Home Sweet Coop

This has definitely been a long, drawn out project. I don't know why I procrastinate building a coop when we have chicks in the garage. I know how fast they grow. I know they will be crammed in their box that looked so huge to start with. Why I haven't learned my lesson I don't know, but hopefully this will be the last chicken coop I have to build.

I knew it would prove to be a bit of a challenge because I would be working with salvaged materials. A challenge or or spend money? I'll take the challenge any day.

I began with a simple 2x4 frame. This coop is going to house 11 chickens so it is roughly 4x12. This is not pre-treated wood or anything so I hope it will last a few years at least. If your aren't using salvaged materials, I highly recommend using pre-treated lumber for at least the base pieces that will be in contact with the ground.

Next step, nesting boxes. In our previous coop we had used five gallon buckets as the nesting spaces. We had several on hand and I will admit that I was feeling lazy in the constructing nesting box category. They worked okay but we found that the chickens easily scratched all the bedding out of them. This time, I decided I would do things the traditional way and build some boxes.

Step 1: Build the floor. My boxes are 13 inches deep and roughly 13 inches wide.

Step 2: Attach the walls. My plywood was not very thick so I had to add a furring strip to attach everything to.

Step 3: Attach the door to the underside of the floor.

Step 4: Cut the box dividers and install from the underside of the floor. The front of the boxes are 14 inches and they slope back to 13 inches.

Step 5: Add the roof. Make sure that it has a little overhang so the rain water runs off without getting the box wet. I added a piece of metal to the roof once the coop was completed.

Step 6: Add a latch or two to the sides and a furring strip to the front of the boxes to keep the bedding in.

That's it! For the boxes anyway.

We had a great big window we salvaged from our porch demo so we built a place for that in our frame.

Here is a word of caution for something that I did incorrectly. I am in no way a builder and usually just throw things together hoping they will work. I attached the roof beams the wrong direction. They should be running horizontal in order to support the tin panels that run vertically. It still works okay but they would be much more sturdy if the beams were switched.

I threw on some plywood walls, built some access doors, cut two vents, one on either side of the coop, and cut a pop hole door.

I dug out a space for a railroad tie foundation for the chicken run and got that constructed. Can I just say that chicken wire is such a pain to work with?! It snags on everything including work gloves and then if you take your gloves off it rips apart your hands. Arrgh!

We moved our chicks into the coop before it was completely done but I don't think they were too picky about the finishing touches. They had room to grow!

Last week we managed to finally get it all painted! The last thing I need to do is build a roost for the inside since the one I originally made was too big. I was planning on using some big branches but then I read that a flat surface like a 2x4 is actually better for chickens. Who knew?

Eventually I will add some light trim to the edges to give it a finished look, but for now it is fully functional and that is what matters!