I kinda let the cat out of the bag yesterday about getting some chickens. Now here's the whole story. . .
I helped my neighbor build an garden enclosure to keep the birds out (very similar to the one I built last spring - the neighbor loved it). Well, as that project was just completed and we were splitting a sixer another neighbor called about ordering some chicks. I was planning on building a coop and splitting an order with him. Well, the first neighbor overheard the conversation and quickly told me a story.
She has some friends the next county over that has chickens (one year old) that they wanted to get rid of (coop included). It seems that they just couldn't dedicate the time needed, and also wanted to do some traveling. So this morning, me and the afore mentioned neighbors set out to get the coop and chickens.
The coop was discribed as 4 foot by 5 foot by five foot. Well, not exactly. The thing weighed around 8 to 900 pounds!!! It was not built to be "portable" and only had six 2x4 legs that were about 14 inches long. The four of us (the owner included) could bearly budge it. Fortunatly I had thought to toss in a chain hoist "just in case".
Using some 8 foot t-posts as levers and an additional tow chain (I keep it in my "trunk-o-stuff" in my Excursion) along with the chain hoist we were able to move the thing and not rip off the spidery legs. It also helped that my little 10 foot trailer was a tipping kind of trailer that put the edge right on the ground. I'd guess it took close to an hour of wrestling that beast on the trailer but we got it on.
Once I got it home, while still on the trailer, I cut some 2x4s and screwed them to the legs to reinforce the legs and also act as skids. Then I parked the Excursion and hooked up a lawn tractor to the trailer so I could manuver it better to where the coop would be placed.
I did not take any pictures of the loading process and really didn't think about pictures until we were ready to drop the coop. So here are a few pics.
The first picture does not really give a good picture of how big this thing really is. I should have asked my neighbor to back out of it. We've got a bit of forced perspective going with him in the forground plus! He's seven feet tall. Look at the guy in the trees to the right to get a better idea of how big the the thing is. Also, the trailer is a 10 footer. That's also a really big ass lawn tractor.
The next picture shows the coop passing the tipping point as we're moving it toward the back. Please note the guy back in the trees. He's using a come-a-long chained to a tree to pull the coop off. It's going much better with the "skids" screwed to the legs.
Next is a picture showing the tow chain wrapped around the lower legs and the wire from the come-a-long.
And it's down:
I put out some chicken scratch and water (the bag of scratch and waterer were thrown in from the previous owners) and let the ladies (and two gentleman) out to see their new home.
Unfortunately the camera took a dump at this point. I counted a total of 20 yard birds. I now gots me some chickens!
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