Open-air Coop Measurements

Once you know how many birds you want to house, the next thing is roost space. Below I've given an example of a 16' deep open-air coop.  The width could be any size, 8', 10', 16' it just depends on how much roost space you need.  Give each bird 12" of roost space, you don't want birds pushed up against the outside walls in winter.

Facing South East?

Why is the Blog called Facing South East?  Well I couldn't think of a name until I was working on where my chicken coop will be in the yard.  

The thing about open air poultry houses they need to face South East, at least that's what it says in the book.  So I thought I'd check for my part of the world.  After a short search I found weatherspark.com, it gives you all the information on weather patterns and especially wind directions.

Wind Directions Over the Entire Year

Values do not sum to 100% because the wind direction is undefined when the wind speed is zero.

So the book from 1924 is still correct today.  The least amount of wind comes from the South East and East.  I'm going to point my open front half way between the two.

Sometime in the next 6 weeks I need to build my main chicken coop.  Hopefully the snow melts and it`ll be sooner rather than later.  

After searching for designs online I came across open air or open front poultry houses.  These date back to the early 1900`s.   In 1924 poultry expert Prince T. Woods published `Fresh-Air Poultry Houses`.  It has been re-printed by Norton Creek Press and is available through their website or Amazon.

This is a modern version of a woods house, located in Maryland, USA.   The front is hardware cloth mesh and is like that all year.

This coop is 16`x8` mine will be 15`x7` so I don`t need to get planning permission.  Hopefully my construction will look as nice as this one.  

American troops coming back to New York

Crowded ship bringing American troops back to New York harbor after V-Day, 1945

A man browsing for books in Cincinnati's cavernous old main library. The library was demolished in 1955.

Eat your heart out Harry Potter

1888 Religious Divide

Found this on twitter. I'm a big fan of historic B&W photography. 

Graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, who were not allowed to be buried together. Roermond, Netherlands, 1888.

I guess they must have loved each other.

Our 2014 Bird Selections Update

All my orders have been placed and are should be ready for pickup Easter weekend.

I was going to keep it really simple but my grand kids and wife had a little input.

6x White Chanteclers and 6x Ridley Bronze (turkeys) was my original plan. Then a couple my grand kids wanted more colour and selected Swedish Flower Hens (Blommehöns) (6x).  Added to that my wife has it in her head that white eggs are better tasting than brown.  So the white egg laying SFH fits in perfectly.  No two SFH's are the same so it will be easier for the grand kids to identify and name them.

Photo from Southern VA Poultry

The next problem was our egg supply wouldn't kick in until fall.  Enter 4x - 20 week old Ready-to-Lay red sex-link pullets.  Leghorn white layers were available but they are a bit skittish, so I took the calmer option. My wife (Chris) will have to wait until fall for white eggs ;-)

White Rock X meat birds will be purchased in the summer.  Not pulling the chicken tractor around in cold weather.

William Harley and Arthur Davidson, 1914

I wonder how much those two bikes would be worth today?

William Harley and Arthur Davidson, 1914