Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

You are here: Home / Chicken / Urban Cowboy: The Great Chicken Adventure! Pt. 1

Urban Cowboy: The Great Chicken Adventure! Pt. 1

September 5, 2016 By Philip 2 Comments

Mast

Abigail, Beatrice, Constance and Dolores.

I wasn’t sure that my journey toward urban homesteading belonged on this blog until Karl encouraged me to document it. As with most things, it is impossible to tell where in my journey I am. I suspect – and hope – that this is merely the beginning, but who can tell. I will certainly keep you informed.

Incipe! You start at the beginning and keep going until the end.

Incipe! You start at the beginning and keep going until the end.

Dennis was the one who piqued my curiosity. I had been thinking about a dog for some time, but my lifestyle does not really allow for such a high maintenance pet. “I have to leave my chickens in Baltimore!” he complained. I was slightly shocked by the passion behind his statement, but he was in earnest. He originally bought the chickens for his twin nine-year-old daughters. However, he fell in love with his fowl and, as happens with most children’s pets, he became the principle caretaker and chicken wrangler. I listened as he waxed lyrical and formed a plan.

The ceder base should make it less resistant to rot and - at least initially - wood destroying insects like termites.

The ceder base should make it less resistant to rot and – at least initially – wood destroying insects like termites.

I do not claim to be the author of this idea. I was sat in class last week (don’t ask – I am 54 and still in school!) and the teacher laid this piece of wisdom upon us. There are two kinds of people in this world; digital natives and digital immigrants. That struck a chord and I realized that, while I am technically a digital immigrant, I have assimilated quite nicely. The point of this digression? I have learned to plunder the internet before I start in on any project. With the idea of keeping chickens in my suburban, campus-adjacent home in Norman, Oklahoma, I went in search of poultry information.

I quickly learned how to frame. Even if it isn't perfect, who is going to compain - the cheickens?

I quickly learned how to frame. Even if it isn’t perfect, who is going to compain – the cheickens?

This city of Norman web site is highly informative and all of the necessary ordinances are easily found.

4 Hens – No roosters – 4 square feet of coop space per hen. That’s doable.

7

Clean-out doors were a natural addition to the plans. I even doubled the coop so that there would be no doubt that I was complying with city ordinances. Also, I wanted a seperate roosting box so that they didn’t poop on each other’s heads when they were laying.

The main issue was what to do about the coop itself. In this hipster world, chicken coops can be purchased on-line, at your local Tractor Supply/Atwoods or even, believe it or not, at Sam’s Club. I do most of my shopping on line. I wouldn’t be caught dead in my local mall. However, a good art supply or hardware store will bring out the shopper in me. I love to browse technical knick-knacks and can lose myself for hours on end in old-fashioned hardware bins. So the chance to hang out in my local farm store was too delicious to turn down and off I went to my local Atwoods.

I found it hard to believe that people who work as hard as farmers work would throw their money away on the flimsy coops that I found before me. I went on line and researched the reviews and found that I was not alone. “Flimsy,” “Cheap,” and “Won’t last a single season” were the consistent comments. With a sense of foreboding, I knew that there was only one way to solve the problem – build it yourself.

This is the egg-collecting hatch, as seen from the outside.

This is the egg-collecting hatch, as seen from the outside.

15

Nesting boxes, lined with washing up tubs for easy collection and clean out.

12

Nesting boxes.

Now, I am a highly trained man. I can think well, cook well and seem to handle money and contracts better than most. However, I have absolutely no construction skills whatsoever. I hit the internet to see what help was available to me. Lots of sites said that chickens will roost in just about anything, but the city of Norman have other ideas. The only things that I was sure of was that, whatever the quality of construction, my coop was going to be more robust than anything that I have seen and if the construction wasn’t up to snuff, who was going to complain – the chickens?

I took every idea that the internet had to offer and settled upon a coop design. The next step was my local hardware store. My biggest problem, apart from the fact that a miter saw needed to be acquired, was how I was going to transport everything. I have two cars. One is my Sunday-best Jaguar XJ8 which, while very handsome, is not the greatest for carting lumber. My VW Jetta, on the other hand, is not the largest vehicle on the road, but its fold-down rear seats make it surprisingly roomy. I am not saying that I didn’t look like a dust-bowl era Okie making the trip west to California, but I got the job done. It also helps to know that your local hardware store (the blue one, not the orange one) will make ten cuts free of charge. Just make sure that you have an accurate lumber list and know what your cuts need to be in order to get it into your vehicle.

17

Varios doors. You know, this isn’t really a chicken coop, since it has so many doors. It is really a chicken sedan!

All I can tell you about the build is that I took it one step at a time. I am a working guy and a novice carpenter. This means that I had a couple of hours a day, at most. Somedays I wasn’t able to do anything. However, the one foot in front of the other approach made plenty of sense. It gave me the chance to think things through, double-check techniques and methods on the internet, before a single cut was made or joint screwed in place. I can tell you that my biggest mistake was not checking that all of my 2x2s were straight. I have a warped board at one corner of the coop and it made life very difficult and not entirely pretty. But hey, who’s complaining – the chickens?

This coop is built like a victorian brick out-house and is heavier than heck. Moving it on my own was no small feat of engineering!

