Assembly Sequence

The construction takes place by building the 4 flat panel wall and bottom flat panel frame. Begin with the bottom frame, laying it out on a large flat surface. Next, lay out the two gable end walls, making sure that they are the same size and that the plywood triangle pieces have the same angles. Follow this with the 2 long walls. The plywood that makes up the exterior of the roost box is attached to the flat panels at this stage. Don't forget to cut in the cleanout and egg doors as well. The plexi-glass can be installed at this time.

Once you have built the 5 flat panels, stand them up on the flat panel floor frame and check your dimensions. If all lines up properly, lay the panels down again and install the wire over them. Before installing the wire, make sure that the diagonal measurements of each frame are equal to insure that the corners are square. This is a old carpenter's trick. After the wire is secure, stand the wall up again over the floor frame and secure the corners with screws or angle brackets.

Next, complete the three interior wall of the roost box. You will need to install additional framing inside the coop to support the plywood pieces. Install as needed. Then, install the bottom of the roost box, followed by the front interior panel with the sliding door. Finally, install the top flat plywood ceiling with the vent holes.

Finally, install the roofing material and all the trim, hinges, roost bar, etc.

This sequence is only one of many ways to build this coop. I suggest you carefully think through each stage of construction, taking into account your physical limitations. There is not perfect sequence, but with a little forethought, you will greatly reduce the inevitable frustration that comes with such a building project. Stay focused when building, but stop occasionally to plan ahead.

Some like to prefinish the wood before assembly. I like this idea. I cut the framing members, then coated them with the Lifetime Wood Preservative. I gave the plywood a single roller coat of paint before cutting it as well.

Metal Roofing

I was on the phone today with our local roofing supplier ABC Supply.  The salesman explained to me that I do not have the correct product name on the plans.  The metal roofing is properly known as ridge roofing and not standing metal seam.  The ridge roofing is a less expensive product that does not need underlayment and can be installed over the coop frame.

I was out at our local big box home improvements store today and found that ridge roofing is now available as a special order product.  It is offered in 10 different colors and has all the trim materials.  The store can order the panels precut to the inch at a very attractive price. One tip is to first choose the roofing and then make the roof length fit the width of the panels.  The panels I saw today are 38 inches wide.  Three panels would give you 104 inches. If you don't want to have to cut the panels to make the 8 foot as called for in the plans, consider building the coop to fit the 104 inches.  Alternatively, the metal panels can be cut easily with tin snips or aviator snips.

The matching screws sold with this roofing product are also expensive. You can substitute a generic screw with a rubber washer available at the home improvement stores.  Here in Madison we have Home Depot and Menards.  I have not checked to see what Lowe's has to offer.

Again if you find the metal roofing too pricey, consider using an asphalt corrugated roofing material.  It won't look quite as finished, but the chickens will surely not complain.

Happy Building

Beekeeping

I'm currently building a Top Bar Bee Hive for backyard urban use. The style will match that of the Playhouse Coop. If you are interested in complementing your urban chickens with a hive or two of bees, please write me at im-handy@sbcglobal.net.

Yours,


Dennis

Materials/Cut List Update for the 8' x 8' Plans

I uploaded an updated version of the Materials and Cut list for the 8 x 8 version of the Playhouse Coop Plans. They are available now when you purchase the plans.

If you have purchased plans for the 8x8 version prior to March 20 and would like to download the updated version, please contact me at im-handy@sbcglobal.net or use the link I sent you.

Thanks.

Dennis

Using Recycled Materials

Here is a note from a builder with a very good idea for locating recycled deck boards for the Playhouse Coop:

"My wife and I purchased your plans for the 8' X 8' coop, and I just started on it earlier today.

I read your blog this evening and saw the one about recycling lumber for the coop. This is exactly what we have done, our local land fill will allow us to take 3 cubic yds of material a day out for recycling purpose's. I started going to the building material area , and as luck would have it I hit a gold mine one day. Someone had very carefully disassembled a red wood deck and disposed of it. We hauled a good portion of the lumber out before the land fill chipped it up for mulch. I spent the day today ripping the 2 X 6's and plan to start construction in the morning. We have more then enough lumber for the frame of the coop and plan to use the rest for other projects we have planned. You may want to suggest people check their local land fill's for lumber in your blogs. We will send photo's when construction is complete. By the way, I enjoyed your directions for constructing a rain barrel on Utube, and have the materials to make 4 now".

