Coop in the Woods
This is a coop I made thanks to all of the forum help and BYC resources. I spent a great deal of time looking at the Coop Pages before I started building my own. It is made from materials salvaged from a porch which was removed from our house and a few new parts. I wanted one which integrated as many of the clever ideas found on BYC as possible and for as little cost as possible. And it had to look like an effort was made to make it look nice.
Here is the basic frame of the coop, built on the concrete slab that used to support my steel shed. Some of its previous contents is still scattered about.
The floor of the coop is 30 inches off of the ground.
- this proved to be too short of a side wall for my feeder, deep litter, and dropping pit plans, so I dropped the floor 12 inches.
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The coop dimensions are 5 feet by 6 feet with an 8 foot long roof. The overhang is longer on one end to provide more protection for the entrance.
Note that there is only one collar tie in the picture- the other was removed to allow the pop hole door to be a bit taller. The frame has to be supported before any weight can go on the roof.
Eventually, the coop got a roof and some more sheathing. Then my 5 YO DD painted the rest of the inside for me.
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I have some large sheets of plexiglass, so I covered the gable ends with that, but also used 1/2" hardware cloth because the plexiglass isn't that strong.

Big improvement today. My DW and DD surprised me by painting the coop, so it looks much better.




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The coop is propped up on blocks in this picture. I must have hit my head a dozen times on the tail ends of the roof framing. I couldn't take it anymore, so I put it up on blocks while it was under construction. Now the coop resembles the rest of the cars in the front yard... they're up on blocks, too.

The shrubbery has gone from brown to green and leafy. I'd better hurry and finish before it goes full circle.
Here are some of the future residents:

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