Welcome to my coop page!!
After much procrastination and thought I have finally decided to make a coop page. My coop is a remodeled 16x8 barn shed, the kind that you get from the home improvement store. The shed is about 15 years old and when I started it had for sure seen better days. It was originally used to store grain and tack for the horses, then the shingles started flying off the roof and it was deserted because the roof leaked. When I started work on it I fondly referred to it as the yellow-jacket barn, because it was full of them!
But.... Before I started this project I scoured BYC for pictures of other coop/sheds that were similar to mine. I just couldn't find anything that matched my vision of what I wanted. Some pages had only outside pictures and that really didn't help me at all!! So here I am 2 years after the great coop project was started and I am finally making a page to share with everyone else on here.
Here are some things that you will find that I have utilized in my coop. Mostly some GREAT ideas from other BYC members.
*Elevated roost with poop board
*homemade feeder that fits 50lbs of feed.
*Homemade Nest Boxes
*Covered Chicken/Goose Run that is *almost predator proof.
*Hardware cloth
And so the Pictures and explanations begin.
Disclaimer- Some pictures are from the freshly finished coop that is still poo free and pretty and some are from two years later, and well there might be some wear, but this means that things have stood up to the test of time!
Here are some pictures of the very beginning, to give you an idea of what I was working with. Notice missing roofing and the water damage inside on the ceiling. Please excuse the junk laying around!!
I decided early on that I wanted a second interior door so that there would be storage room for feeds and other miscellaneous stuff. I also wanted the nest boxes to open up into this area for ease of gathering eggs.
My Dimensions Are:
Total shed: 16x8
Feed storage: 6x8
Chicken area: 10x8 ( but it seems to feel bigger because of the elevated roost that leaves to floor totally open)
In the above picture you can see the ramps that lead up to the roost. This has worked out exceptionally well, even very small chicks can easily get up the ramp. I have had broody hens with chicks use it just fine when the mother hen decides its time to start roosting and not sleep in the nest box anymore.
The ramp is made of 2x4s with 1x2 nailed to it for slats. With a small landing in the corner.
And here is the run addition. The run is completely roofed and the roof line also extends up to the peak of the shed itself, so the bad roofing is covered up. The posts were free because we harvested them ourselves. All of the metal roofing was already on the property left over from other projects. As was most of the wood used.
Here is the view looking in after a couple years. The chicken feed sacks have come in very handy. I put the covering over the chicken wire to keep the poop from falling off the roost board and into the feed area. The cover over the lower part of the door it to keep the chickens from flinging straw out of the coop area.
Here is the view of the nest boxes. They are very big, sometimes there will be 3 hens in one laying at the same time. They could probably be divided in two so I would have 6 instead of only 3 big ones, but the ladies always seem to have a favorite one anyway. The one that is floor level is not a favorite for daily laying, but works very well for hens with tiny chicks to sleep in.
Here is my homemade feeder, it holds a 50 lb sack of feed perfectly. It is approximately 32-inches high and 6.5 inches deep. If someone wants the exact dimensions please let me know and I would be more than happy to get them for you. Maybe I should make a page just for the feeder! The best part of it is that it doesn't take up any room in the coop itself.
Here is the interior view of the nest boxes. The top one has the extra covering because a special rooster liked to roost on the edge at night and... well mess it up. This has solved the problem and the girls really love the darkness to lay their eggs in.
Looking out the door from the inside. Notice the board an the bottom of the doorway. This keeps the straw on the right side of the doorway.
Here is the lovely roost board. Notice all the chicken poop on the board that is NOT on the floor of the coop. YAY! I clean it using a hoe and a tarp. I spread the tarp out on the floor and scrape the board off and let it fall onto the tarp. then bundle the tarp up and dump it in the compost bin. Super easy and it really keeps the rest of the coop very clean. The roosts are made of 2x4s.
Here is the interior view of the covered run. Let me explain the chicken pop door. Yes, I know that there is no ramp up to it. I used to have one but now that I have geese that sleep in the run at night I had to take it away so that the geese could not get into the coop and make HUGE messes. The funny part of the chicken door in that I dont close it anymore. The run is pretty tight with buried hardware cloth and metal flashing. So, the chicken stay in the coop until I open the door and let the geese out because they are scared to death of the geese. I dont blame them.
Things we are still working on: PAINTING!! It almost finished, soooo close to being done.
Thing I would do differently:
*Paint everything before putting up chicken wire of hardware cloth, your life will be much easier!
*burring wire is much easier if you finish the project before the ground freezes. Duh! But it did happen to me, I dug the trench one day and went back out the next day to put the wire in and back fill it, and... the ground had frozen solid overnight. Nightmare!
I really hope that this page has helped someone out there build or remodel their coop!
Swirl (sheep police) says thanks for stopping by the coop page.