Winter Coop Considerations

I found this excellent article on keeping chickens warm in the winter. Please read it carefully as it debunks many old beliefs about keeping our girls warm in the winter.

Robert Plamondon's Poultry & Rural Living Newsletter, Mid-November Bonus Issue This newsletter goes out to people who signed up for it. If you don't want to receive it, see the instructions at the bottom of the page. Chicken Coop or Chicken Dungeon? If you want to see something scary, just search for "chicken coop" on YouTube and look at the chicken houses so proudly displayed by their owners. As you watch, ask yourself, "Don't these things have any ventilation at all?" Because they don't! Close the doors and hatches, and they're about as well-ventilated as a coffin. Here, check it out for yourself. What could be the point of confining chickens to an airless cubicle? Two reasons are usually given, neither of which make much sense: To protect the chickens from drafts. To keep the chickens warm. Protection from Drafts Do chickens need to be protected from drafts? Why? Before about 1875, few people knew that disease was caused by microbes. In fact, it was common knowledge that fresh air caused disease! (Indoor air, on the other hand, was safe.) Drafts caused colds, swamp air caused malaria, and so on. So when people talk about "protecting chickens from drafts," they're repeating a superstition that was discredited over a hundred years ago. Realistically, adult chickens are very resistant to cold, and if you give them the opportunity to stay mostly dry and mostly out of the wind, they will do just fine. Chickens roosting in pine trees through New England winters tend to be at least as healthy as their brethren in chicken houses. Totally open chicken houses, with a roof but no walls other than chicken wire (and no way for the chickens to get out of the wind), were used in the Fifties as far north as Oregon with good results. Winter egg production fell whenever daytime highs were much below freezing, but (according to experiments done by the Oregon Experiment Station) such hens were at least as healthy as the control group in conventional chicken houses. In other words, total confinement is at least as unhealthy as total exposure. The middle ground, as usual, is worth a good hard look. (I'll have to post the Experiment Station bulletins on open housing to my Web site sometime. They make interesting reading.) Can You Keep Chickens Warm in an Unheated Coop? The other reason for eliminating all ventilation from a chicken coop is to keep it warm. Does this work? Can an unheated shed be kept warm just by eliminating ventilation? Of course not! Chickens put out a significant amount of body heat, but they also put out a lot of moisture through respiration and manure. This is a package deal; you can't have the heat without the moisture. If you shut in your flock to retain the heat, you get a great deal of dampness and ammonia, both of which are bad for the birds. Chickens get frostbite on their combs and wattles in a damp house if temperatures fall below freezing, but they are much more resistant to this in a dry house. A damp house is also filthy, smelly house. It promotes disease. And the ammonia generated by the manure is a poison gas that irritates the chickens' lungs and can bind them in high concentrations. The usual way of controlling dampness is through ventilation. You allow at least as much ventilation as is needed to keep the dampness low and the air quality high, and give up on trying to control the temperature. Roof insulation also helps control dampness, or, at the very least, prevents condensation from forming on the ceiling and dripping onto the chickens. Open-Front Housing The open-air revolution started around 1900 with the idea that fresh air was good and dampness was bad, while low temperatures inside the chicken house were tolerable. This was a huge success. Starting around 1908, for example, the Oregon Experiment Station introduced houses with very large window openings that were never closed -- no glass, no shutters, no curtains. Just chicken wire. They immediately started setting all-time laying records in these houses. In fact, they noticed that many of their best-laying hens didn't roost in the back of the house with the others, but perched on the nest boxes near the front, where they got an extra helping of fresh air and weather. So a second version of the house, with even larger openings, was introduced. Similar results were obtained by virtually everyone who tried it, in all climates. Closed houses are unhealthy and unproductive in any climate: open houses are better. Closed houses also promote disease transmission from bird to bird because there's no ventilation to dilute and remove airborne pathogens. In the commercial poultry industry, open-front housing has been dominant ever since. Modern commercial chicken houses are so crowded that, with the addition of roof insulation and curtains to cover the openings in severe weather, the chickens' body heat alone can keep the inside temperature above freezing in cold weather, thus preventing the automatic watering system from failing and, if the juggling between air quality and warmth can be done successfully (which is not guaranteed even with computer-controlled curtains), can lead to higher yield. But none of this works with small flocks -- it takes a big flock in a big, crowded house. With backyarders, fanciers, and other small-flock owners, though, the practical lessons of Twentieth-Century farming are constantly being forgotten. A generation or two separate the practical diversified farms of yesteryear from today's small-flock owners, and there's a simlar gulf between us and today's big industrialized operations. Too often this means that Nineteenth-Century superstitions sneak back in and mess everybody up. I've certainly had good results with my own open housing, which has never caused the chickens to become ill even in dreadful weather. Heck, even hens who insist on roosting on the roofs of the houses stay healthy through freezing weather and continual Oregon rain. On the other hand, the idea of taking my happy free range chickens and shutting them into an unventilated box creeps me out. When I realized how completely the concept of open-front winter housing has been forgotten (and how unhealthy many people's chicken houses are), I knew that I had to bring the concept back into vogue. After weighing the alternatives, I decided to republish the definitive book on the subject, Fresh-Air Poultry Houses by Prince T. Woods. Dr. Woods was a poultry health expert who wrote this book after many years investigating open-front housing, and after many Experiment Stations had vindicated his conclusions. I would have liked to publish something a little more modern than this 1924 book, since it was written before plywood and corrugated sheet metal became the building materials of choice, but as far as I can tell, no such book has ever been written. Other than the lack of up-to-date building materials, the information in this book can pretty much be cut out and pasted down. There's a lot more here than just house plans: he talks about all kinds of management issues. He also addresses every conceivable objection to open-front chicken houses. I have posted Chapter 2 to my Web site. It's a detailed and compelling introduction to the topic. Check it out: I'm sure you'll find it interesting. You Can Help Me Out If you love a Norton Creek Press book, you can help me out by posting a brief review on Amazon.com. The customers at Amazon.com rely on reader reviews and tend to avoid titles that don't have any, and most of my titles don't have any. You can post a review whether you bought the book on Amazon or not, but you have to have an Amazon account. Submitting a review is easy if you're already an Amazon.com customer, and even a couple of lines that mention one or two things you liked in the book will be helpful to other readers. Thanks! You can use these links to go directly to the relevant book review page: Feeding Poultry, Genetics of the Fowl, Gold in the Grass, We Wanted a Farm, Ten Acres Enough, The Dollar Hen, Success With Baby Chicks, Through Dungeons Deep, The Dollar Hen.

