Let me first apologize for my lack of building skills, I am not a carpentar. As you read this post forgive me carpentry mistakes. I hope to show that if I can do this anyone can.
6 months ago my wife mentioned starting a chicken flock in our suburban neighborhood and I told her she'd need a different husband. That changed to, I'll build the coop, then I'm out and you're in charge. Now I might be more excited about this whole project that she is.
I wanted to build my own coop because that is fun for me. I also wanted to try to do as much of it as I could with free, scrap, or re-purposed materials.
The previous owner's of our home had a Lab and a large dog run in the back yard with a tin roof over one end. We decided that would be a great place to house our flock since most of the infrastructure is already in place.
I measured the Dog run and decided to situate the coop at the very back of the run.
I found a bunch of scrap lumber from a deck building contractor, more scrap lumber from a construction company that is building some apartment units near our home. I scored several 2x4s, treated 2x6s, plywood sheeting, some shingles from a broken bag at the home depot which the manager gave me for $5, some broken pieces of siding from home depot for free, Some 70% off vinyl flooring tiles from the Home Depot clearance rack. For the nesting boxes I found a Corner cabinet box from the habitat for Humanity re-store, which when turned on its side makes a great nesting box with a lid. For windows I used a clear plastic storage tote that we had in our garage and cut the sides out.
Total cost under $100.
Now that I had my materials, on to construction....
4' x 6' fits snuggily in the back of the dog run.
I added vinyl flooring to the top of this to make clean up easy.
This shows the Vinyl tile flooring that I installed to keep the wood floor from rotting and hopefully make clean up easy.
Still needs a lid (Roof is provided by the dog run).....See future pictures. Also needs a pop door and ventilation and windows.
After building it in the Garage I took the walls down and moved it out to the Dog run.
Nesting Boxes are removable for cleaning.
The rope opens the pop door.
Pop Door, Windows and Ventilation installed.
This shows the corner cabinet box that I re-purposed as a nesting box.
The windows panes are clear plastic from an old storage tote that I had in the garage. I cut the sides off and they work great.
I cut a hole in the chain link so that the nesting box could be accessed without entering the run and so that the window could be opened for summer ventilation.
The Tiki shield that you can't see very well has been in the garage for years. We figured he could stand as a protector of the flock.
In the Spring we'll cover the concrete floor of the run with sand from the neighboring horse pasture.
This now houses these little producers. Picture above is taken through the nesting box door.
More photos to come.
I'd greatly value any feedback on things I should change.
and the idea of cutting the fence away to make access easier. Nice.