Coop De Ville?

Why do chicken coops always have 2 doors? Because if they had 4 doors they would be chicken sedans. Ok... now that that's out of the way, our early winter project was to construct a small coop for a couple of turkeys and possibly a few guineas.

One of the parameters that we set for this project was to use as many recycled and repurposed materials as possible and to keep the expense as low as possible. We used reclaimed concrete blocks and landscape timbers for the base pillars and runner. On top of this is a large oak packing skid from a local tractor dealership. Plywood was scavenged from a local shopping center in the process of demo-ing some old back room shelving and the steel for the roof was reclaimed from a previous barn repair. Most of the 2x4's were already on hand. A few had to be purchased. The window was also a reclaimed item from a french door. The outer run area is constructed of pressure treated 2 x 4's that were removed from a landscape project I worked on in the fall (the owner was gracious in his support of this project). To finish the run and to provide a more mud-free environment, we installed sod that was left over from another landscape project. Basically, the only thing we needed to purchase for this project was hardware, some fencing for the run, and paint! We're looking forward to spring to be able to finish the painting, which will be a typical barn red. Total cost was less than $100 in expenses but almost 40 hours in labor.

Even though it's not quite finished, 2 inhabitants have made a comfortable home inside. It's currently occupied by a pair of Royal Palm turkey hens. These ladies are about 7 months old and will be joined by a suitor in the spring. If all goes well, we should be producing turkey eggs this summer. We are looking forward to having turkey eggs for hatching to produce poults for sale. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has listed this variety of turkey on their watch list of possibly endangered livestock breeds, so we feel that our efforts to help propagate these animals is worthwhile even on our small scale.