Our coop is an 8x8 shed style that we loosely based off of plans we found at familyhandyman.
My daughter has wanted chickens for a long time. We found out we are allowed to have them where we live so we committed and ordered seven little fuzzballs to arrive in April.
My plan was to have an 8x8 shed and separate a section for us, and one for them. They would have a 5x8 section of it, and I would have a 3X8 section for storage.
We started with the decking. We put pavers under the shed, and attached hardware cloth before we put the floor down to help keep rodents at bay.
Framing out the walls. One thing I liked about this plan was the number of windows.
Walls are up and the floor is down. Things are moving along nicely.
In the meantime, our chicks arrive! But there aren't seven, they sent us eleven! What to do, what to do? We could give some away, but the children shoot that idea down almost instantly. Here they are in their brooder (a free onion box from Costco) along with their Mama Heating Pad (to read more about MHP check out this fabulous thread by Blooie https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/956958/mama-heating-pad-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update)
The reason our coop is a Literary Chicken's Abode is our chickens are all named after literary characters. We have some from; Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three (Elionwy and Henwen), Anne of Green Gables (Anne and Diana), Harry Potter (Luna, Lockheart, Snape, Hagrid), and the Lord of the Rings series (Eowyn, Galadrial, Samwise) and from the Warriors cat book series (Willow and Holly). I wanted to name them all after the Bennett sisters and call the coop "Henberly" but the family outvoted me. The coop section's official name is "Henworts-School of EggCraft and Cluckery".
We got the trusses made, the roof on and the siding up. We had to bust our buns to get the siding up because we were having 95 mph winds coming through and I was worried that with just the studded walls and roof our coop would act like a box kite. Here are my husband and son working away.
The coop painted and mostly trimmed up. I had my husband make Dutch Doors and the windows open inward. I want to make a screened upper section to the door so I can leave it open without my chickens escaping. I decided to do inward opening windows because we went with a hoop style run. The window openings are hardware cloth enclosed, as are the spaces under the eaves.
Three out of the four sides are enclosed with skirting at the bottom. The fourth side we made doors with fencing so we could put rat and mouse traps under the coop that the chickens couldn't get to.
This is our hoop style run, made with 4'x16' cattle panels. This section is "The Shire". The hoop style run was very easy to assemble, but even with having more space than the recommended 10' per bird we are planning on making the run larger. We have also added a lot of shade to the run.
A shot of the inside, I gave up on my segmented coop when we ended up with extra birds. I wanted to make sure they had enough room. We used the plastic fencing over the roof joists to keep the birds out of them, but to retain air flow. I worried my orps would hurt themselves getting down from the 9' height.
It was a fun build and we learned a lot!
Carrie
