Our Chicken Coop is Getting an Upgrade

Ok, so these chickens have been squatting for too long now... out of 8 hens, 2 are laying eggs, and only one a day, if that. I expected them not to lay very much as winter is on its way, but I also expected more than 2 of them to pay their rent!!!!

As they eat all that nice, organic, and expensive feed, I decided to build them a little addition!

I've had part of it built for quite a while, but with life and the many projects we face everyday, I hadn't taken the time to really put it all together. So first, I built a nesting box.

I used all scrap wood to build this thing, stuff I had been collecting on my last film job (so much waste in that industry, someone needs to take it home right?). I tried to follow some plans I found online for it but I ended up only using the size of each nest as a baseline to build the rest.

Once this was done, I cut out the entrances for each net, than I brought it to the coop to mark out the same size openings in the actual coop wall I chose to put on this addition.

The idea behind this nest box is that we wouldn't have to go inside the coop anymore for egg collecting, because it opens from the outside. That reminds me I should put a lock on it, the raccoons around here are pretty smart.

We would still open up large door into the coop to clean it out and collect other eggs from the other nest boxes that are inside... but at least you can see from the exterior one if there are eggs in that one.

If you poke your head in there a little, there's a view of the ones that are inside. It was all coincidence I did not plan that out, and as a matter of fact this nest box was almost too big to fit between the door and the fence. Well, the lid was too big really... I wanted it to be larger than the box for water run off, which it is, but it's not as large as I wanted it to be originally.

You see in this next image, the brown side of the coop, right next to the new box, that's the door. It's really close to the lid!!! I made it work though. I just need to cut it down slightly and cut out a little notch for the 2x4 on the other end to make it fit nice an snug.

Even the hinge for the new box was salvaged from that last job! They literally throw everything away, all the time! Even now in these times of uncertainty...

See this... Squatters I say!!! One hen has decided to try out this new box. It works... I have proof of work, yes!