I’m trying to stay ahead of our baby chicks.  The Jersey Giants we ordered are 2 weeks old now.  After about 4 weeks they need to come out of the brooder as they will be fully feathered and about a third of their adult size.  We have a dozen or so Red Rangers in the broiler coop and they are pretty big birds.  Putting young’ns in with them would be an ugly thing to witness.  So in order to accommodate said providers of growing future dinners, I got busy making the little coop for them that will go into our chicken grow out coop.  We keep the turkeys on opposite sides of the farm from the chickens because turkeys can be susceptible to a disease called “Blackhead”.  Chickens carry it but don’t get it, but it can be fatal for turkeys.  So the chickens need their own world and the turkeys need theirs.

I thought the shelter turned out pretty cute.  We don’t have a source for old barn wood so I used cedar pickets for the cover which will weather gray over time.  I think it almost looks like a building you’d see in “Tombstone.”  I have some sheet metal left over from our barn construction that I’ll put on tomorrow for the roof.  I’m going to put on a flip up door in case we get wind (guaranteed) or nasty rain and hail (also guaranteed).  It doesn’t need any fancy ventilation or insulation as the big coops have it, and we don’t anticipate anyone occupying either turkey or chicken grow out pens in the winter.  I’ll post the completed project when it’s all finished.

This hut will go inside of the fencing below.  We also have shade cloth to bungee over the top so they won’t get roasted in our searing sun.