How I Turned My Greenhouse into a Winter Chicken Paradise

Happy day. In this video I'm going to show you how I turn a greenhouse, any old greenhouse, into a chicken paradise. This is getting by but it's no paradise. We've got a lot of work to do on this to turn it into one. As we go I'm going to show you the steps it takes to turn your greenhouse, any greenhouse, into a wicked chicken paradise. We got to make it so water doesn't freeze. We got to make it so chickens don't get out. Look that one's behind the net. Wrong side of the net. We need to do something to the side so we can retain this deep bedding. We need deep bedding. It's absolutely crucial. I'll also share some tips and tricks if you don't have a greenhouse to make one happen. You can do this with slap together material. You can do this really inexpensively. It doesn't have to be big. I'll show you more about that as we convert this thing. Let's do this. First things first. Let's assess. Our checklist is food, water, shelter, security. So we don't need to worry about food in this one. Water. We'll get that situated after we're done so it will not freeze. Shelter. We're going to need deep bedding. Security. Let's get going on that. I mean the goose just stuck his head through there like that. Tricky to be in here with this goose. Hey I might need a spotter Gideon. Come on please. This nest not been working that great. It's great temporary solution but it doesn't hold material. It doesn't even hold the chicken's well unless you can get it really tight. And then what about wood chips? It's gonna just go over on your net. It's just better if we can have a solid surrounding. I'm wondering can we do this? Can the metal that's already on our greenhouse. I don't think I'll go higher than that with wood chips. We need a base. We need a retainer to hold in wood chips. You can see our we've already got a natural one in this high tunnel so I hate not to use it. And we want the winter setup to be temporary because we want to do a garden in here in the spring. That's the beauty of having your chickens in a greenhouse is you can pull them out and they've made compost for you that you can use on your garden in the in the summer when it's you can plant heat loving crops. And here's another challenge. I don't want to buy anything. I want to use only what I have. We'll take these two and then come back measure. Get that measuring tape. Put that ice inside. No don't go. Where? Inside the sink. Just make sure you put it in the sink. Show Henry. I want to help. What do you think about the big ice? All right I got some real help here buddy. The idea is to raise the fence up to the top of that retaining wall in the greenhouse and tighten up the fence with zip ties. It won't be on. It'll just keep them in because it's tight. Josie's going to get our T-post. We want this to be temporary. This needs to be able to be set up in a couple of hours and taken down in a couple of hours for this to work. I have to be a certain height to lock. I have to put it way over here. There's gonna be more jerry. Now we can get in there behind the chickens and set up this wall. But there's an easier way to do that you know. There is a better way to get your T-post out of the ground. It's a T-post puller. You're supposed to make it look easier. There you go. Good job. What you would do is drill a hole right here. All right so grappling that pole instead of a T-post right? Yeah. Is that not drilling through? You want your 10 screws? Try a different bit. We ought to be able to drill through 10. Did you get a different bit too? Yeah. Now did that go right through because of the work we've done or did that work a lot better? I don't know. Try it down lower. Okay so that was the bit or the drill. Which one do you think it was? That worked a lot better with that bit huh? We got one up. It's too flexible. Let's see if it'd be a good fit but it wouldn't hold wood chips. So I was working on the last pole. Let's get this other 10 in here. This is going really good. This is very reasonable. Even next year it'll take even quicker because we would have already drilled the holes. We just need to figure out how to store and label these properly. Okay let's check our support. Oh yeah much better. Much better. Just to hold maybe maybe four inches of wood chips. We just want enough for a good diaper to absorb their manure. You don't want to do too much depending on how many chickens you have. I mean you could do a foot if you had one chicken per three square foot but this is a bigger area than that. So I've got to not have it as thick or it's not going to get broken down. You know you kind of have to guesstimate about how much they need that they can break down over the winter. It's a quickly made retaining wall. Now if you needed to be stronger to hold more deep bedding, two feet or so, I would have put pig