Hello! Thanks for letting us join your extremely useful forum!
We are inheriting six full grown dual purpose layers (4 sex links, 2 barred rocks) who are currently in full egg factory mode and who are kept in a heated coop by friends of ours.
We are just about finished with the construction of our coop and will probably get the hens next weekend. Neither of us has ever kept chickens so we are doing a lot of reading.
This is our coop as we were building it. The basic layout. The enclosed building will have an outdoor area under a roof.
The basic framing of the enclosed coop.
We sheathed inside the coop with OSB.
We installed electric before the OSB, then framed and built four nesting boxes.
Added siding and a human sized door.
Vents and doors installed. We plan to leave most of the windows open unless it gets very cold out. The two lower doors are to access the four nest boxes from outside the coop. The upper two (and the one around the corner) are all ventilation.
The outside area and chicken door and poo door installed.
We are just about ready to start installing the fencing, which will go from ground to roof to keep out varmints that are clever enough to climb. The doors are all very secure so hopefully raccoons will not be able to open them. I am worried that regular octagonal chicken wire will not be strong enough to keep them out. What do you all think of that? Any other suggestions? I did not mention that we are building a set of bleachers using stair stringers and 2 x 4's for a roosting area inside the coop. The long, low door in the 3rd to last photo is for easy extraction of the poo board. The chicken door is going to get a ramp sometime soon as well.
We are planning to keep a lamp on a thermostat outlet to keep the coop just above freezing. These chickens have been kept in a coop with a heater so I think we probably need to do that for at least this winter. We live in Southern Michigan so it can get cold here, 15 degrees F is pretty common here.
So hi and thanks for allowing my first post to be wordy and photo-intensive.
We are inheriting six full grown dual purpose layers (4 sex links, 2 barred rocks) who are currently in full egg factory mode and who are kept in a heated coop by friends of ours.
We are just about finished with the construction of our coop and will probably get the hens next weekend. Neither of us has ever kept chickens so we are doing a lot of reading.
This is our coop as we were building it. The basic layout. The enclosed building will have an outdoor area under a roof.
The basic framing of the enclosed coop.
We sheathed inside the coop with OSB.
We installed electric before the OSB, then framed and built four nesting boxes.
Added siding and a human sized door.
Vents and doors installed. We plan to leave most of the windows open unless it gets very cold out. The two lower doors are to access the four nest boxes from outside the coop. The upper two (and the one around the corner) are all ventilation.
The outside area and chicken door and poo door installed.
We are just about ready to start installing the fencing, which will go from ground to roof to keep out varmints that are clever enough to climb. The doors are all very secure so hopefully raccoons will not be able to open them. I am worried that regular octagonal chicken wire will not be strong enough to keep them out. What do you all think of that? Any other suggestions? I did not mention that we are building a set of bleachers using stair stringers and 2 x 4's for a roosting area inside the coop. The long, low door in the 3rd to last photo is for easy extraction of the poo board. The chicken door is going to get a ramp sometime soon as well.
We are planning to keep a lamp on a thermostat outlet to keep the coop just above freezing. These chickens have been kept in a coop with a heater so I think we probably need to do that for at least this winter. We live in Southern Michigan so it can get cold here, 15 degrees F is pretty common here.
So hi and thanks for allowing my first post to be wordy and photo-intensive.
Last edited:
