…copied over from one of my older, abandoned blogs…

OK, I’ve been asked in several other places how I adapted a standard 8′ x 6′ shed for poultrykeeping. So here are a couple of pics…

Looking straight in from the door…

…you can see that I run a “deep litter” system, with a 3″ layer of woodshavings on the floor and barley straw in the “nestboxes”. Woodshavings courtesy of our local builder’s merchant’s mill, £2 a big bag and barley straw from the farm shop @ £2 a bale – works to control blanket weed in the pond, too! The perches are 2″ x 2″ timber with the top corners planed off, resting on 2 x 2s screwed on to the supporting struts of the shed. Beneath them is an 6′ x 2′ light ply droppings board which is covered in old newspaper in summer and paper & straw in winter, for extra warmth. Changed daily in summer, weekly in winter – shredded paper works well, too. There is a “ladder” (an old plank with some short lengths of trim nailed across it) up to the roosts for the big Faverolles girls, who can’t fly, up OR down. And a couple of wide logs tied onto the perches for those bigger feet.

you can see the feed bins (including rabbit food) and feeder, and a couple more “nestboxes” which are an old guinea pig hutch and an old wicker cat box on top, currently housing a broody Pekin. There’s a shelf holding medications, mite powder, egg boxes etc. and I shall be adding some more to hold spare flowerpots etc. The other side is taken up by a window, curtained in the hope they won’t all wake up and call to us at 4 a.m. in June – these are chickens-about-town!

I cut a pophole in the side which is covered by a hinged flap that was once the door into the old guinea hutch, which is now a nestbox. This is secured at night by a chain running up to a hook on the side of the shed. And I built a covered run along the whole of that side of the shed to be somewhere dry for them to hang out in the rain, and create a dusbath/digging area. A resolute selfsown Cherry Plum tree insists on surviving in here too, providing plenty of shade and extra greens!

It hasn’t cost much to do, much less than buying a purpose-built coop & run, and they have a lot more space. The main run is made of 4 10′ fence panels acquired second-hand and stained green, currently arranged as a 30′ x 10′ pen leading west into the garden., but about to be moved to the north along the back of the garden, a swap we intend to do once or twice a year to give the ground a rest. I only change the deep litter a couple of times a year; mostly I just add straw on the top and mix it up a bit so it doesn’t form a yucky crust. So there’s an inexpensive, easy way of setting up, if you happen to be thinking “I wonder if I could give a few chickens a good home?”