- So you guys will never guess.
I mean, I teased it a little bit.
We're doing the Epic Coop at the Epic Homestead,
but we're not actually walking to the Epic Coop,
we're walking to Jacques's coop,
because you know Jacques built his own coop.
It is very impressive.
But that's from my-- I don't know anything about coops.
And so Matt's going to come through
and give it that expert touch. - Let's take a look at it.
- [Kevin] So Jacques, you and Katrina built this coop.
Really straight DIY, straight reclaimed.
Took a lot of time but not a lot of materials.
- And Matt's here from Carolina Coops.
- [Matt] What's going on.
- [Kevin] And Matt's built and designed
I don't even know how many coops in your life, man
What's your hot take on this coop?
Because have you seen a coop like this?
I know I haven't.
- So I have not seen a coop like this,
so I love that already,
and I have such a huge appreciation
for someone that's willing to recycle materials.
Not because of the cool recycling part,
because I understand the challenges.
How my business started is pulling lumber
and whatever I could find out of a dumpster,
and figure out how to make it work,
and that's when I found out I was happiest.
And I also understand
the challenges when it comes to designing a chicken coop,
there is a domino effect I talk about all the time,
"Where do you want your egg hutch?"
Okay, you pick that spot,
but then that can affect the pitch of the roof.
Like right away.
Huge mistake when people are building a coop.
They pitch the roof from their hen house into the run.
Why in the world would you want
to dump all that water in there?
People do it all the time.
So I love that you've got the roof pitched that way.
- [Kevin] And you got this raccoon bar,
what do you think about that?
- [Jacques] It's the barricade bar. It's raccoon proof.
- [Matt] It seems like way overkill,
this isn't enough for your raccoons?
- [Jacques] I'm scared.
- [Katrina] We have like, a four-foot raccoon...
- I've seen, like, a bear.
- ...that is in our yard fairly frequently.
- [Matt] Okay, so you need a litter board.
- Yeah, we need something.
- [Matt] Okay. But that's working, so
well, no, no, these are your deep litter doors. Hell yeah.
- And then, so we have two clean outs.
- Okay. Okay, you ready? We still rolling?
Now, how old is this litter?
- We're at the point where we need to clean it,
we're six months in.
- [Matt] You think so?
- Well... [Ominous Notes Playing]
- Let me ask you, why do you think you need to clean it?
- Timeline.
- What do you mean by timeline?
- People say six months.
- [Kevin] What? [Katrina Laughing]
- People tell me a lot of things, and let me tell you,
I usually, well, I'm going to do the opposite,
and you do not need to clean that yet.
No, no, stick your head in there.
- [Kevin] Okay. [Matt and Katrina Laughing]
Okay I'm going in. - [Matt] And tell me what--
Six months of chicken crap.
- [Kevin] I smell mostly fresh shavings.
I smell mostly nothing.
- You clean out your deep litter based on this.
Not this, or what people are telling you.
Now there's a lot of good information out there,
but, I don't know. I can just tell you we're here right now,
and that doesn't stink,
and a lot of people are probably going,
"Oh, my God, six months of chicken shit, no!
It doesn't stink if you do it right,
and the best part is, is, you know,
we talked about this this morning, with the pine shavings?
You're not supposed to be able to use it, yes.
Is hemp better? Yes,
it's more of a set it and forget it system,
but it still can work.
- So we're good?
- You can go another year. [Bell Chiming]
- Wow. - Guarantee it. Guarantee.
Because think about it. Does it stink? No.
- So, I think it stinks.
I have a, like, super sensitive nose.
- [Matt] She's got a super sniffer.
- So, I'm like, [Sniffs] Chicken.
[Katrina and Kevin Laughing]
- Oh my God! Come on. - [Katrina laughing]
- You've got a super sniffer.
- That smells amazing. I am not lying!
[Kevin Laughing] Right?
- [Kevin] No. I went in, it smells great!
- Dude, that smells great!
And that's what it's supposed to be.
And here's the other thing that people need to know.
This is healthier for your chickens.
We screwed things up by making it so that
they never touch the soil, and everything's sterile.
That's the worst thing to do.
This is actually healthier for your chicken.
You've done an amazing job, and look how easy
it's gonna be - [Jacques] Yeah.
for it, when you go to clean that out.
- [Jacques] That's what we thought about.
- [Matt] Now you also mentioned that raccoon bar.
Love the doors, where'd you get the doors from?
- Just repurposed--
- [Katrina] Old cabinet doors. - [Jacques] Cabinets.
- [Katrina] I found them at, like, a junk shop.
- [Matt] Love it.
So here's the carabiner. We love these.
Raccoons are unable to, believe it or not, figure that out.
- [Kevin] So, they just can't do a carabiner?
