Chicken coops are like real estate. After all, a coop is a house, right? Housing for humans and chickens are really needed for the same reason: shelter from the elements of life. How fancy or simple a house or coop is, depends on the person (not the chicken – I have yet to meet a chicken that can build or decorate). Houses vary in size and price. Coops do also, but to my surprise, coops can be very expensive!
Here at LL Farm, we are DIYers (is that a word?). We built our house, we are building our small farm (one DIY project at a time – fences, stalls, buildings, etc.) and yes, we built the chicken coop.
The coop we built for our ladies is from re-purposed materials, so the only cost was for a few items that we did not have – locks, hinges, 1×6 lumber, and a gable vent. The coop is constructed of plywood, which was scrap from a job site. The roof shingles and 2x 4’s were left over from the construction of our house.
The coop is 6′ x 6′ x 4′ tall. The outside is stained with deck stain.
The nesting areas are located under hinged lids, on each side of the coop. They are located on the outside of the fenced in area, making it easy for egg collecting.
The nesting areas are created by using a cut 1 x 6 board. There are a total of 8 nesting boxes (4 on each side). But the ladies all lay their eggs in one location!
The coop and door are made out of plywood. There is a small door cut into the big door. The big door has a bolt lock.
Opening the big door makes it easy to clean the coop and lay down clean straw.
The little door (which the ladies use) stays open during the day by use of a hook latch. We close the small door at night, by hooking it on the other side. Closing the ladies in the coop at night, protects them from predators. They go in by themselves around the same time every night.
The coop is elevated off the ground, and under the coop is surrounded by chicken fencing that is attached to 2 x 8 pieces of lumber. This provides the ladies shade and shelter from the weather. I see them hanging out under there sometimes during rain, instead of going inside the coop. They also congregate under there a lot when the ground is covered from snow. We have a bale of staw on the side where the snow would blow under, so it stays pretty dry under there. I store layer pellets in the metal trash can that you see – so convenient.
Inside are the roosts (a 2 x 4 cut in half) where they sleep at night. You can also see the vent, which helps with circulation.
They look a little started in this picture. They were ready to go to sleep and I shined a light and took a picture (smile).
Before taking these pictures, I made sure there was new straw put down (you didn’t want to see all the poo did you?). This picture may actually prove me wrong…maybe they do know how to decorate. They went in and scratched the straw all around. Hhmm, is that there way of decorating?
7 Comments
Just starting looking for coops. It needs to be sturdy I have two large dogs. In county we have fox, coyote racoon, snakes. In our county you can have four hens and one rooster.
You’re county has more sense than ours! We’re only allowed 2 hens and no rooster!
But everyone here has a dog and they bark all the time keeping us up at night and no one
does a thing about it!
I would rather hear a rooster all day long than to hear a loud dog’s barking!!!
I love all the chicken stories and everything to do with chooks. Myself and my wife are retired and live on the Romney Marsh in Kent in the UK. I wish we had more room but we do with what we have. We have 3 rangers (hybrids) for our eggs, (now and again eggs as they are in moult). Recently we bought 14 new girls, bantams at 8 weeks old. There are 3 Rhode Island Red bantams (or miniatures as they are called here) and the rest are Pekins. One of the RIR bantams is looking a bit bigger than the other 2 and a bit rooster like, hope he/she is going to be a hen or owing to the noise and neighbours he/she would have to go, (sniff sniff). We love making coops from re-cycled timber. Not long ago we were coming home from shopping and noticed in the school playground near us that there was a big pile of old timber sitting there. I made enquiries with the builders on the site and they said that the timber was the old gymnasium floor which was being renewed after 50 or so years. The builder said “help yourself” (music to my ears). The timber boards were 6″x 1″ and there were also some 2″x 4″. So home I went to get my trailer and collected the stuff. If I had more room I would have taken the lot home. So from this timber we built the bantams run and house. The little ladies are getting near their point of lay soon and looking so grown up. The suspected rooster hasn’t made any unusual noises yet, lets hope it stays that way. Best wishes….Mike Peirson.
We repurposed a little tykes plastic playhouse (we bought a dog carier from Craig’s List for transporting hens and temp. housing, they ended giving us the playhouse in addition).
Kinda looks like this
http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/480/974/608/608974480_328.jpg
We used an old wood bathroom sink cabinet for their laying box attached to back window on cinder blocks.
I attached 1/4″ hardware fabric to all openings that were large enough that a Raccoon or opossum could reach a paw through. I used corrugated roofing screwing to attach to the plastic walls. I used screwed eyebolts to secure the door closed at night and prop door open during day.
I used an old shower rod as a roosting pole.
We have nine chickens and a broody hen that we are experimenting with incubating 20 fertilized Coturnix quail eggs. Seeing if they will come home to roost if raised by a chicken. Want them to be cage free quail.
We love this coop! My husband wants to know if there are any building plans for it we could copy?
We love our chickens!!
Ginny Davis
Western Colorado
This looks great! Were there any building plans/specs you’d be willing to share?
Sorry, there were no plans that we used. We looked up ideas on the internet and just ‘created’ it based on different ideas that we liked from other coops. My hubby is a builder….