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Quote of the Day: From the Chicken House to the Cathedral
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. — Frank Lloyd Wright.
I do like a man who has his priorities straight. Even if I’m not one of them.
Frank Lloyd Wright was, while not exactly a Southwest Pennsylvanian, often claimed as one of ours on account of Fallingwater, a masterful evocation of his theory of architecture in harmony with nature, built for the Kaufmann family of regional department store fame. It’s only about 70 miles down the road from me, and I’ve visited several times. Every time I do, I marvel at how he did it and how he even conceived of such a thing. I wonder at its grace, at the impossibility of thousands of tons of concrete cantilevered over a natural waterfall (and at the windows — OMG, the windows!). And I support the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s efforts to “fix” the inevitable structural failures and shore up Wright’s vision. As of the early 21st century, using modern post-tensioning techniques, they seem to have solved most of the problems. Let’s hope Fallingwater makes it through the next thousand years just like Westminster Abbey and doesn’t end up like Beauvais Cathedral (begun in 1225), which fully collapsed twice before its eventual completion and which has been the subject of ongoing efforts for 800 years to keep it whole and standing.
Today, I entered into a new phase of my microfarming life:
Chickens.
Well, I’ve had “a” chicken now for the better part of a year. His name is Chinggis, and he’s one of a pair of starving, frozen Gallus gallus domesticus I found by the side of the road in late January 2021. (This is me, so of course I did!) His comb had frozen solid and largely snapped off. His feet were red and swollen. His bones were visible all over. But he was feisty! His companion — a hen — was much worse off and ultimately didn’t survive. I give Chinggis credit, though. Pretty sure he protected her, and at least when she died, it was in a comfy, enclosed, draft-free spot in my garage and not being eaten alive by coyotes or racoons. A rooster “knight errant,” if ever there was one, my Chinggis.
Once he was settled, we worked out a pretty nice routine: He’d spend the night in an enormous dog crate (I have two Great Pyrenees — so, that enormous), and then during the day he’d go into a 4’x8′ chicken run I built specially for him, one I moved every two or three days to give him fresh grass to scratch at and into which I’d throw scratch grains and mealworms for him to dig up. He thrived. And became ever handsomer:
But I know he’s been lonely.
And so, for the past several months, I’ve been looking for a couple of hens to keep him company. And I’ve had three different offers of two or three of same, all of which have fallen through due to one thing or another.
Meanwhile, mindful of Wright’s injunction, I’ve been building the chicken house:
Yeah. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to building a structure to the glory of God. Honest to that same God, I started out determined to build it from scraps and stuff that I had laying around the farm. And to begin with, I did: The posts; the perimeter boards (there’s a name for them, but I can’t remember what it is — no doubt someone reading this can set me straight); the floor; the windows — retrieved from my “old window graveyard” in the barn (doesn’t every girl worth her salt have one of these?); the 2×4 framing. All laying about. All reused. All recycled.
But.
Then I thought — I’m having so much fun with this: What the hell? And I decided to enjoy myself and build the loveliest chicken house I possibly could, and damn the expense. Hence, the T-111, the trim, the hardware (oh, I discovered a few years ago on the driveway gates I built that it’s possible to spend more on the hardware than it is on the lumber), and the steel roof to match the house. And even the expensive paint.
Lord, I had a great time.
And, yet.
Chinggis was lonely.
A week or so ago, my veterinarian (a farm girl herself) came to the rescue and offered me two hens.
There’s a back story. (This is me, so of course there is!) Apparently, these two hens are “red sex-linked,” a cross between the Rhode Island Red and the White Plymouth Rock. It seems it’s easy, with this hybrid, to tell the males from the females at birth by the colors. (Any of you who’s ever tried to sex small chicks will probably understand why this might be a helpful tell.)
Red sex-linked are prolific layers and generally rather nice birds. However, these particular two lovelies were being savagely henpecked by their peers. (Yes. The term “henpecked” was originally coined to describe the vicious behavior of female on female. Go figure.) My veterinarian didn’t like to see that, as their feathers were pulled out and their skin was torn apart, so she offered them to me.
And I took them.
I picked them up yesterday morning on a different kind of “chicken run.” Brought them home. Put them in the coop. Put Chinggis in a cat carrier in the coop for the first 24 hours while the girls acclimated. (Lord, he was pissed. He stomped heavily around, moaned a lot, and didn’t even crow this morning.) Meanwhile they settled in:
And so, this morning, I woke up and went out to check on them, and:
My first egg!
Shortly thereafter, another one:
I let Chinggis out of jail, and they’ve been lovely together since. Relaxed and mellow. Charming.
Meanwhile, I took my first ever farm egg and decided to use it for breakfast. A very British breakfast. One appropriate to Remembrance Sunday, and one that will evoke memories for British children of my generation and before:
Boiled egg and soldiers:
(Please ignore the pcat on the ptable. That’s just Psymon. He’s pincorrigible.) Also, yes. I enjoyed my repast with coffee. Hoping that those who love me will overlook that rather continental affectation.
Lord, it was delicious. Just like the breakfasts my grandpa and I used to enjoy in the 1950s.
And in his honor, because I loved — above all things — taking my teaspoon and bashing in the top of the newly boiled egg, and because he always gave me a second chance to do so, I turned my egg over when I’d finished it so I could enjoy bashing the top in again:
Here’s to childhood memories and — most of all — to enjoying the simple, achievable things in life. Most of us can’t build the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, St. Peter’s, or the Colosseum. But we can build what matters to us and our families.
And if what, or all, we can do is build a little chicken house, then perhaps we should be satisfied with that.
Published in General
The perimeter boards are called rim joists. The ones that support the floor joists are sometimes called headers.
Did you build the roof trusses?
