Chicken Coop & Greenhouse Lockdown Project

With the arrival of the Corona virus, and the country going into lockdown, we are now finding ourselves stuck at home for 4 weeks. We're feeling very grateful though, 1. Because our country is very fortunate compared to others. 2. Our families are safe. 3. Yay we get a paid holiday at home to work on our renovations!!

One of the projects at home we have been meaning to get started on, is creating a chicken coop and yard, so that we can get chickens and thus our own delicious eggs - we eat a lot of eggs in our household. Along with finally completing our greenhouse made from upcycled old windows (which we actually built 9 years ago and so far has only been used as a storage shed!)

The area we are transforming containing greenhouse built 9 years ago

This area that will house the chickens and greenhouse has always been an eye sore, long kikuyu grass along with excess building materials i.e assorted windows and doors, timber and all sorts of other rubbish, so it will be lovely to get it looking better.

Being in lockdown, we are limited to the materials we have at home. Luckily I have a clever builder husband, and we happen to love the challenge of building using upcycled materials!!

Our vision was to create a really cute rustic chicken house, complete with a fenced yard made from old fence battens for the chicken fence, and the planting of maybe herbs along the fence line... I've been reading about particular herbs being beneficial for chickens. I have some oregano, thyme and mint self seeding in other gardens that I could utilise. We also have our old hot water cylinder plus some guttering that we would like to use to catch the rainwater off the greenhouse.

We have made a good start so far, we've cleared the site, of the old windows and building materials, and we have managed to move the greenhouse forward on rollers to make more room behind it for the chicken yard. Jon has just about completed the chicken coop using old galvanised corruated iron, weatherboards and timber left over from building jobs,

That's where we are up to! We'll let you know how it goes...