post your chicken coop pictures here!

[bruceha2000]

We are putting the finishing touches on our coop. The majority of the materials (90% of the wood) was found for free on Craigslist. We used old fence pickets for the siding. I haven't decided if I want to paint, but for now I am liking the 'rustic' look.

We bought our house a year ago, which came with an existing dog run/kennel that we converted for the chickens (because our dog is far too spoiled to use it

) The previous owners had also built a rabbit hutch, which is where we got the panels to make the top/cover of the chicken run. DH created the coop design by himself. It took about a month's worth of days off to build. Any materials we had to buy new we found as cheap as possible. A few people have commented about how "fancy" the floor is -- it was the cheapest stick-on tile we could find at Lowe's. The whole floor cost a total of $6. We used vinyl panels for the roofing, and the window is a 12x12 shed window. There is one 12x12 vent on the door, and another larger vent on the back wall of the coop (not pictured).

We have currently have five chicks (almost 3 weeks old) who will hopefully move to the coop in the next few weeks!






The inside, complete with mirror and farm artwork

I just put a shelf and hanging rod in a closet using those same shelf/rod supports. That means your roost is a 1 1/2 pole, too small for large fowl. The easiest thing to do would be to put a 2x4 on the flat bolted down on top of the support.

I finished mine for the most part. Kind of a bummer because it was a lot of fun to build.at least I can add cool little details I see from some of the pics I see on here.

Clearly you need to come to my house, I have LOTS of projects.
Coop looks nice but from an engineering POV, the angle brace on the door is backward. You want to carry the load from the top latch side back down to the lower hinge. And typically, you would want the horizontal boards higher and lower, under the hinges so they are carrying the load across all the vertical boards, not on a single vertical board. There is going to be a lot of stress on that board and it will likely tear away from the horizontal boards over time. Also, you wouldn't want that much "floppy" unsupported wood above and below the horizontals. Unless, of course, this is just for show and there are horizontal boards under the hinges and a proper direction angle brace on the inside. In that case you have to change it anyway because it offends my visual sense of engineering stability

Ok,,,needs some advice....what do I do with the corners....the boards are so old and about 10" wide...and they are bowed. I need to be able to close the cracks back up. I am wiring the inside the best I can to protect it from the inside... Lots to finish but a little at a time....Will be using sand when I get it complete. Got to fix the 2 doors...still struggling with that. Took the jigsaw and trimmed out the people door to see if I can get something squared up...or closer to it anyway! LOL Don't laugh...

it will get done one day and be safe..How about the use of flashing on the corners?? Never handled it before but >>??
W

Hi Judy,
You definitely need to close up the gaps or you will have the worst possible problem - draft in the coop. I am assuming you intend the horizontal boards to be the finished out side.
A typical build would have the corner boards put on first, then butt the other boards up to them. That way the curve in the boards doesn't cause havoc getting the corner boards to lie flat. You would have to add 2 bys to the corners to have something to nail the corner and siding boards to where they meet. One corner board would be the width you want them to be, the other that dimension minus the thickness of the boards so the look is uniform on both walls. Also best to have the concave side against the wall so any rain hitting it at the top would follow the curve out rather than into the coop. If you flip those over, and screw them in at the center of the now convex side, JUST barely tight to the board, you might be able to "flex" some of the curve out OVER TIME. These boards have had decades and decades to get to their current shape. They won't go flat quickly without splitting.

With regard to the roost and nest boxes:
Is the 2x2 mostly there to keep the nest boxes in place and how high of the floor is it? Your PM said you think it is high for the birds to get to. Super easy, and not expensive, you could buy 2 joist hangers and mount them one on each wall between the 2nd and 3rd studs so the top of a 2x4 or 2x6 running parallel to the nests would be maybe 18" off the ground. The birds could easily get to that, then to the nests. Besides being cheap, you would be able to take the board out any time if you wanted to do "maintenance" on the nest side of the coop. It is OK for this to be on edge because it is not a roost

Where do you plan to put the roosts? I think you want them at least as high as the center of the nest boxes.

 

[bruceha2000]

Love your coop!!! Beautiful !! Only concern is that I see that you stapled the wiring down...everyone told me to use screws and washers... check it all out. Told me stables/nails could be ripped out too easily...

They look like poultry staples, not "staple gun" staples so they are fine. By far the cheapest way to fasten the hardware cloth and nearly impossible to pull out even with a flat screwdriver shy of mangling the wire, though hardest on the fingers of your "non hammer" hand

we are getting done our new coop, all left is to make egg nests, we have a roost that is 4 2x.4's with 6 2x2's across it, we have one in the other coop and all the chickens try to roost on it, they do not go on the ladder one, dh just asked me to paint the posts, so i may paint them white as i asked for a house with white pickit fence, never got it. we had 6 peeps in screen house so we moved them into new coop and now working on some of the others to go into it, we have one big yard for all of them to share. here is the roost new coop, the old rabbit cage is going to be pushed over as an indoor run for when we get snow or a lot of rain, here is the old coop i just finished painting it, the new and old yard are one, we do have 58 chickens, do not eat them, they are our pets. we can not free ranch so we made the yard big, it is 30 wide by 60 long. chickens love to go under both coops. the camper has nests in it that they love. this is 4 nests high and 5 long but they like to use the same one had 2 hens in one nest and one yelling to get into it, they get up top without useing the boards. now we have to get them use to going in the grass, they stop at the end of dirt.

