Woods House - Mini

[JackE]

Do any of you have plans for this woods coop? Or know where I can get them?
Thanks

Here's the online version of the book. It has measured drawings.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924003138272;view=1up;seq=47

 

[enggass]

Sweet. Think I'm going to build one 8'x12'...

 

[Howard E]

An 8' x 12' (technically 7' 9" x 12') is what I built, but there are no described plans for those. I had to devise my own. Summary of what I did is on a thread linked to below in my signature line. House of that size should be adequate for up to about 2 dozen full sized birds. I only have 10 and they are doing fine. I briefly thought about doing the 6' x 10' house, but realized the material demands would not be that much higher at 8' x 12', so bumped it up, using the excess materials in the house as opposed to leaving drops on the ground.

One issue I had was in finding the correct size of transom windows for the monitor opening. I eventually gave up any hope of finding them in the wild, and resorted to the fairly complicated process of building them myself from scratch. Not something I'd recommend for the average person. In fact, I'm still working on them. Woods himself suggested that would be something a builder would want to hire out to a trade carpenter to do.

Option B would be to purchase commercial made transom windows that open out. The kind with screens. I was going to check, but never did, to see if places like Window World could save some of those from older homes when they do window replacements. Old single pane windows would still work fine in a chicken house......especially one with one wide left wide open.

 

[Leigti]

I wouldn't try it.  The man who designed the coop (Woods himself) doesn't recommend going smaller than, what, 6X9'?   Also, in the book, he goes into the wrong way, (And why it's wrong) to build a Wood's style coop.  Don't mess around with the design from what was tested, and proven, over 100yrs ago.   If you can' fit a 6X9' coop in your yard, don't build a Woods.   

Is there more than one style of a woods coop? As far as I can tell I've only seen the one style here on this site. I really like it but I wonder if there's other styles that the author wrote about that could also work.

 

[Howard E]

In his book, Woods showed photographs and discussed some additional "fresh air" coop designs and did show plans for some of them, but most would be 8' x 12' or larger. Shed style, an A-frame and a larger Tolman house. His back lot, half monitor Woods house of 6' x 10' was about as small as any I've seen from that era. There are plans for a 6' x 8' house on the North Dakota State website that dates back to the 40's.

I have put together a rough sketch of what my proposed "Woods mini" would look like:



Again, the purpose of this is to offer a small but functional back lot alternative to the dinky little commercial death traps. I figure this might work for about 4 birds, which is enough to produce about a dozen eggs per week. You could leave it as is, or attach a run of some width on the side, plus allowing access to the area below.

Still far more complicated and expensive to build than some, but it should work for a few birds.

Main framing materials would be framing lumber plus 4 sheets of 1/2" 4' x8' plywood, or if you wanted to put siding on it, you could use OSB, then cover it with your siding of choice.

 

[Howard E]

To give one an idea of what the 6' x 10' Woods house would look like, we now have an excellent example:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1144881/open-air-poultry-house-aka-woods-coop-in-minneapolis

 

[aart]

I have put together a rough sketch of what my proposed "Woods mini" would look like:

What is width?
What is the 8' dimension at upper right?
9" for roost off wall is not enough....go at least 12".
Will you build and test it?

 

[Howard E]

That 8' x 4' shows how the side profile would be laid out on a standard sheet of plywood. That is just the outline. BTW, if a person was to build this, you would cut both sides out together so they are a matched set. You could do the windows and pop door separate.

How wide? To allow for an inch or so of roof overlap to trim it out, I'd make it 45 inches wide.

If you wanted something more elegant than painted plywood sides, you could nail on decorative battens to give it a board and batten look, or if you have access to boards, use real boards and battens.

Am I going to build it? I don't have use for one, but I suspect if I did build a prototype, I could always sell it down at the feed store.

 

[Leigti]

If time and money were no object, it would be interesting to build one and then test it. See how it does in the winter and the summer as far as temperatures etc. go. See if it's deep enough to work like it is intended to.

 

[aart]

That 8' x 4' shows how the side profile would be laid out on a standard sheet of plywood. That is just the outline. BTW, if a person was to build this, you would cut both sides out together so they are a matched set. You could do the windows and pop door separate.

How wide? To allow for an inch or so of roof overlap to trim it out, I'd make it 45 inches wide.

If you wanted something more elegant than painted plywood sides, you could nail on decorative battens to give it a board and batten look, or if you have access to boards, use real boards and battens.

Am I going to build it? I don't have use for one, but I suspect if I did build a prototype, I could always sell it down at the feed store.

Ah, I see now.

That's what I was thinking, build it and test your theory...maybe with strings hanging and video....
....then sell it, or get more birds..haha!..use it for a grow out/broody coop.