South Dakota Guy
Songster
Oak Abode Coop
My wife and I just finished building our chicken coop and we are rather proud of ourselves. We have almost no carpentry experience, so it was quite the challenge for us. We saw this coop on YouTube and I have posted the link above. We live in South Dakota in a city. so we are operating under some restrictions. We are allowed to have no more than 6 hens and no roosters. The coop should be no larger than 30 sq ft and the run should be no larger than 60 sq ft. We purchased the plans for the coop from Oak Abode's ETSY shop. This coop is slightly larger than the allowed size at 32 sq ft. This is because plywood and studs come in 8 ft sections. I could have modified it to 30 sq ft but I am hoping no one from the city shows up with a tape measure. We liked the raised design because it allows the chickens to have a shaded and protected area and it adds a stealthy extra 32 sq ft to the size of our run (which is already accounted for by the coop). We purchased a cheap metal run on Amazon that is 6.6 ft by 10 ft. This gives our chickens 66 sq ft + 32 sq ft =96 sq ft of run space for 16 sq ft per bird. The coop provides 5+ sq ft per bird. We enclosed the underneath of the coop with hardware cloth. Unfortunately, our bargain run is only enclosed in chicken wire but we know the risks. We live in the city and have a 6ft privacy fence for our backyard. The only predators I have seen are a neighbors cat, hawks and the occasional bald eagle which shouldn't penetrate the chicken wire. The designers of the coop live in Wisconsin which has similar weather to us. Summers are short and mild and winter is long and brutal. In winter we will most likely wrap the run in a tarp or some kind of plastic sheeting to minimize wind and snow exposure to our flock. We have 3 silver laced Wyandot hens aged 9 weeks and 3 gold laced Wyandotte chickens aged 15 and 10 weeks. We chose them because they are known to be cold hardy. Here are photos of the finished coop. If there is an interest, I will post photos we took during various stages of construction.
My wife and I just finished building our chicken coop and we are rather proud of ourselves. We have almost no carpentry experience, so it was quite the challenge for us. We saw this coop on YouTube and I have posted the link above. We live in South Dakota in a city. so we are operating under some restrictions. We are allowed to have no more than 6 hens and no roosters. The coop should be no larger than 30 sq ft and the run should be no larger than 60 sq ft. We purchased the plans for the coop from Oak Abode's ETSY shop. This coop is slightly larger than the allowed size at 32 sq ft. This is because plywood and studs come in 8 ft sections. I could have modified it to 30 sq ft but I am hoping no one from the city shows up with a tape measure. We liked the raised design because it allows the chickens to have a shaded and protected area and it adds a stealthy extra 32 sq ft to the size of our run (which is already accounted for by the coop). We purchased a cheap metal run on Amazon that is 6.6 ft by 10 ft. This gives our chickens 66 sq ft + 32 sq ft =96 sq ft of run space for 16 sq ft per bird. The coop provides 5+ sq ft per bird. We enclosed the underneath of the coop with hardware cloth. Unfortunately, our bargain run is only enclosed in chicken wire but we know the risks. We live in the city and have a 6ft privacy fence for our backyard. The only predators I have seen are a neighbors cat, hawks and the occasional bald eagle which shouldn't penetrate the chicken wire. The designers of the coop live in Wisconsin which has similar weather to us. Summers are short and mild and winter is long and brutal. In winter we will most likely wrap the run in a tarp or some kind of plastic sheeting to minimize wind and snow exposure to our flock. We have 3 silver laced Wyandot hens aged 9 weeks and 3 gold laced Wyandotte chickens aged 15 and 10 weeks. We chose them because they are known to be cold hardy. Here are photos of the finished coop. If there is an interest, I will post photos we took during various stages of construction.
