And it flew off…

No, not the chickens this time, but the roof to the chicken coop! We came home late a few nights ago to find this…Yes, that is the tin roof covering to the chicken coop, half in the coop and half outside of it. My first thoughts were, ‘how strong did the wind have to blow to do this?’ followed right by, ‘did we loose any birds?’

After checking under the sheet metal roof for any of our chickens (which there were none), I promptly went inside the coop to find all 15 hens and our one rooster safely roosting; this was quite a relief. I was able to pull the the sheet metal roofing out of the coop and re-secure the fencing.

After a few days and a rainstorm, the weather cleared so that I could get up on the roof. It was a full family effort, with my wife (due with our baby in 3 weeks) and I to lift the roof back on. Yes, all four parts of the metal stayed together so it was a bit awkward and heavy, not to mention that the screws were still in it and catching on everything. Once we got it up, I screwed 3 inch screws into the studs to make sure it would not come off next time. Then we had our inspector, Qorbin, come up on top of the roof, and he thought that we needed to put a few more screws in, so he helped me until we passed inspection.

The last thing that was needed was to change out some of the wet hay in the nesting boxes from the rain water leaking in while the metal roof was off. Now we have dry and happy Chickens!