panels behind it or cattle panel. Cattle panels might have been even better. That's a higher cage for the chickens. Cattle pedals behind it and you could put T posts every two feet. It's really not that much harder. Josiah had a suggestion. The greenhouse rolled down is enough to keep them in. This greenhouse naturally has a sturdy retaining wall. I think they would stay in. Now we're gonna have to make sure they don't peck it. My hunch is they won't. Still have to get a wall here. Wall here and I think we'll just keep it off our door. Joel didn't open up his coop on the side there in the winter. Desk boxes throughout. They don't have any purchase. Mobile feeders. What do you think Gideon? That's where I got the original inspiration for this. All right, crank it down buddy. Now it's locked? Yeah. Now it locks. Too frozen. It might have been too frozen. Let's hope that works because that sure be easy. That'd be easier. Now if we have to and if you have to, you don't have the natural walls built in, you can just do that. We'll just do that 10 all the way around. It's not that hard and we'll definitely have to start doing that if the plastic blows and they are able to get out or if they start picking at it. Josiah, you got to get them some Netflix out here bud. Jesse, you're gonna get the net up and move the door. I'm gonna go get the 10. I'm back with the 10 and I get to show you how you would support it with a pick panel and or it's a caddy panel and wood framing if you need to because we already had one. One second, Henry's got something for me. What you got? What is it? Well, don't tell me. It's supposed to be a surprise. Whoa, it's a pin. I love pins. Oh my gosh. I love it. It's a notebook. You know I love notebooks. It's our password. What you got? You ready to go? How about you get this off? You made your old man put that on. This way, buddy. Before I forget, I should say, oh Lincoln, I had these. I found these when I first started. I just used a simple PVC hoop house for a greenhouse and easily converted it like this into a winter chicken coop. Also, if need be, do a slapped together greenhouse. Show the footage of us building that slapped together greenhouse. All right, there's one screw in from up here. That was easy. Now, how to get up on that end. You guys got it? It's looking so good. I'm starting to get excited now. That's what I'm talking about right there. Greenhouse in two hours. Let's say that was 10 by 10 maybe. I don't know what it was. It wasn't much. 10 by 10 is 100. No, what's 10 times 10? Yeah, that's 100. One chicken per three square foot. You can have over 30 chickens in that small of an area. You need to have accommodation for probably up to 18 inches of deep bedding. Hopefully, today has inspired you to just use what you have. Oh my goodness. What can you not do with cattle panels, T-posts, zip ties, and tin? You can create any kind of deep bedding situation fast. If I couldn't do a greenhouse, do a shed. It'll keep the chickens dry. It won't have the greenhouse effect, but it'll keep the wood chips protected. That would be fine. Just do what you have. Now, I'm going to tell you what to do. If you don't have a greenhouse, you don't want to do a shed. I'm going to show you what I did for over a decade without greenhouse for chickens with a lock on the door. You could put a garage door here so that we could put the mowers up, and then bust down that wall and put a locked door on the other side. I like it. We need to have some of our tools locked up. Yeah, you could lock them up if you do it that way. How are your doors coming? Oh my gosh, it's a nightmare. A nightmare? You got three up. What's the nightmare? It's bad. They're not all fitting properly. It's extremely weird. I had to cut off the top on that one. Cut some off. It just fits weird. They were built kind of poorly. Yeah, well good job buddy. I had to let go of him this morning. I wanted him to come and work with me, but I think that's part of it. I've got to let him go have his own projects on the farm. Let him own it, so to speak. Although this may be my priority. This chicken is necessarily his, and he wants to... Hey, you want to do that? That's great. That needs to be done too. It keeps the kids still excited about the farm, still gets them a sense of ownership as they age and get more capable. You could just do a wood chipped run in the yard, and just if you're cold, if you're consistently under in single digits, just put some plastic over the front of the coop, front of the chickshaw, and you're good. Just keep them in fresh bedding. It's gonna get wet, so I mean if you could give them some sort of cover, but you do what you can. You can winterize what you have right now by putting some plastic. We'll orient it to the south, to the sunny side. Hopefully you have a mobile coop. I always recommend a mobile coop because