The coop we chose is a take on silkiechicken's Coop. It's a 9'x6' chicken coop that is designed, for any future or alternative use, to be a garden tool shed near our vegetables raised beds garden. The coop is fully insulated with Roxul scraps from our house. The shingles, the pine wood siding, the nails, screws, veneer, the vinyl siding (interior walls) were all scraps from our house we built three years earlier (still not finished.. ;-P). We placed two small 4x10 ducts at the roof connection for minimum ventilation. The window is made of polycarbonate, as glass was not an option since my kids play baseball everywhere around the house. The vinyl siding inside is very easy to clean. The coop is not completed as phase 2 need to be started : a small pergola, with the same slope, on the left side, that will be used for rabbits and for a potting bench. A barn light fixture will be installed in the coming years.
The walls are made of 2"x4". The front wall is 9 feet high. The slope is 17 degrees : i made a few tests and i liked the way it looked. We used Rubbermaid shelving systems to hang our branches inside. The nesting box is an old Morigeau display stand we modified. So... our chicks got the best furniture for their eggs
The hens are all alive after a very harsh winter (multiple -40 degrees Celcius (-40F)) without heating. We got an average of 2 eggs per day last winter with 5 hens. We bought 3 more this spring.The chicken run is 25' x 12'. For 8 Chantecler, i learn that this is too small : it needs to be 2 times bigger, at least. The run was built because the chicks were all over our neighborhood ! The run posts are 7 feet high if a rooftop or a closed run is needed. This is hardware cloth, 2" spacing, 5 feet high, and buried 4 inches into the ground : the coop is built on rock, so digging is limited. I also built a small "kind of" shelter behind the coop to protect our chicks from the full south sun.
I do not have much pictured steps since i did not knew exactly what i was doing and wanted. This is a 4000$ coop, to be honest, if you buy everything to build a coop exactly like this one. With more planification and "material wise" decisions, you should be able to cut the costs around 1500$ for the coop and 400$ for the run.
