Freezing temperature not withstanding, I set to work on the chicken-house-from-recycled-materials bright and early last Saturday. It was a beautiful, clear morning, and since the wind was calm, the cold wasn’t difficult to take. Within a couple of hours, the temperature was in the 50s.

The first order of business was to frame the human-door end of the house. I used more scrap 2x6 material for that. Next, I cut and installed three purlins across the rafters. The purlins were roughly 1x6, although some boards were flitch sawn, so they followed the curves of the tree that provided the lumber. I needed roofing metal in pieces about 5 feet long, so I headed back to the pushed-in shed with a crowbar and brought several long pieces up to the barn to cut. My el-cheapo power sheet-metal shears made the cuts, although the old steel roofing is corrugated so it wasn’t as quick as it might have been. I used six pieces of roofing, and it went on without a hitch.

With the roof on, my attention turned to the human and chicken doors. Since this was supposed to be a project that used things we had on hand, my first task was to locate sufficient hinges. It took a while, but eventually, I found a box of old garage door hinges in the barn’s loft and picked out five. Next, I cut and hung the doors. I used an old piece of machinery chain to hold the chicken door open and an old homemade steel handle for the human-door latch.

The finishing touches, other than painting, included cutting and installing 1x4 and 1x3 material for the corner trim and knocking together a perch inside the house. I also cut 4-inch diameter hand holes for outside access to the nesting boxes. I haven’t created the “doors” for those yet, but I will soon.

Since the Kubota loader tractor is even more buried this week than last week, I decided to try something unconventional to move the chicken house to the chicken yard. I know the folks at Polar Trailer  won’t recommend using their heavy-duty tandem trailers as jacks and house-moving dollies, but I can tell you that the trailer performed flawlessly as the primary tool for moving this 700-pound house.

Within minutes of setting the new chicken house, the hens were curious. Within an hour they had begun to claim it. During chores this morning, I heard a hen laying an egg in it. I can’t wait to paint both the chicken house and Mulefoot pig house … green with red roofs and white trim. Hopefully I’ll have at least one additional warm day to get that done this season.

Photos courtesy of Kate Will.

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.