Hidden Forest Coop

[Jetpad]

I wanted to get some chickens a few years ago and bought the plans for TheGardenCoop.com . I then went down to the county permit office and discovered they didn't really want me to put a coop on my property. So after thinking about it for a while, I decided to go ahead and just build it anyway. My back yard has about a half acre of un-landscaped forest and isn't fenced. I picked a spot in the middle for the coop that'll be hidden from my neighbor's view for most of the year. Unfortunately, it'll be visible during the winter so I'll have to come up with someway of hiding it when all the leaves drop off the trees.

The basic GardenCoop is roughly a 6'x9.5' covered run with a 3'x5' coop. I'm expanding it slightly to 6'x12' and adding on some external nesting boxes to the coop. I'm hoping to have enough room for about 7-8 chickens.

Another twist to this is there isn't a flat spot in my yard. The coop will be on a slope. Here's looking downhill on the spot I picked.


And this is looking at it uphill.


The foundation will be solid concrete blocks.


I had to dig down into the slope to make a level spot for it. The uphill side of the coop has the blocks on their side 4" deep.


The downhill side has a mound of gravel covered with some hardware cloth and two layers of blocks. I ended up needing a lot more blocks and gravel than I originally thought.


I've kept some of the small trees that were already growing in the middle of the run for now. I know the chickens will probably tear them up but maybe I can protect them.


The basic pieces of the frame went together fairly quickly using the garden coop plans. I picked a dark color to paint it that matches the trim on my house. It's called "Dark Forest" and hope it'll help hide the coop in the trees.


Here's my painting crew at work.


This is the frame on the block foundation. Yea! Unfortunately, I had to make a few adjustments to the frame after I discovered that I didn't make the foundation wide enough by 4".

 

[Jetpad]

Here's a video I captured from a few months ago of a deer checking out the chickens.

 

[Jetpad]

Things that I would change.... I think like a lot of people have found, I would have made it a little bigger but the current size works fine for 9 chickens and probably would be good for up to about 12.

I have made another change to the coop last fall (that I hadn't documented here) when I added three chicks to the flock. I put a internal fence below the hen house to keep the new chicks until the older hens got used to them. It also had a tiny doorway they could use to go into the other part of the run but the older hens couldn't follow them back into the chick area. It was positioned so that half of the drinking nipples were on each side of the fence. This picture doesn't show the tiny doorway but it was just a chick size hole I cut in the hardware cloth. I used it for about four weeks before mixing them all together.



I then took that framed fence and turned it into a shelf below the outside roost to create another level in the outside run area. It kind-of adds roughly another 12 square feet to the run. If I was to redo it, I'd make it where the litter could be a little deeper in the shelf because they tend to kick it out after a few days. The bottom of it is hardware cloth so their roost poops eventually filter down to the dirt part of the run below it.

From this, I had the idea that I could drop the floor level of the hen house 6-10" and change out the floor material from OSB wood to the hardware cloth. That way, I might be able to get away with putting 12" to 18" of litter under the hen house roost (instead of sand) and their poops would just eventually trickle down through the litter and hardware cloth into the dirt of the run (just like their run roost). That would save me from having to scoop their poops in the hen house. I haven't tried this yet because there is so much stuff that I currently have under the hen house floor (electronics for webcams, the water tank, pumps and hoses) but I think it might work. During the winter, it might even help the hen house stay a little warmer.

Absolutely no problems with moldy food. The PVC pipe holds about two weeks of food for them and after it emerges at the bottom, it probably only sits for a few days in the trough.

The deep litter method has been great, along with the sand in hen house and fake turf in the nest boxes. I was originally taking the poop out of the sand roughly every day and putting it into my compost pile but I've now switched to just dumping it into the run. It disappears very quickly and has never overloaded the run. I do a total clean-out in the fall, move everything into my compost pile and then fill the run with fall leaves. In the spring, I do a total clean-out again and fill it with leaves I've saved from the fall or a hay bale (if I have one available).

Safety wise, it has been great. We've had many raccoons, dogs, hawks, owls and probably other things interested in the chickens. I've found evidence of something trying to dig into the coop but they didn't get very far and the chickens have been perfectly safe.

 

[magdalene74]

frankly i think it is ridiculous that you can buy three acres of land and not be "allowed" (on your own land mind you) to have chickens.. for crying out loud. THIS is why i just spent my entire inheritance on a piece of land OUTSIDE of town... and if they try to incorporate me later im fighting tooth and nail...

 

[Jetpad]

In this first picture, you can see how close the pipe is to the coop. That pipe is really way to close to the coop and it is obvious now that water is going to seep out into the gravel under the concrete blocks in addition to going down the pipe. It is hard to see in the shadow but on the side of the pipe closest to the coop, I've dug out all the gravel down to the bare dirt. This probably isn't the correct way to fix the problem but I think it might be good enough (for chicken work).


I mixed up some mortar and made a barrier in-between the coop foundation/gravel and the french drain pipe. I'm sure some water will find its way past the barrier but it should cause a lot more to end up going down the pipe. It was really only a problem when there is a heavy rain that lasts all day. This was like the fourth or fifth time I've had to pull up the pavers. Hopefully it'll be the last.

 

[Jetpad]

I've made a few camouflage tarps that I can attach to the coop during winter. I bought two burlap camouflage duck blinds, hemmed their edges (they were kind-of raw and unravelling otherwise) and added some grommets for attaching them. Here is the coop from one angle without the tarps.



Here's the tarps hanging down from the roof. Along the bottom I have another short strip of brown plastic tarp I was using for my wood pile that I can put up to block the wind and snow along the bottom of the run. The opposite side of the coop that faces my house won't be covered.



Here's the coop from another angle but without the brown tarp along the bottom. You can see a little a few branches of an evergreen that I planted on the left. It'll help block things some but it'll probably take a while to grow in all this shade.


And here it is with the brown tarp.

 

[ChookRanger]

I don't know if inviting a complainer over is a good idea. I believe the best strategy is to keep them hidden. You went to a lot of effort to build your coop to be undetectable, so I say go with that. It would be hard for anyone to complain about your coop if they don't know for sure you have one. Essentially your chickens aren't bothering anyone since they cannot be seen or heard from outside your own property. You have enough space that no one needs to know you even have chickens. If it galls someone that you own chickens, letting them see your chickens won't help. I may be wrong, but if someone hates chickens, I doubt they will ever come around. Hopefully the laws will be changed soon, but until then your chickens are nobody's business but your own. Be careful with whom you share your secrets. Good luck!

 

[Jcbdc]

Nice coop!
Put in a V above your coop to channel the water away.

 

[Jetpad]

The roof on this end has an extra couple feet on it. The extra overhang will protect the (kind-of) external nesting boxes that extend 12" out from the normal size of a GardenCoop. I'm putting 3-4 nesting boxes along the bottom of the bump-out and the top will be a little storage cabinet. I'm using a bunch of leftover OSB plywood from another project that I'd already sealed with a clear finish.


The center of this wall will be the clean out door that empties into the run and the chicken door will be on the right side of this wall.


As part of the GardenCoop design, all the interior panels (including the coop floor) can be removed for extra cleaning if needed. There will be lots of light in the coop.

 

[ChookRanger]

Very nice looking coop so far. Before winter comes you could probably plant some evergreens around it.