Big Mice! NOT!

The mouse-proof chicken coop has proved to be a success at keeping mice out of the chicken coop. However, last night it failed to prevent a more serious threat. Marauding raccoons invaded. The clever little varmints discovered that the coop door was held in place by a single wing nut. They were able to unscrew it and open the door. Then they murdered and ate one of the hens. A check of the grounds revealed that they had also tried to dig under a fence and have nearly stripped the Pear tree. This is war. I have called out the troops and traps will be in place by night fall. Death (or relocation) to all raccoons.

Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Recap

My Mouse-proof Chicken Coop is now a year old and has weathered a winter. This photo was taken in late March here in Kansas. I had moved the coop out of the garden for the summer. The window was facing south all winter to maximize sunlight. I had also unplugged the electricity. You can see the electric box just to the right and bottom of the door. The cord has been tucked inside and the box sealed up. Note that I have covered the bottom wire panels with Plexiglas and fiber board. This stopped air filtration and gave the girls a place to play in cold weather. (I had removed them for the summer and had to put them back on.)

All in all I have been pleased with it. It was a job to build but I think it was worth it.

Pros

1. It is attractive. (Kind of reminds me of an Avion trailer)
2. It is much easier to take apart and move than the old coop.
3. The roof is much lighter. (I about put my back out moving the old one.)
4. The height makes it easy to feed, water, and collect eggs.
5. The PVC pipe & hardware cloth floor stays cleaner and cleans up easily.
6. The plastic dishpans in the nest boxes are the perfect size and also clean up easily.
7. The porcelain grill that I converted to a water heater was worth it's weight in gold.
8. An electric outlet worked well. (Night lights are plenty good to light the coop in the night)

Cons

1. For some reason the girls don't like the roosting pole. (Most of them sit on the floor of the pen. May be it is too high? I may try building them a ladder to get up on it.)
2. The chickens tore up the porcelain light fixture in nothing flat. (It is a wonder they were not electrocuted. Very dangerous. An outlet works better)

And now the answer to the $64,000 question: Is it mouse-proof?

Yes and No.

Mice can get into the coop. I have trapped a couple. However, they have not chewed any holes in the coop or found any way to move in. They were just visiting. I will settle for a strategic victory.

(One more follow up)

Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Chapter 7

After what seemed like years I finally had my coop built but it still lacked chicken amenities. I used PVC piping and some 1" mesh hardware cloth to frame up part of the floor for the coop. It sits on the edge of the 2x4 panels that the coop also sits on. A little trap door in the floor opens and closes so I can trap the girls upstairs if I need to get hold of them.


A piece of plywood made up the rest of the floor so that there was a platform for food, water and a nesting box to sit on. The nest box was a double-decker. I made it just the right size for a couple of dishpans to fit in it. Then when the nest boxes got dirty I could simply take the dishpans out and wash them out. I installed a roosting pole across the coop. I also made a ladder of 2x2s and hardware cloth for them to get up into the coop. Each one of these little jobs took another afternoon or two, of course. Finally what house would be complete with out curtains? To cover the window in hot weather I clothes pinned a towel to a bungee cord that I could hang over the outside of the window. That just left the electrical work.

I wanted to provide a light that would work on a timer so that the girls would lay better during the winter. I also wanted to provide a heater for water so I wouldn't have to be thawing out fonts in the winter time. I had installed electrical boxes and conduit in the walls so mice would not be able to get at it. Now I needed to wire it up. I used an old extension cord and left a short piece of cord with the male end hanging out of the coop to plug in to a cord from the house. The other end was wired up to a cheap porcelain light fixture inside the house. I used a plastic trouble light cage to protect the bulb. Big mistake. It seems that chickens are attracted to lights. When I finally got the girls in and tried the light they tore up the porcelain fixture in a few days. I think they may have been trying to roost on it or something. I ended up replacing the fixture with a simple electrical outlet and a night light on a timer.

If you have ever looked at what an electric heater costs you know that they are bulky and very expensive. So of course I decided to make something a little better (cheaper) but it had to be mouse-proof. The old wooden box and light had kept the water from freezing but it was a perfect mouse playground. Fortunately I never throw anything away. I had picked up a small round porcelain hamburger grill at a garage sale. The picture below is of one that is similar but mine was an older model. I turned it upside down, pulled out the electric heating element and replaced it with a cord and light bulb socket. To keep the mice from chewing on the exposed cord, I threaded the cord through a long screen door spring before wiring everything together. A 40 watt appliance bulb provided more than enough heat to keep water from freezing. Cost about $5.00.

After 3 months and about $200 in materials the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop was finished.

(To be continued)

The Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Chapter 6

Covering the coop with aluminum was a huge time eater. Spring was coming chicks were arriving and I am covering one side of a wall every few days. Oh yeh. The other problem was that I was running out of flashing. I started out with a 5o foot by 20" roll plus about 20 feet of recycled siding flashing. I was going to need another 50 foot roll and of course it wasn't on sale any more. I ended up underestimating material every where though not by much. Just enough to have to buy another box of nails or a few more bolts or some more tubes of caulking. Every time I ran out I had to make a trip to town and that took more time. However, things were beginning to take shape.

All the panels were insulated with Styrofoam and left over insulation board from another project. As I was happily building this aluminum box and leaving a window to give the ladies some light I remembered a camping trip I took when I was in high school. We built a solar oven with aluminum foil. We baked a really great pizza in it. It was an aluminum box too. It occurred to me that I might be making a great chicken cooker so I decided to add some vents above the window to allow heat and moisture to escape. Another trip to town. I found some cheap vents and installed them on both side of the panel. More time.

