This will be a picture heavy post but first the story behind why we need the chicken coop remodel!  The week before we headed to Disney, we discovered on our video that a possum had gotten into the chicken coop. The kids and I did a quick fix on the door by placing several cement blocks to keep the bottom from being pulled out.   We knew that once we returned, we would need to put some serious work in to make the door stronger.
While we were at Disney, one night 3 of the chickens got locked outside.  We also discovered that the coop did not provide enough shade for days with temperatures in the mid 80s.  This meant we needed to figure out a way to add some shade.
We returned on Monday from DIsney with plans to spend today (Saturday) working on remodeling the coop.  But first more excitement. On Tuesday night we saw a racoon on the chicken camera. On Wednesday night it was joined by two others. And at least one racoon got in the chicken run. We were thankful that the chickens were locked safely up so nothing was harmed. Zach and I discovered on Thursday that something had pulled out couple of nails at a low corner and that is how the racoon was able to get in. Thursday night we set a trap and caught at one of the racoons.

Today we started by add strength and a new latch to the door.

Next up we used material that was already here to upgrade the chicken run. We decided to try and increase the head space so that we could easily get in and out as well as add shade for the chickens.

We are all very pleased with the result. The longer boards were found in the rafters of my building, chicken wire was recycled from the chicken run (it was originally the top), the long metal piece was purchased but not needed when we updated Matt’s Beatle building and we even cut up a couple of landscape timbers that we decided are not needed!  Total cost $0!!!!!!!!

In other exciting news, meet our three new chicks. They are currently almost two weeks old.

“Lucky”

“Honey”

“Biscuit”