How To Build A Chicken House Mostly Out Of Scrap And Salvage

Well hello, again.

This is where we left you last time.

Having a beer and contemplating the paint job for our newly built chicken house.

If you missed how we got here check out Part 1.

Now at six years old if I closed my eyes and thought of a farm I saw this.

I should tell you I was a city born kid, the truth is my connection and reference to farms may have been based on the Loony Tunes Cartoons and watching the antics of Foghorn Leghorn.

So the temptation of a little childhood homage was just too great.

Voila!!! Our very own Looney Tunes Chicken House... We used some old red Hammarite that we had painted the gate to the property in and good quality white gloss left over from doing the new skirting boards in the house...

Now stop patting yourself on the back you have more work to do. If you go get yourself some chickens now some fox is just going to come along and bite all their heads off.

Next we need to make the chicken run- this was over 60 per cent of the entire cost, maybe more. But a run for chickens is pretty essential. My chickens will free range but bigger is still better.

We made the two sides, 5m long over by the workshop chicken wired them then carried them over. We then nailed them to the house and braced them with some top pieces, then secured and strengthened to the side with supports. We needed a friend to help us carry them over. Now if you don't have any friends, remember what we said in the last part of this instructable!!!

We have used good timber but still want it to last So packed brick and rubble underneath the wood. There is a good flap of chicken wire folded under. Now foxes dig so the advice is to bury your chicken wire. We didn't. Lets hope we don't regret that.

I have piles and piles of firewood on my property from maintaining the woodland every year. We have used that as our fox anti digging measure. It should also house lots of insects that will be tasty snacks for the chickens.

Catches and Locks on everything foxes are sneaky.

We split the underneath into two... one side for us to store things covered with blocks so we don't have to always carry everything out. I recommend you do not store food outside, my feed is stored inside a secure special room inside my house..

...and one side for the chickens. All the boards and blocks are to stop foxes tunnelling in, or badgers, or anything really trying to get my chickens... it is why we put it on hard ground, remember that from Part 1?...

To find a hen with teeth is pretty rare, they need grit to eat... They recommend crushed oyster shell but I did not have any of that lying around so I used some sand that I did have lying around.

We added a second stronger chicken fence around the run.

I raided my scrap metal store for some perches. Chickens love perching. Painted them with some random bits of left over paint.

Added normal mesh over the roof.

For the end, more wood, more mesh, some planks to make the frame strong. The door is an old wardrobe door I pulled out the of house when I was renovating it, but still strong.

The door is a weak spot for digging under so I added a paving slab I had leaning against a wall doing nothing.

We have a few more stages to add and a couple of little modifications still to do, but if your still reading this well done, I reckon I lost most people ages ago. The whole project has cost us around £400. The chicken run was about £260. I did buy the chicken mesh from a hardware store closing down so I got a great deal on it. If you have got this far building it yourself, it is time to go get some chickens. This house will comfortably house twenty. I have never had more than thirteen in it. I started with 6 Plymouth Rocks and 6 Leghorns.

This house has now been up for about five years.

Due to two vicious colonies of foxes in my village, one is on the edge of my property, every chicken house in the village has been sacked to devastating results. Not mine. Foxes have never broken my defences. One reason might be that in the coldest months of the year I bring a flock of sheep into the orchard where the chicken house is, to cohabitate. The other reason might be my chicken house is badass. I will let you decide.

I lost my first two chickens out of the house this year to a Pine Marten, so I had to review defences and tighten them. The main problem was pine martens can jump from either high walls near the chicken house or a neighbouring tree.

The one thing I would change would be the floor of the chicken run. Two years in we started to get rats getting in to the run. They came for the apples in the orchard and stayed for the chickens. We pulled everything out and put in a brick floor and that solved the problem.

Last thing when you build with salvage, the salvage dictates the build but all in all, this is still a useful guide to follow even if it is just to implement the procedures and system.

Happy house building and remember...

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.

Frank Lloyd Wright (The Great American Architect)

Anyway, thank you for reading the first part of my article. Make sure you check out the first part here.

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