Welcome to my page!
My name is Jess and I live in the South East of the UK with my husband. We live in a converted barn in the countryside called 'Harry' (our neighbours are Tom and Dick.) I have ALWAYS wanted chickens but it wasn't allowed in my previous house. My landlords here have said we can keep some chickens on an area of unused grass near our home. So I started looking around at buying a coop for our new additions and quickly realised I could have one much cheaper and much better quality if I was able to cajole my husband into making it for me (he's a cabinet maker) so I decided to design my own.
The Design
We are only allowed a small coop and it has to be moveable as the chickens will not be able to free range It will house 4-6 chickens or bantams. This is the first drawing I came up with:
We are only allowed a small coop and it has to be moveable as the chickens will not be able to free range It will house 4-6 chickens or bantams. This is the first drawing I came up with:
Then Dan, my husband went one better and did a snazzy 3d drawing:
However, we quickly realised how impractical it would be to put the cleaning door on the front of the coop. oops.
So the finished design is something similar to these; it will be 5' long, 4' wide and 3' tall. It is going to be 3' off the ground with the pop-door on the bottom of the coop with a lip to stop bedding coming out.
We will have the cleaning doors on one of the ends and 2 nest boxes on the back.
The Build: (09.08.10)
Despite having a husband who makes kitchens for a living I have decided I want to make (most of) the coop myself, even though I have never made anything out of wood; not even flat pack furniture!
The reason being that Dan works full time and I am a teacher currently on summer holiday, and looking for things to occupy myself. So the project kicked off last night with the delivery of my wood
We are working on a bit of a budget so hopefully the only wood we will have to buy is the 2" by 2" for the frame. The rest of the wood has been donated by a friend who gave us the ply for the interior and my Dad who has said we can have anything we can find in his barns, including the lightweight tongue and groove we will put on the outside.
This is me learning how to use a chop saw, (or a circular saw, or whatever it was) to cut my lengths of 2" by 2" to size.
My first steps in construction:
Coop building will commence in a day or two when Husband has 'borrowed' some screws from work for me to fit the frame together!
(11.08.10)
Today was a day of much activity! My first attempts at woodwork have been an eventual success. I have spent the day putting together the 2" by 2" frame and then cutting and attaching the plywood for the interior of the coop. My husband finished cutting and attaching the ply to the frame when he got home from work - I had to leave most of them for him to square up - oops!
There was a little bit of 'bodging' needed whena couple of the lengths I cut turned out to be too short. I'm sure it will be fine....
This is the coop as it looked when we finished last night. It isn't fixed together yet; we just put it like that to see what it would look like. We then had to pile them all up on top of the base and attempt to lift it as it is slightly bigger than I was expenting! I hope it will be moveable....
