Jaime posted earlier about the 100 new baby chicks we just got in the past week. As with everything, the more you add the more you need. Our existing chicken houses just would not accomodate this many new birds, so a new one had to be built. We decided that a 10 foot by 24 foot house should leave us some room to spare for some future growth.

Junior (local helper) and I headed out to get started on it early Saturday morning, and by that evening we had it all framed up and the floor laid, minus roof trusses which had not been constructed yet. It was a truly good thing both Junior and I had some experience in construction in years past.

Monday the weatherman predicted rain storms, and was actually dead on target, so first we tarped the top of the new building, then we headed to the workshop to work indoors building the roof trusses.

Tuesday was yet another downpour so we just called it a lost day as far as the new chicken house was concerned and worked inside the house and shop.

Wednesday we brought all of the new roof trusses out of the shop, hoisted them up on top of the building and got moving nailing them down and then covering everything with 1/2 inch plywood. We had some time left over so we proceeded to frame up an inside room which will ultimately be used as a infra-red heated brooder room with 4 brooder units capable of handling 200 birds. But thats another story for later.

So, today is Thursday and we have a basically completed chicken house with 3 very large holes in one side where the roosting box and rolling egg delivery systems will fit nicely. We had not yet constructed those, so Jaime and I cut all the pieces (from plans I had already designed), and went about putting it all together. Tomorrow, Junior and I will bolt those systems into place, build the catwalk for egg pickup, and get started with painting and roofing the, then finished, chicken house.

Some pictures of the house in various stages of completion are below for your enjoyment or amusement.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.