Thanks to Julia Kelly,
in the snowy north Idaho town of Rathdrum, for these photos
of the coop she built last summer by modifying the A-frame
coop plans we sell, and also details of how she keeps
chickens in the winter.
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"They are doing just swell in all the
snow. They used to live in the barn, which you can see in the
background, but when I increased the flock size to eight hens
I just couldn't stand the quantity of chicken poop in the barn
any more (and the utter annoyance of laying my hand in a poop
too often). They were not happy about being relocated to the new
chicken yard last summer, and five of them lost all their back
feathers in rebellion, but they all feathered out again beautifully
just in time for the cold weather.
As you can see, their yard is fenced in 4-ft
electroplastic poultry netting from Premier Fence. I don't have
it electrified because I don't need to keep out predators, and
because they cannot see a solid bar at the top they don't know
where it ends - I guess they think it goes up endlessly into the
sky because they have never flown over it (and in the barn they
routinely flew up to roost on top of 8-ft-tall cabinets).
The coop has an 8'x8' footprint, so the eight
hens have 8 sq ft each of floor space, which is plenty even in
the snow when they don't go outside.
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