The Cape Cod Coop


This is our Cape Cod coop which we built this summer when my father finally gave into getting me chickens, I had been dreaming of getting some since I was in 2nd grade. We received our chicks in March and kept them in a basement brooder until we finished the coop when they were about 10 weeks old. When we first got the chicks they were a lot smaller than I thought they would be and they were so cute and sweet. My whole family was so excited. Here is a picture of the chicks when they were less then a week old:

We started with 2 buff orpingtons, 2 welsummers, 2 easter eggers and 1 barred rock


We decided to repurpose our swing set because it wasn't being used much, although now it is is missed
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The swing set that we started with looked a lot like the one above except it was a little bigger and didn't have a roof. Some of the pictures of when we first started building are gone, phone was dropped in the Ocean.The coop is two floors, the top floor is where the roosts are located so they really are only up there when they sleep. On the bottom floor we have their nesting boxes, food and water. For the chickens to climb from floor to floor we have two ramps built. Each floor is 4.5 x 5 feet and the whole coop is 9 feet high. Surrounding the coop there is 12 inches of hardware cloth buried about an inch under the ground to prevent predators from getting in. Their run is 11.5 x 7 feet and is equipped with a few roosts, a set of stairs we built for them to climb, a chicken swing and an old lawn chair. Also in the run I have a bucket of water that I change out once or twice a day, they also have a nipple watering system in their coop.

So this is after we had closed in the swing set. We started by building the framing around the main structure of the swing.

This is a picture of the bottom floor before the feeder and waterer were installed you can see the two ramps that they use to get from the bottom floor to the top floor. There is a platform at the top of the first ramp so they can walk over to the nesting boxes.

This is the top floor, typically there are pine shavings on the floor but this was before we had chickens in there, which you could probably tell based on how clean it is. We ended up adding a lower roost and removing the top one to replace with a higher round roost since the chickens preferred the rafters over either of those roosts anyway.

Her is the door that the chickens go through to get to the run. We ended up not using the ramp after a few months because the chickens could easily jump down and the ramp just got pooped on and looked gross.

This is the outside of the coop, on the side there are two windows that are lined with hardware cloth so we can open them for some extra ventilation on hot days.

Here are the three nesting boxes, behind the coop


This is Haddie, a buff orpington when she was first exploring the coop. The girls loved it from day 1!


These are the chickens the morning after their first night in the coop. They roosted on the rafter, which we ended up taken down after a couple weeks.​


One last picture of the chickens enjoying their new home. In That picture they were about 3 months old ( I think)


That is our chicken coop! Thank you for reading.​
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