way we found to keep him happy, tie him up near the goats and cow, he loves the job to watch their every move and he is so QUIET there! I also added one of Flower our pregnant goat she is getting bigger, exciting!!

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