I started raising chickens again in early 2017. I converted a 4×8 trailer into a 5×10 portable chicken coupe which I call “Lil Deuce“.

We Started with 12 Golden Comet pullets (teenage girls) and a big rooster for security. His name was Buddy and he was a Black Copper Maran. He was the biggest rooster I ever saw- he looked like a T-Rex. Then we added 4 Barred Rock. The Rocks were supposed to be pullets but one identified as male. That meant we had 2 roosters- Buddy and Rocky. Rocky got his brains beat in so we found him another home.

The chicken yard was 50×75 and fenced (it was originally my garden plot) and I expected to have more hens than we ended up with. I also wanted a net over the yard and not need a rooster. Sadly- the hawks found the chickens two days before the net came so we had to get a rooster (or so I was told!). 8 nesting boxes was way to many. I eventually rebuild the whole coop, but that’s a later story. Under the roosts are two removable trays for “manure”. That worked okay, but it would have been nice to have a door to slide them out instead of having to go in. I do compost the manure.

Eventually we decided that the coop was too far away from the house to keep a good watch on the flock. I had added 18″ chicken wire around the bottom of the fence so that varmint could not dig under the wire (we had a lot of minks and skunks at the time). The roof had a gutter and downspout to catch rain for water. The water was stored in a 25 gallon trashcan. This worked very well and I hardly ever had to carry water. I put a 1″ pipe with “nipples” on it, but of course this froze and cracked the first hard freeze and I had to plug the hole and dip water out with a bucken. The bucket was heated in the winter.