- [Matt] They'll figure that out.
- [Jacques] That's a rough one.
- [Matt] You wanna see a hack to this?
- [Kevin] And this is a hack to make it unfigureoutable?
Oh, I see. You're doing that little spring move.
- [Matt] They can't figure it out.
- [Kevin] Look at that!
So it sits in the middle on the loop.
Obviously you'd probably weight balance it, or whatever,
but it sits here, and they cannot figure out
how to unwind that. - [Matt] Yeah, an old farmer--
- [Kevin] And that's just a little piece of wire.
- [Matt] An old farmer taught me that,
and it's something like that.
- [Kevin] There you go, yeah, just flip it the other way.
- Yeah, it's really just that simple.
And the other thing I love a lot about what you've done--
- Ooh! Lookit! - [Kevin] Yeah. Let's do--
We're doing a full coop--
- [Matt] Hold on! This looks familiar!
- [Jacques] Here's what I did. I watched his video.
- [Matt] My video?
- [Jacques] On installing an apron.
- [Matt] Nice.
- I think you were doing it in flip-flops.
And he said you shouldn't be.
- [Kevin] Hey I-- hey. I respect that
- Thank you. Thank you.
People all the time, "Oh, that's a NOSHA violation."
Whatever.
- [Jacques] Yeah, and so we did the--
- [Matt] Beautiful.
- [Jacques] The staple into the board. Every other square,
and then we stapled it into the ground.
- [Kevin] And you don't go in, you just go out.
- [Jacques] Yeah.
- [Kevin] It doesn't go in at all,
because you don't want to bury your--
- Correct.
- [Kevin] You don't want to have the skirt go in
because they need to rest under there.
- Right. I love it, I love it.
- This is my first time coming, 3,000 miles
from where I teach people,
and the information's making it all the way out here.
- We're-- we're researchers. [Katrina Laughing]
- [Kevin] These guys both went deep. I mean, how many hours
do you think you put in this coop, Jacques?
- I don't know. I didn't even track it.
- I probably put in, like--
- [Jacques] She did a lot of it.
- Like 40 hours plus of research
before I even started drawing it out.
- [Matt] When you're an animal,
and you're like I'm gonna dig underneath!
- [Jacques] There's actually an example right there.
- [Matt] Oh, there you go! [Jacques Laughing]
That's a good point! They're gonna come all the way to here
and then try to start digging down.
They run into the apron immediately.
They will not come out here,
and then make their way underneath.
Now, here's the other thing.
A lot of people are gonna say,
"Well, rats can get through that." That is true,
but guess what?
The only hard part about a rat is their skull,
and their skull
can fit through a half-inch by half inch opening.
So, a rat's can fit through there,
but you don't give them a reason to want to go over there,
so the other thing you've done that is great,
you've elevated what would've been a potential ceiling
where rats want to harbor and live. So by having this up--
- [Kevin] So this being, what, 18 inches above
is a little too high for a rat to feel safe
getting underneath that?
- 100%. And I bet you chickens love to go underneath there
and dust bathe.
- [Katrina] Especially in the summer, when it's hot.
That's the coolest place in the yard.
- [Kevin] Why don't we walk inside.
Now this is becoming a chicken tour breakdown.
[Matt Laughing]
So let's go inside, and let's see what we think
about the indoor run.
- [Matt] Your Buff is very sweet.
Chicken 101. When you hold her,
always make sure the feet are hanging.
- [Kevin] Oh. - Or they will push off.
- [Kevin] Okay. - Always let them hang.
And they will-- they'll just love it, lookit.
And this is what makes Buffs Buffs.
I mean, they're just so friendly.
- [Kevin] That's Chirp right there.
- Now we got a Golden Lanced. Rhode Island.
Welsummer? Or Partridge?
- [Jacques] That's a-- - [Katrina] Easter Egger.
- This is an, oh, yup, there's the tuft.
Sorry I wasn't looking, I was just looking at the feathers.
- [Kevin] There you go. Look at you.
- [Matt] Okay. Sorry.
- [Kevin] So we're taking a look at the egg box, I believe.
- [Jacques] So we didn't build this egg box,
we took it from a free coop,
and that's the only part of the coop we liked,
but we want to rebuild it, or replace it.
- Things to think about,
and a lot of people learn this the hard way,
It's very common to have this lift-up roof-style.
Here's why I don't like it.
Number one is, everyone's like,
"Well I'm only gonna go check--
"get eggs when my chickens aren't in there."
It doesn't happen, all right?
You gotta go in here and get the eggs,
and if you already have a chicken in there laying an egg
you lift this up, they think it's a predator,
and they will hop out and get startled.
Versus, like with our coop,
we love the drop-down door right here in the front.
