Building a Coop (Complete newbie)

[brooky]

Hi Everyone,

I am a completely new to this. My partner and I wish to build a coop from scratch with no experience of keeping chickens before. We hope to keep about five chickens to start.

Can anyone recommend a resource for building one? We want to keep it fairly simple and I want to build it on stilts to keep rats away. (We live fairly near a sewer!)

I'd love to make something a bit like this and then make our own run:

Can anyone recommend a resource for this? With no experience of keeping chickens before its quite tricky.

 

[newchicksnducks]

Welcome to BYC! First, "lurk" as my daughter calls it. Read what other people have found useful in building there coops. Get a book from the library on chicken keeping...BYC sells a great one While you may be able to buy plans somewhere, I believe several of the coops in the coop section of BYC actually give material list and step by step directions of their coop bulding process. Everyone's needs are slightly different, be free to adapt as needed!

 

[joletabey]

I agree with newchicksnducks- read everything you can in this section- check out different styles and also the thread that talks about if you were doing it again, what you would do differently- I am no good at finding threads here, but I remember learning a lot from it. People here are SO incredibly helpful!

 

[PhilErvin]

Welcome to the addiction. Chickens are a HOOT. I don't like to brag,OK, I guess I do, but check out my coop. I have NO building experience other than building small stuff around my house and helping my Dad when I was a kid.
Here's what you should do; go to the Home Depot, Lowe's or wherever you buy hardeware. Buy a book on building storage sheds. The books show you all you need to know to build a shed(Chicken Coop). Because a chicken coop is simply a storage shed that has been tweeked to accomodate chickens.
Good Luck

 

[mikecnorthwest]

If you have some building skills, I think you could look through the coops on the coop design page and then design and build your own. That's how a lot of people end up doing it because it's so hard finding good easy to follow plans on the web.

That being said, I recommend, and a few people here have recently built, the Garden Coop. The website, www.thegardencoop.com, has plenty of pictures, sample pages from the plans, and you can download the plans for a very reasonable price. I've been to the designer's home on a coop tour and had a chance to look at the coop. It's very nice and actually pretty easy to build. I think most people have been able to build it for about $500-$600.

Another option is to find a picture of one you like, perhaps the one in your post, and ask around to see if any builders/handymen in your area are in need of work. You might find it's easier to just hire someone to build it for you.

Good luck.

 

[anniem]

We're doing the garden coop right now. Seems like a good basic one that you can customizes as you like. The website has a "make it your own" section listed on the left hand side of the home page with what others have done. It might be hard to make it quite as darling as the picture you posted, though.

The coop section of BYC has lots of cool coops and some have links with basic directions, although it might not be enough for a beginner.

 

[geese'n'chickenlovr]

If you don't really have much of an idea of how you want to build the coop,run,nest boxes,ect. look at the "Coop Design" page.Lots of helpful pics and coop designs there

 

[brooky]

Really helpful advice everyone. Thanks so much for your help. I'll get some books and post my progress here.

 

[dumb_cluck]

Before building a coop (no matter how "cute"), you first have to determine how many chickens you plan to have. The size of the coop depends on it.

If you read a lot of the posts here on BYC, you'll find countless examples of people building and then realizing they need a bigger coop. So save yourself from headaches and money.......