Upcycled/Recycled Coops - Swing Set Frames & Trampoline Frames - Any creative people with ideas?

MESOFRUFFEH

Songster
5 Years
Sep 15, 2015
382
58
156
East Texas


In the spring I would like to expand my flock housing and make a separate pen for my bantams, and a separate pen for my silkies, so I have been thinking about coop and run designs a lot here lately. I saw this top pic for making a coop from a swingset frame the other day and it sounded like such a great idea and I had never thought about it before!! I have at my disposal 2 old swingset frames, and 2 old trampoline frames. One trampoline frame has the framework for one of those protective nets around it, so it would make a great run I feel like. You would have plenty of room to walk in and move around. One of the swingsets is much larger than the other. I could feasibly combine the two tho.

If I wanted to make these permanent structures, I feel like I would need to do something way different than some of the ideas I have seen, as far as the coop portion goes. I live in east texas, so being hot in the summer is going to be a bigger deal than being cold in the winter, however, I have a lot of shade I can place these runs in. I want to use as many recycled materials as possible. I may turn one into a bachelor pad for all these roos I'm going to have in the spring!! I would also like to make these as predator proof as possible and I know there are plenty of people here that are experts at that!

I really like the Idea of using part of the swingset frame as the actual coop, but I worry it would be too drafty and if the wind was blowing while raining, everyone would get wet. My dad repairs appliances for a living and the other day I noticed he had a lot of old washer and dryer cases laying around that he is just going to take to the scrap yard. The wheels in my brain started rolling, and I thought those sure could make some great chicken coops, at least for a small number of chickens! At least in theory....

Has anyone here ever recycled an old swingset or trampoline for a coop, or does anyone have any ideas for incorporating a coop structure into these? Any other upcycled coop ideas? I want to re-use old stuff that people are just going to throw away, or that I can buy on a budget, but at the same time, I want it to look decent, even if all that means is tossing a coat of paint on everything. I know there are a lot of creative people on this forum, and a lot of yall have done things I would have never thought of. Anyone have any ideas I can incorporate into my coop/run plans?

I will more than likely be making roosts out of small trees I can cut down, just like I did for my coop I have now. Using buckets for nesting boxes... local restaurant sells buckets with lids for $1.25!! Can't beat that!! ANY and ALL recycled/upcycled chicken coop/run/accessory ideas you have for permanent structures... lay them on me! Thanks in advance!!
 
For the A frame swing set take a sheet of plywood and about 3ft from the ground and attach it to the frame. You might be able to get 2 from 1 sheet. Put a brace from one corner to the l diagonal from it. Put a roost or 2 in. Cover the section from the top to the plywood with roofi. Then cover the bottom "run" with wire as a run. Probably put the nest boxes in the run for space reasons. Oh forgot, put a ramp from the top to the bottom so they can get up. Make a door at one end to access the top and bottom.

For the trampoline your idea of a washer or dryer case could work grate. Take the door off for them to get in. Take the back panel and turn it into a flap door for your access. Maybe use milk crates for nest boxes . Use pallets to build roost all over the run. Take a tall sapling in the center to make a sort of TP type thing out of your netting for space.

Mind you I'm NOT a professional. I enjoy making old things new . We currently are on the hunt for trampoline frames and swing set . We are expanding in spring and my barn isn't big enough for me.
 
For the A frame swing set take a sheet of plywood and about 3ft from the ground and attach it to the frame. You might be able to get 2 from 1 sheet. Put a brace from one corner to the l diagonal from it. Put a roost or 2 in. Cover the section from the top to the plywood with roofi. Then cover the bottom "run" with wire as a run. Probably put the nest boxes in the run for space reasons. Oh forgot, put a ramp from the top to the bottom so they can get up. Make a door at one end to access the top and bottom.

For the trampoline your idea of a washer or dryer case could work grate. Take the door off for them to get in. Take the back panel and turn it into a flap door for your access. Maybe use milk crates for nest boxes . Use pallets to build roost all over the run. Take a tall sapling in the center to make a sort of TP type thing out of your netting for space.

Mind you I'm NOT a professional. I enjoy making old things new . We currently are on the hunt for trampoline frames and swing set . We are expanding in spring and my barn isn't big enough for me.
My dad has some waferboard sheets that he will sell to me for $2 each and they are huge, so that is totally do-able. They just need a good coat of paint to waterproof them and I think they will be good to go. I am in the process of planning to build a coop in the next week or two for my bunny and my silkies. My dad is giving me some old restaurant swinging doors for free. They are solid plastic and have windows, 6 in total.


I think if I clean them up, cut them down, they would make excellent walls for my coop, complete with windows!!!

I have some old treated wood posts that I thought about doing the tee-pee thing with for my netting in the runs. If i run out of posts, saplings would work too, I do have a lot of trees at my disposal. I also have a lot of old pallets, they are not high quality pallets, they are the ones that my sod grass came on. I have about a dozen of them total. The dryer cases would be awesome to use for coops, especially if I had a few of them, I could cover the back of the case in waferboard and make a hole for an entrance for the chickens, then use the dryer door as my access on the outside of the coop. These would be for my bantams, or for roosters, or even holding pens for young chickens, so the small space is not going to be that big of a deal. If I used these dryer case coops with the trampoline, I could have 2 or 3 of them per trampoline.

I love the ideas, it even got me to brainstorming some more!! Keep them coming, surely there are some other creative people out there with some ideas??
 
Well I just wanted to update this post because we just recently made a trampoline frame pen. I am starting to wish I'd done mine upside down like the one in the picture I shared a few months back, it might be easier to move that way! But nonetheless, we made one for our 30 newest babies who just moved out of the brooder. It cost us less than $100 for everything, most of it was recycled, but we did buy wire and some wood, plus the wildlife netting we used to cover the top.


Started by attaching our wire


Used the trampoline springs to hold the frame together, without the jump mat attached, it has nothing to hold it together. This worked perfectly.


After we got the wire and the frame all secure, we started building what we kept calling "the gazebo" to attach our netting to.
For this we just drilled pilot holes, then screwed the wood right into the frame with wood screws.

I took three 20' pieces of wildlife netting, overlapped their edges, and zip tied them together to make one big piece of netting, then we slid it over the "gazebo", straightened it out, and zip tied it securely to the wood and wire.

Our gate is not the most beautiful, but it was free, and I love free! But you could very easily build a decent gate and if this were a more permanent structure we would have set posts. We used plumbers tape/duct strap to attach a 2x4 to one of the metal poles to screw our gate hinges into.

Here is our completed project. It took us an afternoon to construct it.

We made an A frame to support some homemade waterers and some tin.



Everyone really seems to be enjoying it so far!



We plan on moving this around the yard some, but it does take a couple of people, mainly because of the gate. I think if we had turned it upside down like the one in the picture I posted first, it might be a little easier. One day I might take it apart and rebuild it that way, it would only take a few hours. I have 2 special needs chickens, and once these babies are done with this pen, I will make this pen more handicap accessible and move the two special needs chickens in. So that is probably when I will change the design and flip the frame upside down.
 

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