This coop is built like a victorian brick out-house and is heavier than heck. Moving it on my own was no small feat of engineering!

The wonderful thing about a project like this is that there is no pressure. I had anticipated getting my chickens about two months earlier than actually took place. However, they didn’t know that and I was having a geat time! Each coop construction session brought with it a new set of problems to be solved. Sometimes I got them right the first time, oftentimes, not – but I got there in the end and learned a thing or two along the way.

It was hot, hard work and I was grouchy!

It was hot, hard work and I was grouchy!

 

Once you commit to chickens, you discover that there are more chicken fanciers  out there among your friends and colleagues than you ever imagined. Stephen “The Termite Guy” is one of them. We were at a home inspection one day and talk turned to chickens (I was really caught up in this project!). He confessed to being a proud flock owner for nearly three years and could he come over and see my coop? His neighbor gave him his coop, along with his first flock, and I could tell that he was sad that he had not had the opportunity to make his coop himself.

I moved the coop into place before I put the roof on. It was heavy enough as it was and I didn't want to make it heavier.

I moved the coop into place before I put the roof on. It was heavy enough as it was and I didn’t want to make it heavier.

When he came over he was suitably impressed and I was suitably heartened, considering that this was my very first construction job. Like most chicken enthusiasts, he had suggestions to make. I hadn’t thought about a sheet metal floor to make cleaning easier, so I quickly incorporated that into the build. For less than ten dollars, I now had a coop that was impervious to poultry pee and poop! Since the floor was going to be coverd with wood shavings, the birds wouldn’t slip about on the shiny surface and injure themselves. Thanks, Stephen, nice idea!

21

Plywood roof, ready to shingle.

I left what I thought would be the hardest part to last – the roof. Another suggestion, from my customer, Glenn, was a corrugated plastic roof. This is a great idea. Chickens are hard-wired to respond to light. It tells them when to get going in the morning and it brings them back to the coop in the evening. It also determines the egg production, so that winter months, with their shorter days, see a drop in numbers. An opaque plastic that allows light through makes absolute sense. However, I already had my heart set on learning how to shingle a roof. The materials were already in the garage and, even though I was procrastinating, wrangling the three-tab composite shingles into a water-proof barier for my girls was about to take place

Felting comes pre-marked with helpful lines to keep you square.

Felting comes pre-marked with helpful lines to keep you square. I have a tailor’s pencil which I use for book making projects, thqt came in handy to make extra lines.

23

If you get the felting down square, it makes the rest of the job so much easier.

The judicious use of clamps made the fixing of the ply-wood to the framing for the roof eerily easy. I also managed to put the heavy-guage felting down with the lines square. That meant that the actual shingling began a lot faster than I had anticipated. Don’t get me wrong. There are dozens of YouTube videos to teach you how to shingle. I watched all of them. Some of them I watched several times!

24

Three-tab shingles going down!

If you start out right, shingling is actually very easy. If you do not pay attention and shorten the shingle on your first row, then you have to pay close attention and make sure that it gets shortened on the next or you are going to have problems. The first side of the roof is a really good execution. I am pleased that people will not get to see the other side. Anyway, who’s complaining – the chickens?

25

Ridge cap detail.

The last part of the job was the ridge cap. Three-tab shingls are cut down and nailed sideways to produce the final waterproofing element. Like the rest of the job, it turned out to be much easier than I expected!

Finally, the coop was completed and I was ready to bring the girls home! And that, as they say, is another story . . .

Read Part 2 here.

End of Part One.

24b

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print

Related

Filed Under: Chicken, Misc.

« New update emailed
A grilled cheese sandwich you can be proud of »

Comments

  1. Deborah plotkin says

    September 26, 2016 at 4:29 pm

    Looking forward to your creations

  2. Daniel Cohen says

    September 26, 2016 at 5:53 pm

    Great read, Philip!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Feral Cooks was developed by Karl and Philip, two expats who were introduced to each other by their wives while living in Japan.  Learn more →

Recent Posts

  • Fried King Oyster Mushroom Medallions
  • Singaporean Lemon Chicken
  • Veggies and Ricotta
  • Bacon-wrapped Pork Tenderloin
  • Goguma Mattang (Korean Candied Sweet Potatoes)

Categories

  • Appetizers & cheese (186)
  • Baked goods (87)
  • Beef (51)
  • Beverages (11)
  • Chicken (85)
  • Cooking tools (14)
  • Dessert (83)
  • Eggs (30)
  • Gluten Free (267)
  • Indian (32)
  • Indonesian (27)
  • Ingredients (24)
  • Italian (41)
  • Japanese (53)
  • Lamb (6)
  • Low carb/Low GI/Low GL (235)
  • Mexican (7)
  • Misc. (31)
  • Pasta (34)
  • Pizza (19)
  • Pork (128)
  • Pressure cooker (6)
  • Restaurants & Delis (3)
  • Seafood (29)
  • Soup (16)
  • Thai (56)
  • Tofu (13)
  • Uncategorized (11)
  • Vegan (103)
  • Vegetarian (249)
  • Vietnamese (20)

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016

© 2025 - Feral Cooks - All Rights Reserved