The roof panel was just a flat panel. To get it to mesh with the rest of the house I nailed a couple of 2x2s to the inside to set down into the house. It was bigger then the old coops roof and I gave it a overhang above the window. In spite of its size it was much lighter than the old roof. (Don't use old asphalt shingles on a portable building. Very heavy.) The new roof was really light. So light that a good Kansas wind was going to send it flying to North Dakota. I decided that I would use bungee cords to hold it on and since I needed something to hook them to I would use drawer handles to give me a place to grab the roof when I moved it. Its a crime how much a simple little handle costs. I decided that it would be more fun to make some. I had some pieces of aluminum stock from a door grill that I had replaced. (Did I mention that I never throw anything away?) They were fairly easy to cut and hammer into shape. It just took a little time. I made an extra one for the door.

Up to now time had been the big problem. The door was scary. I created another little insulated panel but had to guess at the correct size to make the frame. There was no good way to determine the exact amount of clearance needed for the flashing. (Did I mention that I was running low on my second roll of flashing?) My door ended up fitting a bit tight but it was just enough to keep the door from opening accidentally. Cool. Hinges were a bit of a problem. They were not aluminum so I was afraid that they would corrode the sheeting. I used a piece of left over bicycle tubing rubber and installed it between the hinges and door clasp.

I was getting close to finishing but the devil is in the details and there were lots more details than I was counting on. (Did I mention that the chicks had arrived and were growing by leaps and bounds?)

(to be continued)

The Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Chapter 5

Another feature that I wanted to ad to this coop was electricity. My old coop had none. I got really tired of going out before dawn every morning in the winter to retrieve frozen water fonts and fill them with warm water. Finally I jury rigged a homemade water heater from a wooden box and a 4o watt light bulb and added a trouble light on a timer to give the ladies a little more light during the short days. I had to cut a hole in the door to run an extension cord in and of course the mice liked all this too. They hid in the box, chewed on the electrical cords and generally made themselves annoying. I wanted to include built in electric with this coop so I installed outlet boxes connected with metal conduit to run electrical before I covered the frame.

Once I had the frames build I was ready to start applying the aluminum flashing to the sides and things really began to be complicated. The first problem was how to cut the flashing. Tin snips were one possibility but they tend to make the edges a bit rough. I finally found a hint on a web site that suggested scoring the flashing with a utility knife and the bending it on the scoring until it broke. This worked beautifully. I found that a linoleum knife, a straight edge and a pair of gloves was about all I needed to cut it clean and straight. I would score the flashing with the knife several times and then bend it on the score a few times to break it.



This even worked when I needed to cut holes in the flashing for vents. I still needed the tin snips for small cuts.
The biggest problem was that the flashing was 20" wide. The walls were about 24" x 48". This meant that every wall had to be pieced together from at least two pieces of flashing on both the inside and the outside. Each piece had to be measured and cut and fitted. This took about four times as long as it looked like on paper.
The other problem was bending the flashing around the sides of the frame. I tried scoring it but that weakened it and caused it to break. I finally came up with the idea of using a piece of angle iron and a rubber mallet to pound the edges around the frame.
Everywhere that the flashing is pieced it needed to be caulked and nailed. I put a bead of silicon caulking under each seam, drilled pilot holes, and nailed the seams closed with aluminum nails every few inches. In spite of all the hassel of measuring and fitting all the pieces together working with aluminum was a lot easier than I had expected. It just took loads more time than I thought it would.

(To be continued)

The Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Chapter 4 -Framing

I started out by framing up each wall panel. I ripped the 2x4s to 2x2 and used decking screws to fasten them together. The corner clamps made keeping things square a lot easier. I countersunk all the screws so they would not touch the aluminum. In reading about working with aluminum I discovered that it reacts with lots of materials. I wasn't sure exactly what materials would corrode it so I tried not to let it come in contact with anything if I could help it. I also installed nailing strips where the aluminum had to be nailed down or coop equipment was going to be mounted. The front an back walls needed to have carriage bolts installed in the ends. These fit into the side wall panels and hold the walls together. In order to keep them from being shoved inside the wall a block had to be put in to stop them from moving. Sounds easy enough just slap a block over the head of the bolt and screw it down. By the time I finished, however, I needed to block them in three different ways. (I should have realised at this point that I was going to run into a few snags.)  (To be continued)

The Quest for the Mouse-proof Chicken Coop: Chapter 3

The next step was to design a coop that would provide the clucky ladies with all the creature comforts but not provide other creatures with comfort. Mice are not the only creatures that invade chicken coops. Raccoons, possums, cats, coyotes, foxes, and dogs are also looking for opportunities to come in and they are more interested in chicken dinners than in chicken feed. Everyone loves chickens. They are more popular than Paris Hilton and a lot more useful.

The old house did pretty well keeping big critters out as long as I remembered to shut the coop door at night. I decided to use the basic design of the old coop. It would still be 4x4. The sides would still be held together with bolts that could be unfastened to tear it down and move it. The materials, however, had to change. They had to be mouse-proof. The old house had been built with exterior siding left over from building a large shed. It looked good but the mice chewed through it like cardboard. It was also pretty heavy. Lighter would be better.

About the only thing that mice don't chew is metal so I decided to use aluminum. I had never worked with aluminum before but that didn't slow me down. I looked around and finally went with 20" wide aluminum roof flashing. I found a 50' roll for $45 dollars. I also ran across some aluminum siding soffit material at a garage sale for a couple of dollars. Add few construction grade 2x4s some screws, aluminum roofing nails and other assorted hardware and I thought I was ready to make some sawdust. "...what fools these mortals be."

(to be continued)