The Minty Coop

venymae

Prairie Wind
9 Years
Aug 18, 2014
1,961
2,244
371
Manhappiness, Kansas
My Coop
My Coop
In June we bought our first house and finally were able to put our dream of owning chickens into action. After researching and looking at many many coop designs my spouse and I sat down together and hashed out our coop design! Here are some of the things that we wanted:

1. EASY TO CLEAN! (#1!)
2. Aesthetically Pleasing
3. Easy Egg Access (outside)
4. Designed for deep litter method
5. Utilizes recycled material/low cost
6. Works with our yard and ordinance restrictions
7. Can be accessed without going into run (egg, cleanout, and chicken door)
8. Predator proof
9. Well ventilated
10. We can actually build it!


My spouse and I are very hands on, but we DON'T have wood working skills. I mean, I've watched my dad (who is ok, but no master!) and helped him build a cat house when I was little, but lets be honest, I watched a lot of youtube videos and the homedepot guys were probably dreading my every visit! In the end, everything worked out. I'm not sure I would recommend doing it the way we did, but it worked! Overall I love the design, I just think it could have been constructed with less headache if we had more background in construction. Haha



We Started Framing in the Garage. We used a lot of Recycled Timber and a couple pieces were not quite straight which gave us quite the headache!



We moved the Frame outside before putting on the siding so that it didn't get too heavy to move. We used a lot of Recycled Siding which was fun and very helpful with the pocketbook!



We cut down an old house door that someone was throwing out for the coop door. It had fun patterning on it and matched our 1920's home.

A glimpse with clean out door open. you can see into the nest boxes on the right. We liked the look of the old chipped paint on the interior side so let it be :)

When we roofers redid our roof this summer, they redid the chicken coop too! Free of charge, without asking ;) Score!


The nesting boxes open from the outside and are right next to the walkway from the house to garage. The stool is so our kiddos can look in :)

The inside of the nesting boxes. The tubs make cleaning out the nests easy, though so far our chicken all stay on the roosts at night and the nest boxes stay pretty clean. The removable front board keeps the deep litter out/in. There is also a similar board inside the clean out door, so the litter does not fall out when you open it.


The Chicken door is a guillotine style door that is opened by pulling down the cord, which is hooked to the fencing to prevent it closing. After the chickens roost for the night we simply unhook the rope and the door drops. The door is mounted inside so no critters can get their fingers underneath it to open it.


Almost done (see that nice new roof? Yeah!) We put foundation stoned under the posts so they were not directly on the soil.



I let our little man fill blown out eggs with paint and throw them at the door for a fun pop of color.


As an afterthought we added a dust bath area in the form of an old tire in the covered part of the run underneath the coop. Crawling under the coop to dig out an indent to put it in was not fun! (Especially because I am tall!) I needed to think of this idea BEFORE we set the coop atop it! Nevertheless, I got it done. We filled it with wood ash, sand, and loose soil.



UPDATE: Finished Exterior and Interior Pictures

Here is the finished outside with the painted door. We might repaint it next year, because it's fun, and I think the layer upon layer of paint splashes will look nice. We got the mint color of our coop because we had a quart of green paint and a bit of leftover white paint to we just threw the two together and that's what we ended up with! It was all left in the house when we bought it, so cost was $0


The Chicken door and Maple Roost (view through the clean out door). We used a Maple branch we cut out of one of our trees for a roost. It is wedged in very tight, but not nailed down so that if it ever get filthy we can remove it to clean. The bark is very smooth so we are not worried about it collecting ick anymore than worked wood.


Another look at the Chicken door and Roost support


The inside of the window. The chickens are always on the roost looking out the window in the morning. Waiting for us to come open the chicken door. It's hilarious!


Opposite side of the roost in front of clean out door and nesting boxes. The children's rake ($4 dollar general) is used to stir the litter, and sits nicely in that little pocket area. We can reach all corners of the coop with it from the clean out door.


Nesting boxes and roost from the outside of the cleanout door. You can see the edges we put on the nesting box and cleanout door to keep the litter in.



Closeup of the lips to show how they can be removed for deep cleaning once or twice a year. Also, you can see the flooring we laid down beneath the litter. My parents had a large remnant that they no longer needed so that's what we used.


Our no spill feeder. We only need to refill this every week or so.


Horizontal chicken nipple waterer. This also only needs to be refilled every week or so. However, in summer it sometimes will grow algea inside so we are considering getting a black bucket. We also have not set it up for freezing weather yet.



So far our chickens really really like the coop! These pictures were taken after about 4 months of use, so you can see it stays pretty clean! We use straw and shredded paper in the coop (4-6 inches deep) and lots of leaf litter and wood chippings in the run. Everything stays nice and dry.

The few things I would change are:
1. A window in the south side to take advantage of passive heating
2. Better traction on the ramp - they slide a lot and seem to not care for using it. (we're going to do this next spring for sure by laying a paint/sand mix onto it for extra traction without color.)

Other than that our coop is awesome and satisfies everything we wanted! Hope you enjoyed our little tour!
 
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