Courtney's Secondhand Coop
- We were broke when we first moved to the mountains.
We found this old 3' x 3' doghouse in the barn and thought, what the heck! It'll do for now. - We first cut out a piece for the door, hinged it, and made a homemade "wood lock."
- We cut out 4 right triangles, 2 on each A-frame side, and screened them for ventilation in the coop. (These pictures currently show them closed over with styrofoam for the winter. When I take them off in a week or two I'll take more pictures.)
- I found a large tree limb that I stripped of it's bark, cut it to size, and screwed it in to the inside of the coop for a perch.
- We put the coop on cinder blocks, shoved rocks underneath and around, and made the run.
- The run is made out of 2 x 4s, the size is around 5' x 8'.
- The top of the run is enclosed by hawk netting, on top of that we have sloped rafters and barn roofing from Lowes. (About $45 for this size.)
- The automatic feeder is just a large PVC pipe with a cut 90 degree curve, and a lid at the top. It lasts about 3-4 days for my 3 girls.
- I rake out the old straw from the run and coop and replace it with new every 1-2 weeks.
- In the above picture you can see the coop door, which I close and open (every night and morning), to prevent anything from breaking in at night.
- The pull string runs through an eyelet, through the run roof, through another eyelet, and then clipped onto yet another eyelet. When I unclip the clip the door falls and I lock it with another homemade wood lock.
- It's simple, but my babies seem to like it so far! During daylight hours they free-range across our property anyways, so run space wasn't really necessary for us.
