DuchessVonRabblerousen
Chirping
- Jul 10, 2024
- 13
- 63
- 54
Man, the struggle for proper, affordable chicken home is real! After a few weeks of researching options, plans, and seeing how outrageously over priced prefab coops are for what you get, I decided to build one. We'll, mostly build one.
After pricing out materials for the house, it became obvious to me that I could dive well into triple digits for a budget on this. Given that I'm a first time chicken mom, I wasn't even sure these birds were gonna make it. So I compromised:
After scouring the local marketplace for used playhouses, I came up with nothing so I just bought a new one for about 240 dollars on Amazon. Then I supplemented it with a trip to Home Depot for the run supplies.
And slowly it started coming to life
After this pic, I did some heavy coats of weatherproof stain along the inside and some silicone roofing paint on the floor for resilience.
I had some texturized weather proof deck paint left over from an overlanding project, so I painted the entire run, their ramp, and the base of the coop with it.
After putting on the shade I added the fans to the inside of the coop and some lighting around the place.
Seen here under this weekends full moon.
I have elected to use construction sand throughout the coop and run. It has made life a lot easier and my birds don't have to worry about lounging or running around in soggy ground. Once the inclement weather starts in I'll probably add a full roof over the run. But for now, my birds are happy. It's not very big (12 foot by 4 foot run) but my birds free range in a huge yard all day anyway and they haven't had any trouble finding a place to roost. As of right now they huddle as closely together as they can on one bar.
All in all this project cost me 800 dollars. A prefab coop and run of comparable size would have run me at least 1500 dollars. So, I'm pretty happy. I will probably build off of it as my birds develop their needs. But for now it works just fine.
After pricing out materials for the house, it became obvious to me that I could dive well into triple digits for a budget on this. Given that I'm a first time chicken mom, I wasn't even sure these birds were gonna make it. So I compromised:
After scouring the local marketplace for used playhouses, I came up with nothing so I just bought a new one for about 240 dollars on Amazon. Then I supplemented it with a trip to Home Depot for the run supplies.
And slowly it started coming to life
After this pic, I did some heavy coats of weatherproof stain along the inside and some silicone roofing paint on the floor for resilience.
I had some texturized weather proof deck paint left over from an overlanding project, so I painted the entire run, their ramp, and the base of the coop with it.
After putting on the shade I added the fans to the inside of the coop and some lighting around the place.
Seen here under this weekends full moon.
I have elected to use construction sand throughout the coop and run. It has made life a lot easier and my birds don't have to worry about lounging or running around in soggy ground. Once the inclement weather starts in I'll probably add a full roof over the run. But for now, my birds are happy. It's not very big (12 foot by 4 foot run) but my birds free range in a huge yard all day anyway and they haven't had any trouble finding a place to roost. As of right now they huddle as closely together as they can on one bar.
All in all this project cost me 800 dollars. A prefab coop and run of comparable size would have run me at least 1500 dollars. So, I'm pretty happy. I will probably build off of it as my birds develop their needs. But for now it works just fine.