Coop and Run -- How are we doing

[Michelle A.]

Hi Michelle here and we are new to this idea of chicken and all. So we are in a rural city of Soap Lake WA and we are allowed to have four chickens. We decided to build a tractor coop so we could move the chickens around our yard in their run. After reading some the other posts and before we finish what we have going I thought I'd run what we've got done so far by ya all.

Here goes: Dimension of coop- 43" tall on one side, 34" tall on the other, 25" wide and we'll be using tidy cat litter boxes as their nest boxes, attached to the far end of the coop away from the door (this fall they will get furniture blanket coats for insulation against the cold. The roof will lift so I can clean it. We have built it out of Pallets & used a heavy plastic on the inside to cut off all drafts. We have matched up the coop doorway with the run door way. We still need to put in vents and my husband is itching to put in an exhaust fan. As you can see by the attached photos we're not done, thought I better make sure we are doing it right before we put the roof on. Both coop and run will be movable.


Just told my husband that I am posting this and as the builder he is cringing so......
Any suggestions folk?

 

[Crazy for Chickens!]

Looks great to me!!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Perhaps a window in the coop. Winters are dark and dark means little or no eggs. I would use maybe a shed window. You can open it in summer then.

If you do a window be sure to add hardware cloth to keep the undesirables out.
For my small flat topped broody run I use shade cloth on top of the wire in summer. It allows air flow but gives shade.

Don't forget vents that can be closed in cases of blowing snow.

Good use of materials!

 

[Michelle A.]

Well this is what we ended up with:

and here are my girls.

 

[Crazy for Chickens!]

Pretty rooster too!

 

[Michelle A.]

Pretty rooster too!

Nope all hens.