Hunting for a Coop
I had started thinking about how to create a coop space that would support a larger number of additional chickens.
I toyed with building a timber coop, but new lumber is expensive, reclaimed lumber is a lot of work, and quite honestly, I don't have the skills or tools to build something like that by myself.
I had started looking into buying a shipping container and converting it into a coop. It looked like a 20' x 8' shipping container could be had for somewhere in the $2,500-3,000 range. A shipping container would have been a great start to a coop, but it'd have required a lot of additional work, including doors, windows, roosts, and nesting boxes. Ventilation and insulation would have been key as the metal container would likely have suffered from extremes of hot and cold. Then this beauty showed up on Craigslist:
The Coop
It's a 20' x 8' mobile chicken coop, built on a hay trailer frame. It's big. It's heavy. But it's beautiful!
I bought it from farmer in South Kingstown, RI who has 250 acres and was running chickens out on his hay fields with temporary fencing to create a run around the coop.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, we do NOT have 250 acres...so getting this into my back yard was a little tricky, and looking out the window into the backyard and seeing this out there is deliciously absurd.
To facilitate delivery, I had to temporarily remove a section of fence, and cut down two trees in my neighbors yard (with their blessing, of course) to make a path to it's new home. The best part is, it was a great deal - I was able to purchase it for $2,500 delivered (a key selling point, since I would have had no clue how to get it here otherwise).
So, on a VERY cold January day in 2020 (the 17th, to be exact), we became the owner of the new epicenter of our operation!
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