The Poop Coop

So the egg production of the Buff Orpingtons dried up.  One of the hens is going through a moult and the decreasing daylight is also affecting the flock.  Another obstacle is that one of the hens, Rose, turned out to be a rooster.  She (or he) is now known as Edward.  While we are building up the Orpington flock we had the idea of bringing in some additional hens just for their eggs.  So we picked up five ISA Browns from a local place that have their egg laying down to a science.  These birds were just past their laying prime and thus surplus to their needs but just what we were looking for.  These hens are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a Rhode Island White.  For the last 30 years they have been further selected for their egg production and can lay up to 300 brown eggs a year at their peak.  These hens had been raised Amish style, free-ranging on organic feed without any artificial lighting.

We needed a temporary coop to hold these birds for the two-week quarantine period before mixing them with the Orpingtons.  It turned out that the composting toilet built by the previous owners to accommodate a media event took very little converting.  It was already well-ventilated with the main openings facing East-West which is great for maximum lighting.  All I had to do was cover the vents with 1 inch cage wire and some hardware cloth around the roof openings.  Inside I weighed down the two "seats" to block access by predators from underneath.  I added a simple roost and lots of straw.  Since the hens will only be in this coop for a couple of weeks the original functioning of the composting toilet was maintained (not that it gets any use!).  A short run was also constructed.

 

No eggs yet but plenty of manure... I mean, plenty of manure.  BTW, the golf ball was used to help promote egg laying but it looks like it may have promoted a different bodily function! 

Needless to say, this is now known as the "poop-coop".