My attempt at a Johnny House

[bwire]

I was given permission to put a johnny house on some land close to my house. Here are some pictures of what it looks like. As you can tell, I am not a carpenter but it should get the job done. I plan on putting about 25 quail in it around mid July.
View of the front release door


Back view


Some pictures of the cover the birds can fly to.




It should be fun for my 4 year old son to help me out with the birds. And it will give my dogs some birds to work on. This is the first time I will be trying this and I hope it goes well.

[birddog1968]

Nice job....should be fun.

Maybe one lil suggestion. pin that wire with some 1 x 4's to keep the birds or critters from opening it up with just staples holding it. If there is a weak spot the quail or predators will find it. Quail are escape artists.

Good Luck !

[southernblues]

i'm looking to do something similar. what's the inside look like? any ledges or shelves for them to perch on? great job!

[bwire]

Nice job....should be fun.

Maybe one lil suggestion. pin that wire with some 1 x 4's to keep the birds or critters from opening it up with just staples holding it. If there is a weak spot the quail or predators will find it. Quail are escape artists.

Good Luck !

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to see if I have anything around the house that will do the job. I bought some of the lumber to use but the metal roofing was from somebody else that had it laying in the woods.

i'm looking to do something similar. what's the inside look like? any ledges or shelves for them to perch on? great job!

I have 2x4's at around the inside of it for a ledge. They are placed at the top of the plywood. The birds will be able to fly up to look out.

[BoJack]

Looks good.Should do you fine.I'd take the advise about the 1x4's though.

[bwire]

i'm looking to do something similar. what's the inside look like? any ledges or shelves for them to perch on? great job!

Here are some pictures of the inside:





I also put a door over the recall funnel to keep unwanted critters out:




I'll put some 1x4's on like suggested. A little later I'll put the feeding system in. I've been thinking of using the less mess feeders I read about. Anybody use them? Thanks for the advice.

[birddog1968]

I would put two or three coats of paint on it (inside and out) so that waferboard doesn't delaminate on you.

[gspmo1]

In my Johnny house I used the bullet feeder/ water from LCS. It keeps the birds from fouling it up. I also used a water similar to the less mess, you can purchase the same nipple from farmtek. Just insert it in to some pvc pipe and fill it with water.

[SCKennel]

Bullet feeders and waters from LCS work great. I have about 35 birds in my johnny house and only feed and water them maybe once every five days. The mess from the bullet system is minimal.

[bwire]

I got 21 quail on Monday and put them in my johnny house one at a time through the recall funnel. My 4 year old son enjoyed putting some of the quail in too. I plan to release about 4-5 birds in two weeks and see how things go. Here are a couple of pics of what it looks like


the feed and water tubes I made at home


some of the birds


I just hope it doesn't get too hot for them. They seemed to be fine today and the inside of the pen is shaded from the roof. The pen gets some shade in the afternoon so I think they should be OK.

[birddogger]

Looks good to me. Good luck with them.

Charlie

[ACooper]

Can you post an up close pic (when you get a chance of course) of how you fashioned the feeder and waterer. Are you using some kind of nipple on the water tube? How did you cut the hole on the feeder tube?

[bwire]

Can you post an up close pic (when you get a chance of course) of how you fashioned the feeder and waterer. Are you using some kind of nipple on the water tube? How did you cut the hole on the feeder tube?

For the water tube I used a nipple that I ordered from Farmtek. This is the one I used. Before I had all the birds in I saw one quail using the nipple.

http://www.farmtek.com/farm/supplies/pr ... c1030.html

The feed and water tubes are just pvc pipe. The water nipple just screws in using the correct size drill (23/64 is what the web site says) to make the hole. To make the hole in the feeder I drilled some holes and then used snips to cut the opening. I used a dremel to smooth out the edges.

If I do another johnny house I think one thing I would do different is to put some elbows on the top of the feed/water tubes and have them angle out through the wire screen. That way I could add the water and food without getting into the pen. I think with the way I have it now I will have to get in every two weeks or so to add water and food. But that is just a guess right now. I'll try to get some up close pics when I put in more food and water.

[ACooper]

The feed and water tubes look good, I have been kicking around ideas similar to what you did, I had not figured out how I wanted to do the waterer yet, I am glad told me about the farm tec nipple.

[GSPlover]

Very nice Johnny house. I have one that is very similiar. I had problems with Coyotes and dogs really doing a number on my house. Every night they tried to chew their way in. I finally had to put a solar fence charger on my bird house and fence it in with some hot wires. That did the trick. I also made a portable johnny pen that will house a dozen birds. It will lay in a pickup bed real easy. Its divided down the middle with two different bird doors so you can keep track of which birds have been out. Ill try to post some pics. Good luck with yours. Hope the predators stay away.

[Greg Jennings]

The hot wire idea works. We had tons of problems on Chris's bird pen till we put the hot wire up. No problems at all since.

Did you use any kind of baffle inside the tube feeder to keep it from flowing out? Might want to consider how to mod the waterer and feeder to keep from having to go into the JH to service them.

[bwire]

Did you use any kind of baffle inside the tube feeder to keep it from flowing out? Might want to consider how to mod the waterer and feeder to keep from having to go into the JH to service them.

The nipple I used is a self sealer. I just drilled a hole in the bottom of the pvc and screwed in the nipple. I had water in it for a few weeks before I got the birds and I had no leaks. They started to drink from it before I had all the birds in the pen.

I thought of putting some elbow bends on the pvc feeder and put them through a small hole in the wire. But since I already have birds in that may wait till next year.

[bwire]

I started to release some birds on Sunday evening. I let 4 out the first time and they were back in the pen the next day. The next day I let 3 out and they came back in after a couple of hours and I left another 3 out the same day and they came back in by the next morning. Yesterday I released 7 birds and when I checked on them in the morning 4 were back in the pen but the other 3 must have decided they liked being free and were in the grass outside the pen. They ended up going back into the johnny house by the afternoon. So I left 5 more out today and I'll check on them in the morning. So far everything has been going great. I did 5 different releases and I have not lost any quail, still have the 21 I started with. My plan is to keep the releases small for the rest of the week and then increase the number of birds I let out next week. I thought if I do that until the middle or end of August they should be strong enough flyers to get the dogs on them a little.

[ToddW7]

I know this is an old post, but how did your Johnny House work out? How did you make the feeder to keep feed from spilling all over the floor?