I would rethink that roost. Parallel roosts need to be 18" apart minimum so a birds can't pick on each other. And the birds feet REALLY WILL be much more comfortable on a 2x4 on the flat (3 1/2") or a 3" round fence rail. REALLY!!!

 

[Wildivy2112]

Thank you. Those are the long ones that you hammer in and I had him place each one cross ways over two boxes of wires at a time.
We do add extras all the time.

As a matter of fact every nail in the whole coop was hand hammered the old fashioned way. I tried to get him to borrow the neighbor or his cousin's automatic nail gun and he is too proud to ask anyone for any kind of help, other than me. Argh.

 

[bruceha2000]

Thank you. Those are the long ones that you hammer in and I had him place each one cross ways over two boxes of wires at a time.
We do add extras all the time.

As a matter of fact every nail in the whole coop was hand hammered the old fashioned way. I tried to get him to borrow the neighbor or his cousin's automatic nail gun and he is too proud to ask anyone for any kind of help, other than me. Argh.

Air nailers are faster but I've noticed that faster sometimes means sloppier. The professionals that redid the house didn't always notice when they just missed the stud (and hand nailing you WILL know if you just caught the edge and went out the side), sometimes the nails don't go all the way in so you have to whack them with a hammer anyway (or not notice and leave it to the homeowner).

I've often said I hit the nail on the head more often than a professional carpenter. Of course that is because *I* HAVE to hit EACH nail more often to drive it in. No "tap, BAM, BAM, BAM and done" with me doing the nailing. No, it is more "tap .. tap.. hit .. hit OK, probably in solidly enough to take my hand off and hit it hard. HIT HIT OOPs, caught the corner, bend it back straight, HIT HIT"

 

[Wildivy2112]

Oh yeah I wore a black thumbnail for a few wks once during the coop build. Ouch.

 

[Lockdown199]

Love  your coop!!! Beautiful !!  Only concern is that I see that you stapled the wiring down...everyone told me to use screws and washers...  check it all out. Told me stables/nails could be ripped out too easily...

If you used staples with a air gun and used a lot of staples you should be fine, if you used a hand stapler you might run into some problems. JMO.

 

[tntchix]

Air nailers are faster but I've noticed that faster sometimes means sloppier. The professionals that redid the house didn't always notice when they just missed the stud (and hand nailing you WILL know if you just caught the edge and went out the side), sometimes the nails don't go all the way in so you have to whack them with a hammer anyway (or not notice and leave it to the homeowner).

I've often said I hit the nail on the head more often than a professional carpenter. Of course that is because *I* HAVE to hit EACH nail more often to drive it in. No "tap, BAM, BAM, BAM and done" with me doing the nailing. No, it is more "tap .. tap.. hit .. hit OK, probably in solidly enough to take my hand off and hit it hard. HIT HIT OOPs, caught the corner, bend it back straight, HIT HIT"

this is me too!

 

[iwiw60]

If you used staples with a air gun and used a lot of staples you should be fine, if you used a hand stapler you might run into some problems. JMO.

I used wood screws with fender washers EVERYwhere....don't trust staples at all...JMHO

 

[gilcamp4]

They look like poultry staples, not "staple gun" staples so they are fine. By far the cheapest way to fasten the hardware cloth and nearly impossible to pull out even with a flat screwdriver shy of mangling the wire, though hardest on the fingers of your "non hammer" hand

I would rethink that roost. Parallel roosts need to be 18" apart minimum so a birds can't pick on each other. And the birds feet REALLY WILL be much more comfortable on a 2x4 on the flat (3 1/2") or a 3" round fence rail. REALLY!!!

we have that in the other coop and for 3 years no one uses it they like the flat one we did not have it in our first coop and they used the nest so dh added one of these and they left the nest to jump on this, they do have the old one in camper coop put only one will go on it, the rest are on here they love it, we have tried to change them, we are going out every night and move them to new one but as soon as we leave they run back on this one, yes they are poultry staples, not going any were. we have he round on the other one. we will see witch one they go on, still working on getting them in, we have 2 roosts in camper coop, well see when we finish the enclosed run what we will do.

 

[Lockdown199]

I used over 10k 5/8th in staples using a air gun, I was putting staples on top of staples. I weigh over 2 bills and have a hard time pulling them out with pliers.