Finishing Up The Wiring Of The Fence Lights In The Chicken Yard And Cleaning Up Some Mess12/26/2020
With the S10 Ranger chicken coop completed the next thing I wanted to turn my attention to was finishing up the wiring of the white LED Christmas lights. I put two runs of lights in place. One run spans the western length of fence from the gate over to where the rear entry gate is. Another run spans the whole of the Northern/perimeter fence and back around the Eastern end of the chicken yard fence back to the house, ending where the fence ends.
What I needed to do was make an extension cord that goes from the end of the first set of lights, down to the ground and past the rear entry gate and back up to link up with the 2nd set of lights. I then had to run a short cable from the beginning of the first string of lights over to the post where the outlet box has a plug going to the cable feeding the chicken yard. The one thing I planned on doing for the entire chicken yard was to add a dusk/dawn module that just plugs up to the outlet box and has an outlet of its own that will connect to whatever load is to be switched on and off. In this case, the module will go to the outlet box where the cable is plugged up to and said cable will go into the module. This way at dusk the power will be switched on to the whole chicken yard's power supply feeding all three coops. This will turn on the interior lights of said coops as well as the electric heaters and heating lamp that are in the coops for keeping the cabs and brooder area warm. What will also be switched on is the LED fence lights. I started off by taking an old extension cord and plugging it up to the beginning end of the 1st string of Xmas lights and routed the cable down to the ground and along the bottom of the gate over to the power post where the outlet box is anchored. From here I carved a shallow trench with which to lightly bury the extension cord. I got the cord in the trench and covered up with the dirt and gravel that I removed to form the trench. Once the cord was over by the power pole I was able to start working on the rest of the project. The next order of business was hooking up the dusk/dawn module. I put a screw into the power pole with which to anchor the module to. Afterward I ran the other end of the extension cord up the power pole and plugged it up to the module. There was some excess cable left so I had to bundle it up and secure it with a wire tie and put it up where it'll be out of the way so the cable won't be damaged if grass around the pole needs to be trimmed. Of course I plan on having gravel around all of this area so grass shouldn't be a problem and if any errant blades of grass do pop up they can be eliminated with weed killer. The extension cord was wire tied to the other cords going down to the ground. I had to use a three way plug since the dusk/dawn module only has one outlet on it. With that I was able to plug both cables up to the module so things are able to be switched on at dusk. Next is to get the rest of the fence lights hooked up. To do the link up between the fence lights I essentially did the same thing, using an old extension cord. The plugs on the cord were shitty so I had to replace them with replacement plugs I had in my stash of electrical components. Just like by the power pole I put the plug on one end of the cable and plugged it up to the end of the string of lights then routed the cable down to the ground. Just like on the first cable I dug a shallow trench along the bottom of the gate to bury the cable. On the opposite side of the gate I routed the cable up the tree that served as a fence post for the perimeter fence. The cord was routed behind the chain link that I left in place which helped further secure the cable. From here I trimmed the excess cable at the beginning of the 2nd string of lights and installed the opposite plug for the cable. Plugging it up to the 2nd string of Xmas lights had the link up completed for the fence lights in the chicken yard. With the chicken yard's electrical system completed in its entirety, it was time to do a little clean up work. The old chicken tractor I made several years ago and had to retrofit due to decay was being used as the coop for the couple of ducks we had. One of the ducks went missing so we're currently left with one duck. Once we released all the chickens the duck never went back into the coop. The other chickens would periodically go in there more or less to be nosy but otherwise none of the birds used the coop. The floor inside was already rotting away as well. It was time for this thing to go once and for all . I started cutting the coop up little at a time, removing screws here and there and cutting pieces of wood from the longer boards, making firewood along the way. As I continued working my way through the coop I removed chicken wire and eventually sheet metal. As I got to the rear I removed the rotted floor boards and the wheels in order to get the remainder of the sheet metal from the structure. Eventually I got the whole structure disassembled and was left with a few pieces of sheet metal, several short rolls of chicken wire and two crates full of firewood for outside, along with a bunch of screws and other miscellaneous hardware. With the old duck coop gone the opened up area can now be graveled over to help cover the muddy ground within the chicken yard. The other two coops that remain in the yard are still in use by the chickens despite being in a state of disrepair and in the case of one of the coops is actually broken in half where the chicken run came free and has long since been disposed of. The chickens are still using the coop portion so I left that portion alone. At some point I do plan on building another vehicle coop in the yard but at the spot where I plan on setting up the unit there are two small trees in the way. I'll have to work on slowly removing these two trees before I can plan on setting up another car coop. Once that is done I will then fully remove those two old coops once and for all. For all intents and purposes, by the time I do get around to removing the trees and finding and building another car coop the two old coops will probably have degraded to a point where they will need to be retired once and for all.
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