In the last two years of chicken keeping, I have had to expand and build more coops. Any one who has chickens as a hobby as well as for good food and eggs, know's how quickly addicting it can become. I have had some temp coops that would shock some people, as well as some flubs that have left me devasted when predation happens. I have decided to put the different coops that I have built here. Only one coop is made of new materials. The rest have been made from scraps and new materials. Mostly though, I just had fun building them and learning and rethinking along the way.

Ok... here comes the coop/compound in all of its incarnations!

Including one down right hillbilly, holy crap, they survived that! coop...

Starting with the newest (seriously proud of this one). It still needs a paint job, will do that later this summer. The only thing purchased new on this coop was a 12 foot and 10 foot 2x6 wolmanized (SP?) plank, cut in half, and a box of wood screws. I picked up the rest of the wood for free, was someones deck. The two for sale signs I picked up last year and used it as a wind break/winterizing job on the summer run of the coop down at the bottom of this page. They made a door and a floor. The metal roof and hinges and nails with a rubber washer were given me by my neighbor. The peices were to small for his projects, and left over just sitting. SO, this coop cost me, time, thought and $23. It is 3.5x4 on the floor space. This is also the first external nest box I have ever tried.
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The seriously messed up one... It was just temporary, and yes they survived it! It was a big tub, then a slightly smaller tub, in side ways, then a wooden box in that sideways... so they went in the one spot, went around the corner and there was their hidey hole... The chicken wire was DUCT TAPED to it... then I'd stake the fencing and chicken wire in the front of it and around it at night. LOL I know... crazy!
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First coop...
firstcoopframe_zps007fef22.jpg Frame was square on the pavement... not here... LOL

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This was my very first build... There are a lot of things I would have done different now... were I building it now...

The Bates Motel.. Named this, because of a very serious error and lack of thinking on my part that lost me a silkie hen with five of her chicks... Now no chicken will use it, even though it has been moved AND it is in the whole containment area. There will be a random egg laid in there on occassion...
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Making of the first winter run, before it became a summer roosting area... after the first winter, I ended up changing the flat top to a slanted top... nothing like having to pull snow off a flat top... ALSO, there is a duck coop. I didn't build that, but it was given me when I took in some ducks. SO, they had 1/3 of that run.
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Then in January 2012 I got brooder babies... they needed a brooder... A rabbit cage didn't last long...
firstbrooder_zps0b0696d7.jpg 2x2s, chicken wire and card board...$18 brooder. Still use it today for garage chickens and mamas with new chicks...

Well, they grew up... and needed a coop!
I picked up a bunch of remnant wood from a building site. I stopped one day on my way home, and asked the builders if I could raid there hopper for wood for a coop. They were going to dump it anyway. They said "SURE" and this is the coop I built for them. This one cost me $30 bucks. I had to buy some uncut 2x4s, screws, hinges and lock.
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Well summer was coming, and I moved the ducks enclosure to the far back of the yard. They had pretty much decimated all vegitation from around the coop, and it's still not recovered... I added roosts to the winter run for the birds, put metal fencing all the way up, and added wind breaks so the birds could roost out there and not get wet, or wind blown in the night. We also painted everything RED! Made my first ever door, like actual door! Got an old dog run FREE from Mrs. Brown and made an enclosure for while I was gone. It is 5 feet high, and that didn't stop the birds. IF they wanted out... they were out...
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THEN I decided I needed to rethink how I put the run on... Square it up... and roof it for the winter... I ended up going with PVC and a tarp... And plastic wrap for the sides. Built a divider down the middle inside, so the birds I wanted pure eggs from weren't with the other roos... And yup... there sure was fence hopping still... Rotten stinkers.
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So, this is all of them. That yellow building in the background is going to get some serious work this summer and become a few pens for the birds from Decoyman and some of my faverolles projects. I ended up running 20 feet of wood support across the top, with support beams down to the ground.

Those skids you see against the propane tank I picked up for free also to use as a floor for the summer coop. It has dirt floor, and I was a bit concerned about predation. I actually prefer the dirt floor under the roosts. May have to make a poop board... we'll see..

So, that's it. Those are my current coops. There is also a dog house that I turned into a coop until I built the big coop. Now it is just used as a giant nest box.
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