Pallet Coop

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獫票楧栮捯洀鉭曮㞱Û뜰⠲쎔딁烊皭〼፥ᙼ䕸忤઱
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This is the Coop that I built out of found materials.
Specifically, the pile of used pallets across from the Napa Auto Parts on 4th
st.  The main goal of this design was to not pay for anything. Granted, at
some point in history I paid for the screws and deck blocks at Home Depot, but
I did not make any special purchases for this Coop and relied only on the
materials that I could find or that were already in my house or back yard.
Those are my old tires, the deck blocks were purchased years ago, the hinges
were from a friends old door, the PVC and re-bar were leftovers from my wife's
winter garden boxes, and planks were off an old fence in the alley and the tree
limbs fell off on their own. My wife calls it the "Ramp of Death" but
it only took a few tries for the girls to get used to it. Its a fairly labor
intensive Coop. The girls , Peg and Dot, wake us up at dawn and one of use has
to go outside, lift the re-bar stake out of its slot, open the door, and use
the re-bar to prop it open for the day. The wall closest to our back door opens
up for poop and egg removal. The girls don't like the roosting bar I installed.
I know this because I have put them up there but they give me a look of fear so
I take them down after about 5 minutes. We give them the whole of our 20' x 20'
back yard to roll around. They were jumping over the fence so we trimmed their
feathers after their 3rd successful escape. You can see in some of the pictures
that our neighbors have 2 hens as well. The 4 girls have daily meetings at the
fence to re-establish dominance, ours are in the lower half of that hierarchy.
You can also see that our hen's tail feathers look weird. The farmer we bought
them from had about 200 hens so he clipped their tail feathers for maintenance.
It has taken 2 months for them to grow back. That gray mess on Dot's side is
from when she rubbed against the house when the paint was wet. They are pretty
cool little pets. Every time I watch them walk up the little gang-plank to go
to bed I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside.