I too have started with a coop from TSC I am new to having chickens but we are now going to build a coop so I can get more chickens next spring the only con i have with the coop is its not dog proof but it is nowVery early in this thread someone posted that they couldn't understand why people ignore good advice and buy prefab coops anyways. I just wanted to post an answer to the "why" I personally went with a cheap prefab coop. I hope this helps explain why at least this person would buy these coops even though thread after thread bashes them.
I was well aware that the TSC coop would be insufficient in the long term, especially if I added any more birds. I knew it wouldn't hold up for years and was flimsy. I also knew it was not generous in size. So it was an educated choice and not flippant.
Before my chicks arrived in the mail, I had never held a chicken or chick before. I had researched extensively what was involved in caring for chickens, but there is a world of a difference between reading in a book and slogging out in the rain to take care of chickens. So I figured there was a decent chance that I wouldn't make it through the winter before deciding I didn't want to keep them. Also, I was the only one in my household supportive of getting chickens, and if I didn't have time for them, I would have to get rid of them. (Just to reassure everyone, I had a rooster plan and a get-out-of-chickens plan)
In addition, I was bombarded with negative feedback that said every chicken has an extreme death probability at every point. Order twice as many chicks because a lot will die. But just wait, as they grow up, more will die. Just as you get eggs, predators will kill them all, etc. So I had no idea how many chickens I would actually have in 6 months! I figured I was very likely to have 2 chickens and thus the tiny coop would be fine.
The final factor was that I have little carpentry skills and it would take a LOT of time to build anything. I see a lot of comments like "just whip out a huge coop in a few days"! I wish I had that much ability and time in a day, but that doesn't apply in my case. It took me a bunch of weekends just to get a prefab coop set up LOL! I can allocate about 3-4 hours a week to building anything and thus it is a year project to build a "real" coop.
I figured I would know by the end of a winter if I was stuck on chickens and then I would start building a "real" coop. The prefab ones make great quarantine and brooding cages, so it isn't a waste of money and can be reused.
