My Small Scale Coop Build

[Burritoboi5]

Hey all, I'm relatively new to the chicken game. I started out about three months ago building a small 4x4 coop from some surplus lumber I had around the house and finishing it in vinyl siding. Unfortunately it can only house about three or four birds and since the rest of my family has taken a liking to them we need a bigger coop. Here's a picture of my first coop that's located in our dog's 9x9x6 kennel.

I have three birds now and would like around 6-8 ideally.

The new coop, is also being built much closer to our house for easier access during the winter. As such though, it has to look a bit better than my first budget coop. The layout for this one is 7x4x3.5 plus the height of the roof. And I'm building it to be a somewhat scale replica of my real house. I'm not sure about including one room of the house though on the back of the coop just for ease of construction. It will however have 3 nesting boxes and plenty of room for 6 chickens to roost.

I sunk the posts in yesterday and got the frame all leveled out.

Then added floor joists and covered it in 1/2in ply. Everything else so far has been treated 2x4s.

Today I got some of the uprights framed in as well as the nesting box area skinned.

Here's one of the neat things I'm doing......

Functioning garage doors to access the nesting boxes, it will be operated with a pulley eventually. But really simple design just runs vertically up a track on the inside of the coop. Here's an open door picture.

Other things will include a gravity feeder that can be filled through the chimney. And since I use a fount heater, there will be electricity in the coop so I intend of having a functioning front door light. The right side of the coop has a 4x3.5 foot opening that you can see in the pictures, this will be my main access door. I'm accomplishing this by putting in a vertical hinge so that the entire front of the house will swing up on two gas struts. The chickens will exit and enter the coop out the back door which is onto an elevated deck like our fullsize house and then use the deck stairs/ladder to get to the ground.

I am pretty busy the next few days so probably won't work on it again until Monday, but any input or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve

NOTE: Since I'm a new member I can't post pictures unless a mod wants to fix this I'll just have to wait a bit. Found a way around it.

 

[ipie68]

sounds like a good idea, but you might want to put a cap on the gravity feeder if its filled through a chimney,

 

[3forfree]

If you're not using the dog pen, you should plan the build so your birds can use it for a run.

 

[GardenGal]

Are they going to have any windows? As we know, chickens are solar powered

Looks like a quality build - good luck!

 

[Burritoboi5]

Oh Yes, there will be functional windows (probably plexy) that will match up with the actual house.

 

[GardenGal]

Looking forward to seeing your pictures

 

[cmom]

Looking forward to the progress pics too.

 

[Time-Out]

Do we get to see a pic of your house too?

 

[Mahonri]

Good job!

 

[Burritoboi5]

I had a few hours to work on the coop before it got dark today. Here's what I got done....

I started with the access/service door. I used gas struts to open and close this since it's 4x3 ft and relatively heavy to hold while working in the coop.

Then I started skinning the sides and rear of the coop, as well as built another door in the rear for the chickens to access the run. It's similar to the garage door/nesting box door and slides vertically.

Open

Closed

Planning to start in the on the roof tomorrow and will add pics of the real house too.

-Steve