The other thing that happens, okay?
And this is just the father in me. One of the best things
about when we finish a chicken coop,
whether it's for a family, or at a school,
first thing the kids do is they run right to there
and they can drop that down, drop that door down,
and get to the eggs very quickly,
instead of trying to come up here and look in here.
The other thing is,
well obviously, it probably hardly ever rains here,
this can be a very difficult spot to make waterproof.
- [Jacques] Yes.
- [Kevin] Yeah, and you guys will see
when we go over to the Epic Coop at my place,
it is the dropdown door
and then there's a little skirt or something,
I don't know what the correct term is there,
to flash over, yeah exactly, so that
it will never go down this crack,
it'll run over the top of this and drop off.
- Yep, this custom flashing we make for our coops.
And that's why people love buying our egg hutches
because this is the most difficult part
probably in the entire coop to master.
But it's the overall design,
you know you've got to think about,
"Okay, where am I going to put my windows?
"Do I still have wood for a roost bar to catch?"
- [Kevin] Yep, yep.
- You never want your roost bars
lower than your egg hutches.
- [Jacques] Yeah, we made sure to do that.
- Yep, you always wanna make sure that's--
that's their tree branch,
they wanna go up there at night to sleep.
- [Kevin] Let's go inside, let's take a little quick peek.
- [Matt] All right, so then I gotta ask a question.
- [Kevin] Yeah. - [Jacques] Yeah.
- [Matt] I don't know why this drives me nuts.
[Kevin and Katrina Laughing]
Do your chickens use this?
- We've-- they've used it at the start,
but I think it got-- they're too big for it now,
and we've been meaning to change it.
- Chickens should not want a swing
because they don't want to be on something that's unstable.
And I see chicken swings all the time,
and I think that's the reason why it drives me crazy.
So I always like to ask if they use it, because if they do,
it's like, hey, great. This is interesting.
Do they ever have problems going up into the chicken coop?
- [Jacques] No, we-- - No, they don't,
but they get impatient, and a lot of times
they come to here, and then they hop down, so...
- And that's normal.
Here's why I ask, so many people out there are gonna go,
"It's wrong to have a ramp come off,
"and, oh, they're going to turn 90 degrees
"and they're not going to go into the hen house."
Yes, they will! - They do.
- They do every night.
- God, people.
- So, the reason why is because the door is there,
so we didn't want to block the door,
but we wanted to make sure it wasn't too steep,
so we put extra steps, and we lifted it up a little bit.
- One of my passions right now
is getting all the farm animals to live with one another
and not have problems,
like goats eating the chicken feed or whatever.
And we've done it where on the outside of the runs,
or going into the henhouse,
you actually don't even need a ladder. If you had--
you saw the perch bar in front of our egg hutches?
We put perch bars in front of the chicken opening
where the chickens can jump up there
to get into their henhouse, but the goats can't,
the dogs can't.
- Interesting. I didn't think about that.
- And even on the outside of the run,
so that the goats can't come into the run
and eat the chicken feed, we just have,
instead of the chicken door being down at the ground,
we bring the chicken door up high
and the chickens just jump in and out like normal.
- Okay, cool.
- [Kevin] What happens when we look inside?
- [Jacques] It's just the-- the roost bars.
- [Kevin] We get the roost bars. That's two-by-fours?
Looks like.
Take a peek in there, Matt, what do you see?
- [Matt] It's excellent.
- [Jacques] I'll take it.
- [Matt] So I mean, well-- here, here's why.
A lot of people, again, here's where-- size does matter.
And, if you have your roost bars up too high to that roof,
and you don't have a lot of ventilation,
chickens actually have a very sensitive respiratory system,
and you don't want them breathing in
those fumes from their droppings.
So I love that you got the height
where they're not up close to that roof
and it's just, they should be a lot happier.
Also, I like your big, fat roost bars.
Now again, this is San Diego,
and I don't have to worry about this
in other parts of the country
where it's really, really cold.
A lot of people will take a two-by-four, rip it in half,
which is called one and a half by one and half,
for simple math,
and in cold climates, chickens can't cover their feet.
It's a way that they can get frostbite,
versus when you've got a big, fat bar--
- [Jacques] Oh, by sitting on it?
- They can sit on it - [Jacques] Gotcha.
cover their feet and prevent frostbite, so I love that.
Not that you have to worry about that here.
- [Kevin] Yeah. Okay,
why don't we take a look at the outdoor zone
and see what you think of this-- this chicken orchard idea.
We actually filmed a whole video on this.
The logic being, we've definitely got some birds of prey,
we've seen them. I've actually seen them eat smaller birds
and lizards and mice and stuff.
And with these guys out here, eventually
in let's call it two years or so,
we'll have this sort of canopy of shade
and fruit producing trees.
