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 gotta make it so water doesn't freeze. We gotta make it so chickens don't get out. Look, that one's behind the net. Wrong side of the net. You 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 slapped-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. Uh, water, we'll get that situated after we're done. So it will not freeze. Shelter, we're gonna need deep bedding. Security, let's get going on that. I mean, the goose just stuck his head through the electric net. 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 chickens 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, it's, it's just better if we can have a solid surrounding. I'm wondering, can we do this? Can, 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 set up 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, 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. Let's go get that measuring tape. What about ice? Melt it inside. No, don't go— where? Inside of the sink. Just make sure you put it in the sink. Show Henry. I want to help. What do you think about that big ice? That's cold. All right, I got some real help here, buddy. 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-posts. 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 don't think so. 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. Papa, there's an easier way to do that, you know. There is a better way to get your T-posts 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 why'd you make the same mistake? Wrap around that pole instead of a T-post, right? Yeah. Is that not drilling through? You want your tin screws? Try a different bit. We ought to be able to drill through tin. 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 fence, 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 4 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 1 chicken per 3 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, 2 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 panels behind it, and you could put T-posts every 2 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 doesn't open up his coop on the side during the winter. Nest boxes throughout— they don't have any purchase. Mobile feeders. What do you think, Gideon? About what? 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'd sure be easy. That'd be easier. Now if we have to, and if you have to, if you don't have the natural walls built in, you can just do that. We'll just do that tin 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 tin. I'm back with the tin, and I get to show you how you would support it with a cattle— a pig panel, and— or it's actually cattle 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 book. What you got? You ready to go? How about you get this off? You made your old man put that on. Sit up 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, uh, house for a greenhouse. And easily converted it like this into a winter chicken coop. Also, if need be, do a slap-together greenhouse. Show the footage of us building that slap-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 2 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. 1 chicken per 3 square foot. You could have over 30 chickens in that small of an area. Just, you need to have accommodation for probably up to 8— well, up to 18 inches of deep bedding. Hopefully today has inspired you to just use what you have. And 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. And if I couldn't do a greenhouse do a shed. Just keep them— just keep it— it'll keep the chickens dry. It won't have the green effect, greenhouse effect, but it'll, it'll keep the wood chips protected. That, 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 have— 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 like the mower stuff that's in, 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. So how are your doors coming? Oh my gosh, it's a nightmare. Nightmare? You got all— you got 3 up. No, what's the nightmare? Bad. The— they're not all fitting properly. Oh, okay, okay. Like I had to cut off the top on that one. All right, well, that's some off. And then it's like it fits— just fits weird. Yeah, it doesn't quite— 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. And although this may be my priority, these chickens is it's not necessarily his, and he wants to— hey, you want to do that? That's great, that needs to be done too. And 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, 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 COVID 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. Always recommend a mobile coop because you can just pick it up and turn it, 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 2,000 different birds that do not migrate south, and they're out and about and wild. And just like you can hear that bird, I mean, we've got the cardinal, we've got crows, saw some birds flying to 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 falls out the water quicker, it keeps them dry, and we're breaking down compost to— 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 pig port. 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. Load number 2. We should have done this before the chickens even got in here. And we could bring this material in. But 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. Bonus, bonus! Put it out for the chickens to mess with. They'll spread it. Look how they love it. Oh, this makes me happy. Look at him just climbing and finding stuff in it. Oh, he's just so happy. Give him something to do. Thank you, Josiah. Looks good. Look at this. I feel so good about this. I'm feeling so gross having them just be in their own— okay, our trough heaters that we use on every other trough also works in this. We have a nice notch in this so that can run up 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 6 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, 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. Joel Salatin would say, 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 gonna be good for the— my tomatoes too. Are they picking up the— not yet. We're gonna watch them. We were thinking we were gonna 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. Uh, 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. 3 down, dude. That's pretty good. Yeah, proud of you. Why not the other side? We're gonna do some other stuff there. 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 4 or 5 pages long. Let's not overdo this. Free down in the description. That is at chickentender.com. Happy day, y'all!