Building the New Coop, Part 4- Chicken Run Move

The new coop has been ready for a few days now and we've been working on the run the past few days. The chickens have finally been released into the run as of a couple days ago and they are happy to have the new outside space. We're still tweaking the whole thing and discovering along the way (and with the help of the chickens) what else needs to be done.

Just a reminder, here is the old coop

We took out the run, all the fencing and the garden boxes. Step by step, the destruction began.

The city had the perfect machine to smash up the old metal shed coop. Someone wanted the scrap metal to recycle, so the clean up of the main part of the shed was pretty easy since someone else took all the metal.

 Here is my garden before we took it apart, that took a lot of time too.

The yellow vehicle is actually sitting where the above garden used to be. We removed all the fencing and wooden boxes and they pushed all the soil and compost further up our yard. The city is now parking some of their vehicles in that spot.

So out with the old and in with the new...

Converting the new shed over was actually a lot easier then moving the run since we had 4 walls and a roof already and there was no need to move the building, just modify it. This is before we started, you can still see the old coop and run in the background.

Building a run on a slope is not an easy task. My husband tackled the challenge well although we probably do not meet building codes and are probably not really level, but it's a chicken run. They do not care and it looks okay.

The biggest challenge was the last side with the human door, that really took some time to figure out how to attach it.

Once we got all 3 walls of the run up and we covered the bottom where it meets the coop with hardware cloth, we realeased the chickens with a temporary ramp. One of the EE's was the first one out.

The broody hen was a little skeptical. She is no longer broody after being in a cage in the new coop two nights. That was an easy fix, break a broody hen by moving her to a new coop. Who knew?

The Buff Orpington was excited to get outside. They had been locked in their coop almost 3 days.

The Rhode Island Red decided that the ramp was not needed.

 Eventually they all made it out.

The Columbian Wyandotte decided flying out was the best option. Yes, chickens can fly!

I locked them up after they went to bed that night and yesterday morning we started working on their covered patio. Lucky chickens!

Building the patio...

Patio complete except for paint

The chickens spending the day out all day with their new patio. We are going to landscape around the run and hide everything below the bottom of the run so the cement blocks will not show.

A closer look at their patio. On rainy days they can go out of the coop and stay under one of the two levels.

After spending the day out I locked them in the run one more time and painted the coop before the sunset last night. That way it could dry over night. We are getting rain today and the next few days so I needed to get it done before it rained and let it dry while they were sleeping. We learned last night that some of the chickens have trouble jumping up to the patio, so put a temporary pallet ramp in there for now until a dry day and time to build a better ramp.

They were happy with the new paint job and they are starting to lay more eggs now since the move, they did slow down a little while they were locked in the coop for a few days.

So the chickens are safe and sound and we're taking a construction break. We have a lot of cleaning up to do and a few more things to add here and there. My garden is a whole other story, I am not even sure where to start there.