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Copyright 2008 by Robert Plamondon. Permission is granted for copying if the material from here to the end of the message is left unaltered.

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This newsletter is sent out occasionally by Robert Plamondon to anyone who asks for it, plus the customers of Norton Creek Press, publisher of:

• Fresh-Air Poultry Houses by Prince T. Woods, M.D.
• We Wanted a Farm by M. G Kains
• Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris
• Gold in the Grass by Margaret Leatherbarrow
• Success With Baby Chicks by Robert Plamondon
• The Dollar Hen by Milo M. Hastings
• Genetics of the Fowl by Frederick B. Hutt
• Feeding Poultry by Gustave F. Heuser
• Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers' Handbook by Robert Plamondon

Sliding Floor for Cleanout of Roost Box

Sliding Floor for Easy Clean-out of Roost Box

What is not shown on the video is a small flap cut into the side of the roost box area opposite the egg door. Cut a rectangular opening about 4 inches high across the 24" plywood side panel. The bottom of the rectangle should be even with the top of the floor to the roost box. Hinge the rectangle on the top side. Install a to keep out predators. Then cut a thin sheet of plywood (1/4 or so) which will slide over the roost box floor. To allow the plywood to cover more area, consider adding a floor to the nest box, then suspending the nest box an inch or so above the roost floor. This will allow you to slide the removable floor under the nest box. Alternatively, you can cut a rectangle out of the sliding floor so that it does not hit the nest box.

The color, three dimensional drawings will show the opening for the cleanout. There is also a photo of a builder who has installed this feature. The size of the plywood floor is roughly 2' x 4'. You will have to cut it down a bit to fit your particular application,.