- It's ideal. We call this companion--
- Phew.
- Companion planting.
You're gonna provide shade. You said fruit trees?
- [Jacques] Yep. - [Kevin] Yep.
- So when these fall, the chickens can eat it and, or--
Hi, baby, I know, I know, I don't have anything for you.
They'll come up and actually just start nipping away,
like they already have here.
- Look at that loquat. They really like the loquat leaf.
- [Kevin] Yeah, look at that. - Oh exactly.
So they are going to use it, but that's okay,
that's what these are here for,
and to me that's so important, not just for the protection
and the shade. They want to work, give them something to do.
And what a hell of a conversation piece,
I mean, how many times you have friends that come over, and
and then that's where it all starts!
- [Jacques] That's what this is.
- [Kevin] Chillin', chillin'.
- Think about this.
People are gonna come over and go,
"Backyard chickens! I never thought about that before!"
And then you get to share what you have learned
and hopefully they'll-- they're gonna go home
and be like, "I think I can do this."
And of course that's when you're like, yeah,
"Well, if you're not going to build your coop,
call Carolina Coops." That's important.
- [Kevin] There you go.
- This is awesome.
And I tell you,
here's the other thing, a lot of people don't realize,
and I love to speak to the people
that are maybe on the fence.
Isn't it extremely therapeutic?
[Kevin Laughing] - [Matt] See? See?
- Yes.
- [Jacques] It's also really easy.
- [Kevin] I'll say this like, and you know,
I don't have chickens yet, and I will soon, very soon,
but I'll do that. I'll come over and I'll do that,
right there.
And I'll pretend like I have a new child.
And I don't act like that normally.
And so I might, you know,
I might be having some chicken therapy.
- He was-- when he came here, and Chirp jumped up to him,
you could see him melt.
- [Kevin] Oh yeah. I started crying tears. Internal tears,
but I still-- I did. [Katrina Laughing]
- [Jacques] I felt them.
- [Kevin] Yeah. - There's something about it
that I want people to realize,
because you're going to hear the bad things.
No, this is why we're here, doing what we're doing,
because we want to educate you, and let you know,
you can go out and have fun building a coop, repurposing it.
And there's good information out there,
and the chickens, as long as you've got the right setup,
they're the-- in my opinion,
the easiest pet you can ever have
that's gonna poop out breakfast for you, come on.
- [Kevin] So, Matt.
- Yes, sir?
- [Kevin] If you had to rate Jacques's build,
Jacques and Katrina's build out of 100. Where are we going?
- Out of 100?
- [Kevin] Yeah. Zero to 100.
- Well, I need to explain a lot of things.
- [Kevin] We get it.
- Because I can appreciate how hard it is. So I-- I love it.
I love it because I'm gonna give it a... I'm gonna say a 90.
- [Kevin] Oh, wow. That's - I'll take it.
- [Kevin] That's a great score.
- I'm going to say a 90, and a lot of it is because
I understand the difficulties
of designing a coop that's gonna work.
Most people fail. Okay? You've made it predator proof,
and that's something people underestimate.
You've got a good egg hutch.
Whether or not you built it or not, you knew it's important,
all right? And, okay, here's big-- lookit, see?
I'm not lying. Okay? I love this.
- [Kevin] Oh, there are real goosebumps!
- I love-- I'm sorry! I love this stuff!
You were incorporating a deep litter system.
Okay? It does work! There's-- you said six months!
It doesn't stink. All right?
You got the predator apron.
- All around.
- You're an A student, you're a pretty smart guy.
- So, I'll say Katrina is the A student
and I'm the assistant.
But I will say that actually a lot of the videos
from Carolina Coops are what we used
to learn how to do certain things.
- Love it.
- So the wealth of information is out there.
And, also, we're thinking about maybe taking
some Carolina Coop elements, and doing some add-ons here,
because our-- we're not married to our watering system,
our feeders... so we might look into what you have, too.
- Yeah, no, and we love that,
and there's always room to grow.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- You know, you're not done even though
when we sell a coop to someone, I always want to tell them,
"We want to get you the right size coop
"so that you don't ever have to add onto it."
Because the people underestimate chicken math.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- It is more-- - [Kevin] I certainly did.
- Yeah. But from there, from the chicken paraphernalia,
the swings, and the art, and the fodder trees,
and there's just so much more room
to just have fun and grow.
And especially when you have children, too. They need to.
They need to get out and get their hands dirty.
- [Kevin] Well, hey, Matt, thanks for coming around.
- Thanks for having me.
- Yeah, thanks. - Excellent job.
Excellent job.
- [Kevin] There you go.
More coming in the chicken world at Epic Homesteading.
[Jacques Laughing]