We are entering the pre-fab chicken coop market and are looking for feedback!

[tnt-ranch]

Hawk, I am so glad you are posting here. Our family is vegan and we are raising chickens as pets. (The eggs will go to friends and neighbors.) I've seen some photos of other folks assembling their vintage red barn coops where the run/pen is on the left side and the nesting boxes on the right while the window and tray still face front. This is reversed from your stock photos and I was just wondering if you could tell me if this would be easy to do or if those people have had to heavily modify.

Additionally, nice job on your branding and marketing. Love the new videos. I hope you decide to make one for each individual coop!

I just put the coop together and answered my own question. The only thing getting in the way of assembling this coop in the reverse configuration are some wooden dowels that aid in holding side pieces in place before screwing them together. Just pull the dowels out with a pair of pliers and voila!

 

[HaloAmanda]

The main reason I dislike prefab coops is they are so expensive for very small spaces. Around here your looking at $500-$100 for something big enough for 3 hens and they are usually very cheaply made and fall apart after a few years.

 

[centrarchid]

I am playing with one. Preferences I have is for adaptability for use as a chicken tractor. Also having hook ups for fencer and solar charger would be nice. Current model I have is top heavy not holding up well when moved. Having ability to switch between run and free-range mode need not provide easy entrance ponts for raccoon. Most have a form of hardware cloth that seems much lighter duty than I can buy at hardware store.

Roost in run area I like have so birds a good foot or more from porous side wall predator can see birds through.

 

[hawkduncan]

Hawk, I am so glad you are posting here. Our family is vegan and we are raising chickens as pets. (The eggs will go to friends and neighbors.) I've seen some photos of other folks assembling their vintage red barn coops where the run/pen is on the left side and the nesting boxes on the right while the window and tray still face front. This is reversed from your stock photos and I was just wondering if you could tell me if this would be easy to do or if those people have had to heavily modify.

Additionally, nice job on your branding and marketing. Love the new videos. I hope you decide to make one for each individual coop!

TNT-Ranch,

Thank you so much for the compliments =)

We created these coops not anticipating folks would want to reverse the direction, so there are dowels that are made to make it difficult to build it "wrong" -- but hindsight is 20/20 and we now see that lots of people want to reverse the coop orientation, so we'll be making this easier for our future models =)

With our existing coops, all you need to do is remove the dowels that get in the way of the Pen and the coop when you flip the front and back walls (they are not structural, just to help make assembly easier). You can either twist and pull with a pair of pliers (I personally think it's kind of fun) or you can saw them off so they don't get in the way =)


It's so cool to hear that your family is vegan! Half of our office is either vegan or vegetarian. I am somewhere in the middle

 

[hawkduncan]

I just put the coop together and answered my own question. The only thing getting in the way of assembling this coop in the reverse configuration are some wooden dowels that aid in holding side pieces in place before screwing them together. Just pull the dowels out with a pair of pliers and voila!

Whoops --- I did not see the next page of comments! So sorry that it too me so long to get back to you on here! I'm glad you figured it out! =)

 

[tnt-ranch]

Summerhawk Ranch red barn coop assembled in reverse configuration with custom built run add-on in a homemade 4x16 raised bed planter. Maybe I'll paint it all to match one day!

 

[Birdmania]

Pre made runs would be nice. I'm looking for one that is big that had a some sort of roof and won't fall apart in a year. I'm not a carpenter so my run is really ghetto and I plan on buying a nice big shed in the spring to convert to a chicken castle. Id love a nice run so my neighbors don't have to look at my ghetto fab chicken housing. Haven't had much luck finding anything big enough

I converted a dog run 10' x 20'x 6' just by adding hardware cloth around the bottom on the inside. This (the hardware cloth) extends up the side 3' and has a 1' skirt on the ground for predator protection and looks decent at the same time. It was easy to assemble and only cost me $90 dollars off Craigslist.

 

[Birdmania]

To answer the original question.... The problems I have found with prefab coops are 1) not enough room, I have 12 full sized chickens 2) flimsy construction and faulty design, ie....little or no ventilation/ not predator proof 3) hard to clean and 4) way too expensive.. Why Spend that much money for something cute but with no practical usability. I have spent under $300 for a 8' x 16' coop built out of pallets and corrugated metal and a 10' x 20' x 6' run from craigslist. And I am not much of a carpenter. (Granted it does not look as cute but my girls don't care.)

 

[Al Gerhart]

This looks like an impossible business to even consider developing. From reading the thread the business plan appears to be importing Chinese made coops, repackage, and make money. You can find these coops for as little as $50.00 in 20' container loads but good lord, I don't see how they could paint the darned things for that little money. Then the resellers have to pay Amazon's 15% commission plus the shipping to get it to the Amazon warehouses and another fifty cents a pound for outgoing frt.

Then the better built ones sold locally aren't anywhere near as attractive and I'd guess that you couldn't buy the materials much less pay labor, sales commission or advertising, for what the re sellers are selling the Chinese products for.

Kudos to any businessman that can make it in this business. It appears to be just a way for a retailer to make a quick profit off unsuspecting and naive newbies. I was thinking about offering coops but sounds like it needs to be local sales only.

 

[ChickenGals13]

Hello all!

My name is Hawk, and my dad just started a backyard chicken products business

Our focus is designing sustainable and innovative products that help make the backyard chicken-keeping lifestyle more accessible and enjoyable.
He named the company "SummerHawk Ranch" after his ranch in Central California, which is named after my sister, Summer, and I =)

We already have some coops designed and are selling them at local pet shops and feed stores. We're also just got setup on Amazon and HomeDepot.com. HomeDepot has even agreed to let us do a 50 store test, so some of you may be able to visit our red coop in the building materials section of your HomeDepot)

As proud as we are of our initial designs, we know there is always room for improvement, and we're testing all kinds of new ideas. There are a lot of decent prefab coops out there, but there's so much potential for improvement, and we want to offer a coop that is first and foremost, safe for the birds, but also easy and even fun to operate for the family.

I was hoping it would be okay for me to ask all of you who have experience, What is lacking in the world of pre-fab coops?
Do you think they are acceptable? Too small? Cheaply made? too expensive? dangerous?

We want to know what you think should be improved on all the prefab coops out there (especially ours!) so we can start designing something even better.

Thank you so much! You can check out our three designs here:
http://www.homedepot.com/s/summerhawk%20ranch?NCNI-5

Some pre-fab coops have mesh windows which is very easy for predators to get into and it should be hardware cloth