Category Archives: building a turkey coop

Líneas de Agua

We decided that walking up the hill to fill the chicken and turkey water was becoming a bit too tedious.  Granted it is good exercise, it is kind of a pain.  Since it is a pain the turkeys and chickens sometimes let us know that they are out of water by following us around.  The whole flock.  It is kind of funny, but also can be a reminder that getting them water is a chore.  The distance from the cabana to the turkey coop is about a football field (down, then UP hill).

We figured that since we put the coops along the property line, we could also drop in a new PVC water line along the border.  This serves two purposes.  Easy to water the birds, but also the plants.

It is pretty dry in Rincón during the winter.  It is nice because the humidity drops as well as the temps just a few degrees.  It really does feel perfect out, but the plants and especially the new plants have to be watered.  We have been dragging around 150ft of hose to do the task, but since we have expanded our area of planting, we think it is time to expand our infrastructure.

Truck with pipe
Truck with Pipes

We are now clearing/planting almost to the end of the property line on one side, we are putting down lots of grass seed and we spend quite a bit of time “down below”.  The mower, the chainsaw all the gardening equipment is starting to live at the turkey coop for convenience.  Having a water tap will be perfect!

A nice thing about living in the tropics VS a temperate climate is that I don’t have to bury the water lines.  It makes finding and fixing leaks easier as well as installation.  There really is no need to bury the line.  Not that it makes laying 400 feet of pipe thru the jungle easy, but if I had to bury the pipe I would probably not be doing it!

Laying Pipe
Ducking Under the Mandarin Tree

We have installed the new system and I had to fix a few leaks due to hooking up to some old PVC that was dirty.  Lesson learned, sand/clean the old pipe before cementing.  I should have known because I have worked with copper pipe quite a bit, oh well.  If you want it done right, do it thrice!

Water Faucet
New Faucet On The Coop

This project cost ~$150 more or less.  We decided to do this because it actually made our lives easier.  We had thought about installing a rain catchment system but did the calculations and decided that for the amount of water we use, it was far cheaper to use the water system already setup and maintained by the city.  Plus we have a reserve built up in the lines to our house, so there would be little to no gain and more maintenance and cost.  When we build the main house, we may setup a rain catchment off the gutters/roof.

In either case we planted lots of grass seed, planted new trees, transplanted trees and watered the birds with ease today!

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Completion of a Turkey Coop!

Cassie and I worked all day yesterday to get the turkey coop painted using up the existing paint we had on hand, framing/cutting out the windows and putting up the final touches including the trim.  It was a pretty long day, we started working ~9am and didn’t finish until around 4 in the afternoon.

Again, a lot of time working on the coop has been spent reusing old materials which adds a lot of work but saves a lot of money.  In the end it is worth it to us.

Turkey Coop Finished (2)

We built this coop to have a similar design to our chicken coop as that design has worked out well.  This coop has a screen door to add a bit more airflow and we didn’t have an extra door laying around. There is also a trap door on the floor of this coop so that we can someday enclose the base with chicken wire and have the turkeys raise their poults underneath without fear of the hawks.  They will still need to sleep in the coop due to rats, but they will have space to dust bathe in and peck around.

We used materials from the wood house’s deck as that deck will be replaced with new lumber, and I even grabbed T-111 sheets from the upstairs bedroom.  The paint for the turkey coop was leftover from painting our cabana and the blue trim leftover from the chicken coop.  All in all we spent less than $100 on the new coop.  In new materials we estimate it would have cost close to $1000 which would have been waaayyy too much for us to spend on a coop.

Paint makes such a difference.  We know this as we have done many a remodel project but yet it still amazes us.  Before painting the coop it looked like a true to life hillbilly shack complete with a hillbilly.
BK Turkey Coop

The Turkeys are now moved in which is great because they are growing fast and have outgrown the turkey cage/tractor we had them in.  They were having to crouch to get around and there wasn’t adequate space to keep a full size feeder and waterer so we were having to check on them multiple times a day.  The coop will not only make the turkeys happier but also will be less work.

Turkey Coop Chicken Coop
Space Between (click to enlarge)

We left quite a bit of tree nursery space between the two coops.  We haven’t ever raised turkeys so we actually weren’t too sure how much space if any was needed.  It is possible to have them co-exist in the same coop but there are chicken to turkey diseases that can be transmitted.

We are happy with the results and figure for a turkey coop, the turkeys have a pretty nice crib.
Turkey Coop Finished

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