This is our full coop, The Chicken Cottage that has finally replaced the mini chicken coop. The first coop was a little 4 x 4 (ish) shed with T11 siding that was meant to move around if needed, but in reality weighed far more than was reasonable. It's short coming were many and sadly it's lack of sturdiness meant we lost more than a few birds to predators.
It was cute, and bright and fun, but also kind of falling apart, cramped and hard to clean / maintain.
So when I was deciding to build a shed I figured the easiest way would be to be able to access everything I needed to do with the chickens from inside the shed, which meant an attached coop. So I designed a 10 x 14 shed, with an 8 x 6 coop.
I outlined a gravel foundation with 4 x 6 treated lumber, laid down some landscape fabric and filled it up with 1" gravel. On top of that sits some more 4 x 6 skids, and then on that is the 2 x 6 floor system. I had a lot of help from various online forums for figuring out the best foundation / floor system options and I'm really happy with this. I didn't want to do piers but with the 100% clay soil, I had to do something other than just plopping it on the ground.
The roof is galvanized metal roofing and the siding is 1x8 rough 1 side, v-groove other side shiplap siding from Home Depot. I originally had big plans to use a local sawmill but kind of failed to understand they might need some lead time. Oops.
The doors and windows were either salvaged, left over from building my house or built for the coop. The siding was painted with Behr white fence / barn paint (which I should have first primed, then painted, oops again). And once I took the winter off and came back to it, I finally managed to get it finished this summer. Including the lights, that I'm so very, very thankful to have done.
Here's a good shot of the inside before any of the coop separation started:
And now with the wall up separating the coop from the main part of the shed. From left to right we have the food / grit bins, the nesting boxes over the doors for the water and food 5 gallon buckets (both designs from forum users here at BYC!! THANK YOU Jimmywalt!!!) and a lovely transom and homemade door.
Eventually the walls will all be painted to match the bottom doors below for the food and water, but that's for a later time. Moving into the coop, here's the other side of this wall (before I added the food and water and pine shavings)
I added a light for the chickens, and since I can't help myself had to make it a bit fancier than it needed to be.
And here's a lovely cozy shot of the coop all lit up (on a timer switch) at night
Back inside I built roosts on either side of the coop, with a stick ladder on the one side to help the ladies up at night.
For the outside run, I sunk 4x4 posts into the ground 2-3 feet each and tossed in some ready mix concrete. I ran 18" of hardware cloth out from the bottom of the run to help prevent digging (though nothing has dug around the old coop) and then 36" of hardware cloth all along the bottom with some bracing.
The run is about 7.5' x 14.5', mostly constrained to the thought that I might add metal roofing there as well so I didn't want to have to cut any sheets.
We currently have 6 hens in residence at the cottage, 4 Buffs and 2 Buff / Brahma mixes. We have a lot of space now so we're probably expanding the flock in the spring, but I want to see how it all works over the cold upstate NY winter first. And of course we still have the old coop (which received an extension last fall when I realized I was not even close on the cottage) so my wife is talking about possibly getting some Banty's to make use of it (mostly because she really wants Banty's not because she cares about saving / keeping the old coop).
And here are all of the chicks instagram stylez enjoying their new digs.
In closing, a HUGE thank you to this site for all of the help I've received. I had not signed up but I've read COUNTLESS threads on everything from poop pans to roost sizing to predator deterrent, etc. I especially love my food and water designs from Jimmywalt.
Thanks everyone.
