This week’s entry in the How to Live Sustainably series: How
to build a chicken coop in 157 easy steps. Note that everyone is different, and
not every step might apply to your situation.
1.) Decide
you want to keep chickens. Perhaps you want animals to provide you with
companionship and entertainment until you get hungry. Perhaps you want to play
tricks on animals that lack the wherewithal to be indignant, allowing you a
certain freedom from guilt. Perhaps you
want free protein for when the Eurozone collapses, oil prices skyrocket again,
another Icelandic volcano erupts or the Zombie Apocalypse takes place.
2.) Decide
what kind of chicken you want to have; there are docile and aggressive breeds,
white and brown egg layers, and breeds that look like they stuck their beak in
an electrical socket. Many of the more bizarre-looking breeds are purely for
show, by people who enjoy that sort of thing. Others were bred for fighting, by
people who apparently love the mess of chicken slaughter without having to
bother with the inconvenience of eating fried chicken afterwards.
3.) Decide
what kind of chicken run you need. Some people build a mobile run, basically a
cage whose one end rests on the ground and whose other end rests on wheels, and
which can be picked up and dragged. With a mobile run, you don’t need much
space, for the chickens strip the small area and poop all over it in short
order, but the next day you can roll their cage to a different patch of ground
as the first patch recovers. The
disadvantage, though, is that you need to move the run, and as it’s dark when I
leave for work in the morning and dark when I get home, there’s no time to do
so; I would kill myself wandering across the land in the dark even looking for
a chicken run that didn’t keep moving around.
4.) Dig
your trench. As we plan to have as many as six chickens, we want to have at
least 50 square meters, so I had to dig a perimeter of 30 meters (5 x 10 x 2) half
a metre deep to keep out foxes. Try to remember that there is now a giant
trench on your property, and try to make sure no one sees you when you tumble
to the ground. Remember: how you got all muddy is a long story, and no one can
prove anything.
5.) Take
scrap wood and begin hammering it together. Take careful measurements of all
your wood, calculate the length and depth of each piece, and plan your coop
accordingly, so that no piece of wood is wasted.
6.) Realise
that much of the wood has rotted. Start over, but mixing scrap wood and lumber
purchased from the hardware store, costing more than a year’s worth of eggs.
7.) Accidentally
step on a nail and hop to the car on one foot to drive to the A&E, assuring
your daughter that you are fine and no one can prove anything.
8.) Invite
your mother-in-law, who knows some carpentry, to inspect your progress so far,
and collect your dignity as she points and laughs at you.
9.) Start
over.
10.) Bring your
electric saw, electric drill and other power tools outside to piece the wood
together into a workable coop, with hen boxes and door.
11.) Rush the
tools inside as it starts to rain, frantically wiping them off so no water shorts out the electronics.
12.) Wait until
it stops raining. Bring tools outside again.
13.) Feel the first drops of Irish weather again;
frantically gather up the power tools and run inside.
14. - 155.) Repeat steps 10 – 14, putting the coop together a few pieces
of wood at a time over a period of several months.
156.) When coop is done, ask a very nice friend to help you pull a fence
of chicken wire around the run, and fill in the gap on either side of the fence
with stones, thus discouraging foxes and getting rid of the boulders that have
been our most prolific garden crop.
157.) Write a blog post asking if anyone has chickens they’d like to sell.
2 comments:
Enjoyed that immensely. You didn't mention that if everything you do just happens to turn out successfully and you do decide to keep chickens, that they will straight away proceed to wreck it all (my experience).
Hilarious! Thank you.
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