The new chicken shed is finished

We had a really full on, busy, weekend but we did manage to get the chicken shed finished in between.

The new shed is finished and in position

I am pleased that all three nest boxes still fit and there was no need to move the storage cabinet (which is screwed in place). I had the nest boxes closed and broody Marmite was sat on top of one. I opened them to take a photo and she is already about to jump in.

We will block off the pop hole in the old shed later, when we have more time, so for now I have just blocked it temporarily to stop the girls going in there. I have emptied it and hoovered it.

The automatic door closer is on

The perches are in place

The wider perch is opposite the pop hole, as before, for the bigger girls. It only needs to fit the three girls so didn’t need to be too long. The longer, narrower, perch is opposite the door for the little girls.

The black square is black plastic glued in place to block the lower vent as I didn’t want a draft directly behind where the girls will be perched. There is another vent above the door and a slight gap around the left edge of the door due to our alterations. There are also small holes (pound coin sized) beneath the peaks of the roof. I hope that this will be enough ventilation. If it turns out we need more we will add more as the shed doesn’t need to be water tight as it is under the dry area.

Spangle is the first to investigate

We sealed the cut edges of the plastic for the pop hole with strong white masking tape and I sanded the plastic strip at the bottom so that there are no sharp edges for the girls to stand on.

I went out several times last night to see how the girls were getting on. All the little girls went to their perch which I was really pleased about. They all fit comfortably. The three bigger girls were obviously confused by the new arrangements. All three ended up on top of the nest box outside the plastic shed.

I am not too disappointed by this as at least they chose to get as near to the new shed as possible. I think I should be able to train them over the next few nights.

The disappointing thing was that the automatic closer didn’t work. I checked  it several times, the last time being at half past ten, when it was dark and it was still open. As it is really warm at the moment I left it open and we are going to look at the wiring inside today. The wires came out when we moved it and we think we may have them wired up wrongly.

If we can get that sorted out the shed will be up and running. We will see how tonight goes and I will report back in another post.