The new chicken coop has arrived on a very large pallet and its been assembled

As you can see, its a lot larger and gives us much more room to add things in, plus the door goes upwards, which is exactly what we need. Its also built to last, the wood is thick and the construction is robust - so spot on to what we wanted. 

At this point, its just the standard unit, but with a couple of coats of wood preservative and a cut to fit rubber pond liner in the bottom of the unit. This will make it a lot quicker and easier to clean out over time and the base should last a lot longer as a result.

We have added 5mm perspex all around the base, except around the front-left section, which will provide easy access to the bottom area so you can easily corner a chicken. A chickens ideas of "hiding" is really poor, and being enclosed, They are easy to catch, even if a lot of 'brooking' goes on.

What we hadn't considered is that chickens can't see shiny perspex sheets, so they would try and just walk (or run) through and bounce off the strange force field, which made them wary about going into this strange, enchanted place. Luckily, chickens also flick lots of things around, so after only a couple of days, mud, poo and other items were starting to build up and they figured out where to go and where to not go. They also figured out (or Borg'ed as Domestic Management calls it) that it was shelter from the sun, rain and wind.

So, now we have a base to start building on.