Official BYC Coop Article Contest - 2017 - Abbie Jones

We created our chicken Taj-Mahal several years ago. We wanted a coop that would keep our chooks happy, and large enough to hold our 40 chickens! In the first picture you can see the basic design of the coop. At the base of the coop is underground concrete blocks to stop foxes and pests from being able to dig under the coop. We designed the run quite large incase we had to keep our girls in all day. On the inside of the coop there are 18 egg laying boxes, which the girls both lay eggs in and sleep in. This has 3 stories, the first being 2 nurseries for new chicks being born, which is separated from the rest of the chooks. Mums and their babies love scratching around in here. There is then the laying boxes, each separated with dividers for privacy. The girls loves sleeping on the dividers. You can also see there is a ladder so the girls can jump up on the different perches and get to the higher laying boxes. Their favourite area is the perch located highest in the air! They also have 2 windows inside to allow for ventilation in summer when it gets very hot. The inside section of the chicken coop contains sawdust and the run has mainly bark in it. If we ever leave the girls in the coop for a day they have plenty of room in both the run and the indoor area to scratch around.

The coop is made out of timber slabs, stacked like a cabin style, so there is no gaps that snakes could get in the hole, which we found was an issue with our pre-existing coop. There are beams across the chicken coop for extra support against wild animals. There are also lights outside and inside the chicken coop for when you lock it up in the dark, which I found very helpful. We have made sure that there are no gaps or areas wild animals can get in during the night, so we know our chooks are safe. Unfortunately we lost the photos of our plans and construction photos, but hopefully you can get the basic idea The size of the coop is 5 metres x 4.2 metres.The size of the run is 3.3 metres x 4.2 metres. The size of indoor area is 1.7 metres by 4.2 metres.