you can just pick it up and turn it towards the south, which would be this way. See that sun? And then just put plastic over the front. Never use heaters. Never use insulation. Too much of that is going to cause their respiratory, their breathing. You're going to get moisture, and then that's when you're going to get in trouble. And one, they're going to go in this coop, and it's going to be all warm, and they're going to go out. They can't just put on a jacket. What they've got, they've got. Don't make them bounce back and forth in their same clothes, so to speak, and look around you. Even if you're in Minnesota, there are 20 hundred different birds that do not migrate south, and they're out and about and wild, and just like, you hear that bird? And we've got the cardinal. We've got crows. Saw some birds fly into the tree. We've got turkeys. Unless you have a heat-hardy chicken breed, your chickens are just like that, and they don't need to fly south, and they have just enough feathers to get them through the winter. The greenhouse does make them more comfortable. It's warmer during the day. It thaws out the water quicker. It keeps them dry, and we're breaking down compost, or breaking down wood chips for compost for in place for our garden in the spring. And we're off-grid with this, too. I don't think we have to ignite that. More chickens in a tighter space. You wouldn't get away with this door, because it's not going to hold material. This is a premier one. Electric fence door. Isn't this nifty? I've done it on our original pickport. You put in a retainer wall, maybe 18 inches, and then you have a swinging door. It's so you can step over it, but it's still holding material. We should have done this before the chickens even got in here. Then we could bring this material in. I don't mind going to Farm's Gym for a little bit. We're about to get a workout, buddy. I know. Just a sprinkling. Bye, Ness. Bye, Ness. Put it out for the chickens to mess with. They'll spread it. Look how they love it. Wow, this makes me happy. Look how I'm just climbing, finding stuff in it. Oh, I'm just so happy. Give them something to do. Thank you, Josiah. It looks good. Look at this. I feel so good about this. I'm feeling so gross having them just be in their own... Our trough heaters that we use on every other trough also work in this. We have a nice notch in this. So that comes out there. So trough heater's key. We're doing this just in time because we're about to get the coldest stint of the season, they say. It's going to be in the single digits at night. It's not going to get out of the 20s in the day for a few days. That could be bad. That could be bad in this area. Look, we're not Minnesota. We only have a foot and a half frost line, so we're not six feet under the ground, you know, with our water lines and everything else because these cold events are rare events. All right, we're going to take this cord overhead. Great. This is great. Wait, wait, wait, wait. All right, pull it up. All right. I feel so good about this. Food, check. Oh, quick, the inspector comes. Come on, baby. Oh, wow. Yes, this is very nice. You could eat a sandwich out here, go with Allison one day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you could. This is sandwich management right here. Isn't this nice? It is. Isn't there something so good about just putting wood chips down? Yeah, it's going to be good for the tomatoes, too. Are they picking up the... Not yet. We're going to watch them. We were thinking we were going to put Netflix out here for them, though. Netflix? If they pick at it, all we got to do is put the tin up and we can because the posts are already there. Yeah. It won't be that hard. Yeah, that's great. One more thing to do. Fix this thing once and for all. Just put that screw in there. There you go. That's it. Don't do it too much. You strip it. You got another screw? Put that in this. This is loose. Food, water. Got our heater set up. I love that we brought it up over. I don't know why we never thought about that. Water, shelter, security. We got our walls up. Let's see what Jonah has accomplished and see what Lily has made for lunch and then we'll happy day this thing. Show me what you did, bro. I went and got all the old doors that we had and screwed them back on. Nice. Just one left? Yep. Three down, dude. That's pretty good. Proud of you. Why not the other side? We're going to do some other stuff there. Okay. All right. Lily, you want to sand these down and paint them black? When? Wouldn't that be cool? Sometime. She's made rice. She's reheated up some chicken and some burgers. We did it and if you want to learn more about chickens from me, I've got a how to get started plan. I think it's only four or five pages long. Let's not overdo this. Free down in the description. That is at chickentender.com. Happy day, y'all.