Coop #2 and moving day for chickens!

We bought a property consisting of 5 acres, pretty much on top of the highest hill above Adelaide. A bit of a change from being at the foothills to the top of the hill.

The 5 acres was so we could expand our chicken numbers and fortunately the new place had an existing chicken coop. We can see the coop from our bedroom window, similar to our old place.

There are a few problems with this new place, firstly, fencing is quite poor and being next to a main road, we didn't want the chickens walking willy nilly into oncoming traffic, plus, this area is known for foxes. Secondly, the previous owners left the coop as it was, with all the dry litter.

All this litter had to be removed. We didn't want our chickens catching any diseases from the previous chickens.

 Unfortunately, the litter depth was about a foot deep! That was a lot of digging!

Not to mention dusty, I had to put on a face mask to stop breathing in all the dust. 
See that rust mark on the wall? That was the height of the litter. I dug down until I hit dirt.

The place was then power washed with a high pressure washer and sprayed liberally with Virkon. We allowed the Virkon to dry onto the surfaces.

After this, I spread around some poultry dust on the ground and raked in lightly.

The wooden beams were then painted, just to give an easy to clean/less porous surface.

Then it was time to bug bomb it. I just used a Mortein bug bomb. Left it for the day and returned the next day.

In the meantime, hubby was busy digging a trench to hold the fencing in. Since there are foxes, we are burying the fence wire. Unfortunately for our chickens, they get a significantly smaller roaming area. Before they had the whole backyard, now they get an apple tree and some bushy plants to play in. When we have sold the old house and have more time, we will increase their enclosure size.

Door was situated here as there was concrete in the way of the trench. Door was made of whatever scrap wood we had lying around.

Limit of their enclosure. We are filling the trench with rocks and bricks for now until we can back fill it with soil. Also a bit easier if we want to change the fence line.

Perches installed. Decided on two low level ones as in the previous house, they all wanted to sleep on the highest perch. This caused issues when they wanted to come down though, it usually ended up with a chicken using another chicken as a landing cushion. Plus Flopsy is the mean hen and likes to pick on any other chicken on her roost. Usual bed times at the old place consisted of:

-Flopsy being the first up onto the highest perch and settles down
-Effie or Chicky will join her later
-Flopsy will get up, walk over to Effie or Chicky and peck them
-Usually the other hen falls off or jumps off
-The other hen tries to get back up to the top perch
-Flopsy again pecks her until the newcomer falls down
-This goes on again and again until it gets so dark that the other hen just stays put and Flopsy gets tired

The pop hole was widened, thanks to Hubby's dad wielding the angle grinder (angle grinders are so scary). The automatic door will be installed in that location to provide extra security against foxes at night.

Temporary nesting box using some shelves. I want to make another nesting box which I can access from the outside. Fresh sandy loam was placed over the base of the coop. I find that this is the best for drying out poo and makes it easier to scoop up.

Moving day itself was a disaster. We were planning on moving the chickens in the Saturday afternoon allowing them to settle for a few hours before bedtime. Well, things didn't go to plan...we were busy moving furniture during the day and didn't anticipate how long it would take us to unload the trailer and drive back.

It was nearly dusk by the time we got back and we had the arduous task of capturing the chickens and stuffing them into boxes. Penguin, DumDum and DeeDee ended up in the cage. They got placed in the back of the ute. The three big chickens got stuffed into a box together. Since they all are afraid of Flopsy, we had an attempted escape by Chicky and an actual escape by Effie (she just burst through the top of the box). Buffy and Pippy were in a box together.  It was a rather warm evening and despite the airholes, I had the air conditioner on just to try and keep them cool. When we finally left in two cars it was dark. I had Buffy and Pippy in my car. It was a 30 min drive to the new place.

With that drive, Buffy kept on trying to escape and calling out. He was scared and didn't want to be shut up in the box. He finally broke his way through the top of the box about a quarter of the way there. I ended up having him in my lap as I drove. Strangely, he was extremely calm and quiet when on my lap. Even with the lid open, Pippy just stayed put. I think she might have gone to sleep on the ride.

It was fully dark by the time we arrived. The three big chickens fared the worst on the ride, Flopsy bullying the others and being big chickens, felt the heat more. We put them into the airy coop to cool down. 

Penguin and the other two were fine in the cage. They were all lying down and snoozing. They didn't seem all that bothered by the move. 

All the chickens, bar Buffy were placed into the coop. Food and water was dispensed and the thirsty chickens drank their fill. They quickly discovered the perches and hopped up and settled down for the night. Buffy was again placed in his cage to be separated from Penguin (by this stage they were fighting uncontrollably and had to be constantly separated).

The next day we heard them crow and woke up early to check on them.

They stayed in the coop for hours. We had to entice them out of the pop hole into the run. The araucanas especially did not want to leave the coop. Penguin as usual got his cuddles in the morning.

We quickly found out that they hated their new small nest box, despite all the ping pong ball "eggs". So a cardboard box was put into place. You can tell which one was the popular box.

Buffy can't understand it. He spent some time making a nest in the smaller box, it was the right size for him!

As all the hens were shunning his first nest box, he decided to show them the "better" nest box

As Buffy was still fighting with Penguin, we hastily bought an off the shelf chicken coop from Bunnings. Those things are tiny! There is barely space for Buffy and he's a bantam size chicken! This coop was installed in the run under the apple tree. At least this way he can interact with the other chickens during the day, and not get into any fights with Penguin. We will have to build him his own run and give him some other bantams of his own. That is on the long list of things to do...

Lessons learned from moving chickens:

1. Prepare all your boxes before hand. Give them plenty of airholes or put a wire mesh on the top

2. Secure the top of your boxes

3. Move them before it gets dark, I would still move them late afternoon, but definitely before dark.

4. Yes to moving them on Saturday, it meant we could keep an eye on them on Sunday.

5. Chickens are quite adaptable, they settled in to sleep quite quickly. Next afternoon, they are digging away in the run.

I hope the chickens like it in their new home!