That seems to be unusual wall framing between the top of the walls and the roof framing. Coop construction wasn’t part of my education. Is that style of framing typical for chicken coops?
And yes, you should be proud of your accomplishment. The hens should show their appreciation by being good layers.
Before you had indoor facilities, was the outdoor one brick? Heated seat(s)? One or two hole?
OK, maybe one, two, or…too many questions.
Harmony in the coop. Chinggis for President. Make America Something To Crow About! MASTCO!
We have an expert on post-tensioning in the office. I asked him about this, and he said they were most likely using long bolts rather than tendons. Most post tensioning cables are laid in what are essentially sine curves, and there’s no way to drill that.
Now I’m ready for lunch and it’s only 10:30am!! What a woman!
Every once in a while you lapse into a Britishism that I have to look up. It expands my horizons. “Stroppy” is a good one.
Would you like to enlighten the rest of us? I’m too lazy to check myself.
Obstreperous. Onery.
Yes. Unreasonably loud and argumentative.
Rim joists!!! That’s the term! I always want to call them “sills” but I think sills are oriented flat, rather than on edge like a joist. Thank you.
Yes, I built the whole thing.
It is a bit odd, and I have no idea if it’s proper or not (however, it did seem to work). The main reason was that I built the walls/roof in modules that I could handle by myself, since I framed them up on the reasonably level driveway and then had to carry each piece up to where I built the coop. So I made a rectangle with studs for the “walls,” and then built the upper-level truss thingy with something halfway between a king post and a queen post (yes, I actually do know the difference), and a bit of additional height at the sidewall, where I have a 1/4″ rat-wire ventilation panel on each side. Everything is premised on the 4×8 siding sheets and using them efficiently. I had very little left over. I wanted to be able to get through the door and stand up inside without having to stoop at all (I’m 5’10), and I can (not at the corners, obviously). But it’s easy to sweep out. The smaller door on the right is for storing feed, treats, and bedding (I wired it for electric the other day). It’s separated from the main section by 1/2″ rat wire, so as not to cut down on light or ventilation. According to the tables, the coop should handle 4-6 birds, if they have to be “cooped up” in it, and I don’t want any more than that, so it should do.
Thank you. Fingers crossed.
LOL. I read The Specialist as a child. Perhaps that’s where I got some of my odd ideas.
PS: The whole thing is very solid. I think if we’re ever under a tornado warning or threat of nuclear attack, I’m going to bunker down in the chicken coop.
I love this!!! (You can see in this photo how beat-up the one chicken is, and that some of her wing feathers are pulled out. It’s not a molt; she’s been bullied. Their tails are also rather picked over. I hope they’ll settle in, grow back their feathers, and if they do, I think they’ll be very pretty birds.)
I like your description of the re-use of various parts and the spare windows. Our old farmstead has a large chicken coop (the sales material described it as a “potting shed”, but it.was.a.chicken.coop). It was built on a concrete foundation along two sides, so there is a small air space below the floor. There are two horizontal doors to let the chickens in and out and provide ventilation, but when you look at them, they are painted glass doors. I am pretty sure they were originally dividing doors in the main house to separate different rooms for heating.
We don’t use it for chickens, but it has become a storage place for various garden bits we have tried to use to keep deer and groundhogs away from the nearby garden. The groundhogs took up housekeeping under the shed and we eventually gave up on having a garden so close to its home. Last year, there was a fox mother who raised her kits there.
Building by yourself always presents some interesting challenges. Sometimes one has to do things a bit differently when one does not have a helper available. There is always a certain extra satisfaction when it all comes together. I’m impressed.
This morning’s gift from Mrs. Precious Ramotswe and Alakhai Bekhi. Just wonderful:
Aren’t you going to tell us how your chickens got their names?
Well, Mrs. Precious Ramotswe (“Precious” for short), a lady of the requisite “ample proportions,” is named after the central character in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of books. She’s exceedingly curious, not to say nosy and snoopy, hence her name. Alakhai Bekhi is named after one of Gehghis Khan’s older daughters, a very powerful one, who–as with most of the Great Khan’s daughters–was smart, literate, and quite powerful in her own right. “Bekhi” or “Beki” is a Mongol word denoting a noble woman, and that’s what I call the hen. Alakhai is somewhat melifluous, and since my other choices were names like “Sorghaghtani,” I went with it. (I supposed I could have called her “Checheikhen” if I could only remember how to spell it. (That may not be right, but it’s something like that.)
Hells Bells. It’s raining chickens. See where I said–above somewhere–that plans to acquire chickens had gone nowhere fast, and so when the veterinarian’s abused “MeTooSquawk” chickens came up for grabs I was eager to take them?
Well, 48 hours ago, one of those previously-set arrangements came to “futrition” (as my former, much-loved, boss would have said). And my neighbor showed up with two MORE ladies. They’re older, and perhaps not so reliable in the egg-production department, but I don’t care.
Currently negotiating chicken diplomacy WRT border-crossers and intruders, even perfectly legal ones.
So far, so good.
And I now have five. Please, Lord, let that be the end of it.
Four eggs today! All the ladies look a bit scruffy, so I think I’ll wait a bit for their close-ups. They appear to be the same or similar breed. I’ve found that “sex-linked red” is fairly common, and have several other names (“golden comet” is what I think my neighbor called them when he dropped off two in a feed sack). They’re lovely birds, and when feathered out look like this:
Not broody at all (that means they don’t try and sit on their eggs to hatch them. Mild of temperament. Reasonably friendly (as chickens go, which isn’t all that far).
Names for the latest two (older) girls? Hoelun (Genghis Khan’s mother), and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Great ladies, both.
If you get anymore, and one ends up being Marie Antoinette, she should watch her back around dinner time.