Lingering scent of skunk not withstanding, I was up bright and early last Sunday to see how far I could get with the chicken-house-built-from-scraps project I started Saturday.

The house’s base was constructed with 2X6 dimensional lumber and ¾-inch plywood. It was an entrance ramp in its former life, after all. We made the nest boxes with some ½-inch plywood (painted green on one side), some once-lovely spruce molding, and slats that once decked a pallet. I used exterior-grade “drywall” screws and roofing nails to do the nest-box fastening.

The first step on Sunday was to attach the nesting box structure to the floor with a couple of 2x4 cleats screwed to both the floor and the nest box. Next, I attached a 4x8 sheet of ¾-inch plywood (green paint side out) to the back of the house. I screwed it to the edge of the platform and the nest box, and I built a non-conventional 2x6 frame for the back wall and attached it to the floor and the back wall. You might be wondering why I am using 2x6 lumber for the framing … it is simply that we have about a ton of lovely used 2x6s, 2x8s and 2x12s stacked in the barn … and not a single full-length 2x4 in sight.

I found two matching storm windows stashed in the corner of the barn’s loft and framed them fairly conventionally into the front wall before screwing the works to the platform. With top plates and rafters in place, I installed more of the green-painted plywood on the end wall where the nest boxes are located. By the time evening set in, I had the front wall sided with green plywood, too.

All that’s left now is to side the end opposite the nest boxes, frame the human door and install it, install perches, build the chicken door and ramp, and roof it. With any luck I will accomplish that next weekend … and hopefully it will be warm enough to do a little painting, too.

Part 3 of this adventure will hopefully appear early next week.

Photos are once again courtesy of my sweet bride Kate Will.

Last Saturday, after moving the Mulefoot pig house to the pigs’ paddock, I noticed that we hadn’t put much of a dent in the pile of lumber and other miscellanea in the barn. I was considering spending the rest of the day sitting and watching the pigs, chickens and cattle, but Kate wondered whether I might spend the time more productively by building, or at least starting, a chicken house.

I had tripped over the remnants of a wooden ramp (that once connected the mudroom door with the garage) enough times that I decided to use it as the base upon which to build the structure. Of course, the bulky piece was wedged between the box blade on the Kubota’s 3-point hitch and the barn foundation. After a bit of jockeying and levering, I managed to free the platform and tipped the heavy wooden structure up on edge. This would have been uneventful if the terriers and I didn’t just happen to be staring face to face with a couple of startled skunks who had been huddled beneath it.

After a quick assessment of the situation, I decided to lower the platform to the ground before taking the skunks’ fury full-force in the face. I was so hurried that I trapped Woodrow, the Cairn terrier beneath the structure, right along with them. Knowing that Kate would get after me if I let Woodrow battle two skunks alone, I lifted the platform again, narrowly missing the aromatic spray as I propped it with a stick. Woodrow, in a rare moment of obedience, headed out of the barn on my heels.

The scent wasn’t altogether unpleasant at first. It had tinges of musk, onion and other sulfur-containing compounds. As its power dissipated somewhat, and my over stimulated olfactory nerves calmed down, the smell was, well, very skunky.

Since I really wanted to get the chicken house started, I went back into the barn with a 12-foot-long stick. I peeked over the box blade. No skunks. After a bit of investigating and poking, I discovered that the skunks had moved to the space behind the old Allis-Chalmers combine pickup, left leaning against the wall by the farm’s previous owner. In spite of the smell, I horsed that old piece of ramp outside and set to work.

The first task was to spray some of that de-skunking solution on the underside of the ramp to make the work bearable. And it did.

Kate and I managed to install four short legs beneath the platform and cobble a nest box together before it became too dark to see. By the time we packed up the tools, Lucy the Westie and Woodrow had visited the skunks’ new hideout often enough to wear the badge. Luckily, we had plenty of that magic de-skunk formula left and gave them a good going over. It worked again.

Part 2 coming tomorrow, hopefully .

Photos courtesy Kate Will.

Last Saturday was one of those days when I woke up knowing exactly what I was going to do. I had been mulling pig shelter designs for the past couple of weeks … this mulling usually takes place around 2:07 a.m. when the dogs join the local coyote chorus and wake me up. What I decided on was a low, floorless shed that would be relatively easy to move around and that could be stuffed with straw for our little Mulefoot pigs to make into whatever kind of bed they desired.

During one of those sleepless early morning sessions, I mentally inventoried all the used lumber accumulated and left behind by the farm’s former owner. My initial reaction to all the wood was negative … the stacks are messy, and I loathed the idea of removing them from the barn and burning them. But that particular sleepless morning, I realized that we had everything in the barn that I would need to build the pig palace … everything except the roofing, that is. But as luck would have it, the sagging metal-roofed shed that the insurance company made me push in (it was a liability hazard, don’t you know) was still in a heap inside its limestone wall foundation, and most of the 12-foot tin roofing panels were relatively intact.

In a nutshell, this pig house began with a topless shipping crate turned upside down. I cut away part of the front framing to make room for the opening and clad it with some exterior-grade plywood I found … it was painted green on one side, so I installed it green side out. I screwed three purlin-like affairs to the bottom of the crate (roof side) to support and provide purchase for the metal roof. After careful consideration, I decided that 6-foot-long pieces of roofing would be ideal. I used this as an excuse to purchase my first power sheet-metal snips. They only had an el-cheapo version at Tractor Supply, so try as I might to add another Milwaukee tool to my chest, I paid less than $50 for a more or less disposable version. It worked just fine though, and who knows how many times I will really need to cut a lot of sheet metal.

Kate gave me a hand with this project, and she was invaluable as an extra set of hands, photographer, general morale booster and moving contractor. Since I haven’t had the Kubota loader tractor out of the shed for a while, it is kind of buried … lazy old me didn’t want to un-bury it to move the completed pig house to the pig paddock. So with Kate’s help again, we tipped the entire house onto a little foldable garden cart called the Fold-A-Cart and even though the house’s weight caused the cart's tires to compress to almost flat, we rolled the shelter into place in no time.

After stuffing the house with straw and placing the pigs’ dog-crate inside, the growing Mulefoot hogs began to investigate. By the time the temperature had dipped below freezing, they were nestled, four-abreast, inside the dog crate, inside their new house, with the straw all neatly arranged.

Who ever heard of building a palace for $49.99 and a couple of boxes of fasteners? In time, we plan to freshen up the green paint and paint the roof with Rustoleum … Kate wants the roof to be red. What do you think?