Chris

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cgainer

cgainer

Chirping
7 Years
May 3, 2015
24
2
92
Thomasville Ga
Hi I don't have chickens yet, I have to wait til August to see if our town will approve (Lake Wales,FL). I've been looking at coops and would really love to build one myself but have no construction experience. Can anyone advise on a good, inexpensive coop? I'm so glad to have found this site.
 
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glad you have joined us. Hope your town will pass the ordinance so you can get your own flock.

You should visit the learning center and coop/run forums before buying a coop. Most you can buy are not chicken friendly, too small and those large and well built are really pricey. There are so many examples in the coop forums of what you can accomplish on a budget. Many people with no carpentry skills have accomplished building quite nice coops.

IMO try to find a friend or family member with some wood working skills. Look at the upcoming chicken laws to see how many you will be allowed and then decide what size and style coop would fit your needs. Purina has an on line building plan for a simple coop that you may be able to accomplish.

If you do decide to purchase a kit coop, pay close attention to actual dimensions and ignore the promo adds of how many chickens they can house - those numbers are ridiculously too small. And the really small coops don't work out in the long run.

Good luck on the vote.
 
Hi Chris, welcome to BYC!

I hope your town will allow chickens so people like you can enjoy them.

@sunflour made some really good points about coops. Most people that buy a pre-built end up buying or building another one because the first one they got was too small or fell apart. To get an idea of what you want to look for in a pre-build or what the issues are with them, take a look at the coop review section: https://www.backyardchickens.com/products/category/coops-runs-housing

You might also want to read some of the posts by members that have built their coops to get an idea of what all goes into putting one together: https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/2/Coops Not everyone that builds a coop has a lot of carpentry skills and reading some of these stories might give you the encouragement to tackle one. Repurposing items like wooden flats or even old playhouses has worked well for some people with a bit of tweaking and elbow grease.

Good luck to you, if you have questions feel free to ask. Nice to have you join us!
 
Hello Chris!
400

Welcome to BYC and the coop! There's a lot of great peeps here! Feel free to ask lots of questions. But most of all, make yourself at home. I'm so glad you decided to joined the BYC family. There are some threads that show step by step, instructions on how to build your own. Fellow members even put their blueprints up and materials you'll need. That's what we did, we ended up building our own. I found that most of the prefab coops, are built real cheep and they don't last long against the elements.
 
Welcome to BYC, Chris! Please make yourself at home and we are here to help.

The other members have given you excellent advice. So I'll just say good luck and again, welcome!
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